From Stranger at Blah3:
Blah3 – Dear Media: You’ve been played like a ‘59 GoldTop. Now what?
Listen up, Rubes. You think that for the past six years you’ve been part of their crowd, but you haven’t. You got suckered, flim-flammed, taken in, jacked, jobbed and jerked around. They took your lunch money. They came in your mouth after promising they wouldn’t.
They used you, and now they want to jail you.
Barbra O’Brien of Mahablog guest blogs at Unclaimed Territory and introduces her series on saving democracy through media activism. I can’t wait to read the rest of it.
She says what I’ve been saying (though much better, of course) for a long time: That fixing the media in this country is THE most important thing for progressives to do.
The ascension of the radical Right occurred over many years, and their takeover of government — a slow-motion coup d’etat — happened gradually enough that most of us didn’t comprehend what was happening. America has been challenged by radicalism before, and always it has come back to the center soon enough. (And by “center” I mean the real center, where liberalism and conservatism balance, not the false “center” of today that would have been considered extreme conservatism in saner times.) I do not believe the coup is a fait accompli; the Right is not yet so secure it its power that it has dropped all pretense of honoring democratic political process. They’re still going through the motions, in other words. But this time I do not believe America will come back to the center unless a whole lot of us grab hold and pull at it. Hard.
How do we do that? First, we have to get our bearings and remember what “normal” is, which is going to be hard for the young folks whose memories don’t back back further than the Reagan Administration. Just take it from an old lady — what we got now ain’t normal.
Second, I argue that media reform is essential to all other necessary political reform. Until people outside the radical Right and the elite media-political establishment are able to take part in the nation’s political discourse, not much can be accomplished.
For example, many progressives have concluded it is pointless to support Democrats, because as soon as a Democrat gets inside the Beltway his spinal column is ripped right out of him. Time and time again, we’ve seen Democratic politicians make grand speeches to their liberal constituents, but once we get them elected they do little more than offer ineffectual objections to the ruling right-wing power juggernaut. At best. At worst, they vote with the Right out of some screwy notions about political expediency. And we’re all sick of this.
But I say that progressivism’s salvation will not come from any political leader or party, Democrat or otherwise. Progressivism will only be saved when we can effect change in our political culture so that progressive ideas can get a fair public hearing. And this brings us to the necessity of media reform. [emphasis added]
When A Net Neutrality Tie Is A Win | TPMCafe
The news stories following the Senate Commerce Committee vote on Net Neutrality pictured it as a defeat for the forces of good. Don’t believe it. Even though the Net Neutrality amendment failed on a tie vote, we got ourselves into a good position for the rest of the game.
Or, you know, more legalistically:
SCOTUSblog: Hamdan Summary — And HUGE News
[...] the Court held that Congress had, by statute, required that the commissions comply with the laws of war — and held further that these commissions do not (for various reasons).
I’ve been in such a funk, depressed by the news at every turn. This makes me feel a little better.
Update from the There May Be a God After All department:
Think Progress » Supreme Court Decision on Gitmo Undermines Bush’s Legal Case For Warrantless Wiretapping
The impact of today’s Supreme Court decision on military commissions goes well beyond Guantanamo. The Supreme Court has ruled that the Authorization for the Use of Military Force — issued by Congress in the days after 9/11 — is not a blank check for the administration.
Update 2: Glenn Greenwald explains the decicion in more accessible language, but his post is a downer, because he basically articulates my first reaction: What’s to make the Cheney administration actually follow this ruling when they don’t follow laws they don’t like, and don’t care who objects.
But his summary is upbeat:
Nonetheless, opponents of monarchical power should celebrate this decision. It has been some time since real limits were placed on the Bush administration in the area of national security. The rejection of the President’s claims to unlimited authority with regard to how Al Qaeda prisoners are treated is extraordinary and encouraging by any measure. The decision is an important step towards re-establishing the principle that there are three co-equal branches of government and that the threat of terrorism does not justify radical departures from the principles of government on which our country was founded. [Emphasis mine]
For me, it all comes back to the media (and the tide of public opinion it can influence), and whether they will stand up on this one, finally. Or whether Spector will find some balls. Don’t hold your breath on either.
Update 3: Happpy meter swings down with Digby. Back to my original news gloom.
Update 4: Glenn responds to Digby (and others) with sunshine and light, and I’m calling it for GG, who’s been studying and writing exclusively on Presidential powers for a while now. And he is one lawyer I trust.
Final Update: Christy at Firedoglake gleans the web for reactions, celebrations, warnings so I don’t have to.
Van Taylor wants you to know
Van is mad at Murtha for something he didn’t actually say. The Miami Sun-Sentinel misquoted him and no one checked the quote (sounds like bloggers have taken over, doesn’t it?) before running with it.
Van Taylor, the Republican candidate for the District 17 House seet, and the only R candidate who is an Iraq vet, is joining the swiftboating of John Murtha for his position on the war.
Of course the whole campaign is politically motivated and fueled by lies and distortion — else it wouldn’t be “swiftboating” but of course we can’t count on the media to clarify things for voters.
Fortunately, there’s a local blogger who takes on this task for the district. Nate Nance publishes the blog Common Sense, and tirelessly covers this race. If you live in this area, you should bookmark Common Sense and check it regularly. If you have local news that Nate might be interested in writing about, he’s got his email posted. And of course, use his comments to get a local dialog started — a civil, respectful one, of course, regardless of your political persuasion..
An interesting storyline has developed, with Hillary hiring a prominent blogger. What does it mean? What triumphs or disasters does it bode? I expect the arc to last at least through the 2008 elections, but we could get a pretty good idea of the plot with the upcoming mid-terms.
And I use the word “interesting” advisedly, in the way it was used in the old Chinese curse: May your children live in interesting times.
Cenk Uygur has a take on it at HuffPost, and he knows Hillary’s new consultant personally, so has an emotional spin on the problem he, the consultant faces.
Steve Guillard has worked for a political campaign in the past, and, well, has a rather strong opinion about the experience: “I’d rather set myself on fire and run through a gas station first.”
At this point in the political state of this republic, the blogger involved getting burned is the least of our worries
From the Daily Gotham:
It’s official : Hillary Clinton is running for president
To make this a real democratic movement, we will need to walk away from the wannabe king-makers and really invest our time and energies into advocacy organizations and citizen networks. We need to get people and advocates together in the same online communities, email lists, forums and chat rooms as well as the meetups, rallies and door-to-door friendraisings.We need to bring everyday citizens who don’t have time to work as activists or write as pundits but want to do more, contribute more personally (not just financially), to the causes they care the most. We need to make it easy for regular folks to be engaged in the political process.
With the death of the liberal blogosphere hopefully we will see a true progressive movement arise online and off.
To be continued….
Atrios:
Stand up now.
Update: Glenn Greenwald explains why.
This area has been going through a period of reflection and reassessment in the past few years about its rather dark racist history — well some folks in these parts are frantically resisting any reflection and reassessment, but they are the usual suspects who are always on the wrong side of history.
This interview with, Patricia Bernstein, the author of one of the two recent books that looked at this issue was interviewed by the Waco Trib and, though much too brief a discussion, it does reveal quite a lot about local attitudes and in/action on the matter.
From Q and A with Patrica Bernstein: Of Waco, lynchings and the need for community healing
[...] it’s pretty amazing it took this long to get the whole story told and somebody didn’t do it sooner. One of the sources I used was a master’s thesis written at Baylor University in the 1970s by a gentleman whose aunt actually witnessed the Jesse Washington lynching. He had been interested in it ever since he heard her story, and his professors tried to discourage him from writing the thesis because they thought it was too negative and too inflammatory and they just didn’t see the point. But I think this is a story that long needed to be told, not just because it is an atrocity but also because of the heroism involved.
We also learn that a screenplay is being written from the book, which I would love to see be produced into a film. It would be a great vehicle for an actress to portray a relatively unknown heroine, suffragist Elisabeth Freeman and bring more attention to her life of activism. Freeman’s anti-lynching organizing with the NAACP is described here.
I’m a big fan of Kathy Griffin. Love her Bravo specials and her reality show, My Life on the D List is just a hoot. She pokes good natured fun at celebs, and gives a boost to gays, political dissidents, and is generally brash and irreverent, which gets me at hello, as they say. Plus, she’s brave as hell, going to Iraq to entertain and visit with the troops, despite her opposition to the war.
I don’t watch her show religiously, but I’ve caught a couple of recent episodes and, while she was funny as ever, I was startled by Kathy’s appearance, especially her eyes.
Well, turns out that Kathy had lasik procedure that went bad, or was botched by a famous LA surgeon. She went through a lot of pain and has lost most of the vision in one eye.
A really sad story. As Kathy warns on her site: lasik=bad.
Larry Beinhart says we should just “Give George Bush His War”
George Bush wants the war. He wants it to be his issue. Yes. Yes, please, let him have it. Let it be all his. But it has to be all his. I heard Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid on the radio and he said that it was time to get out of Iraq because it had gone on too long, with too many deaths, at too great an expense. Frankly, it sounded weak and wishy-washy. It sounded like the problem was that he – and the Democrats – just didn’t have the stomach for a long, tough fight. Which is how the Republicans want it to sound. That’s not the position to take. Nor is it the issue. The position to take is that it’s not America’s war at all. The issue is that it’s George Bush’s war. His own, personal, private obsession.
I doubt we will ever see Bush pay appropriately for his crimes, but I do think now that we will see him have to stew in widespread contempt from his fellow Americans once he is out of office and the full force of his distastrous presidency is felt. It is bound to be a dark time of much suffering, but any shame or embarrassment felt by George, assuming he is even capable of it, will be a little light in that darkness.
