A little j'accuse from the Dayton Voice
So, I'm finally taking the time to really think about the Dayton Voice--what the experience was like for me, what it was like for others, what we tried to accomplish, how much of Dayton life it chronicled, the Voice in retrospect, and other passing thoughts. Of course, to interrogate only my own self is to make the story of the Voice about me, which it most certainly was not. To get it right, I would actually have to report, talk to others who were with the Voice and of the Voice and for the Voice, readers and writers and photographers and carriers and sales staff and fellow travelers.
And I would have to set aside time and effort to write about Marrianne McMullen and what she did as co-publisher, editor and writer. She reported some of the papers most important stories, like the Dayton Public Schools' reliance on suspension and expulsion, like what prostitution felt like to the women who had fallen into it, like what Jenny Wilcox, wrongfully convicted and incarcerated, experienced during and after her release, like how the Voice was Marrianne's inspiration.
But as important as it is to make sure that my story of the Voice is not some hagiographic fantasy of myself, I'm going to end this post with a pretty complete transcription of a piece I wrote for the April 20, 1996 issue of the paper about Vietnam, Kennedy-era Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and U.S. media at the time. In that piece, McNamara didn't lie alone," I was, per usual, much more opinion writer than reporter. And so it goes:
"Last week, the Dayton Daily News joined others in the mainstream media in criticizing former Secretary of Defense robert McNamara for hiding the truth about Vietnam. A News editorial chided McNamara for his "late, awfully late" revelations about the mistakes and failures of the devastating war against Vietnam.
"As the News would have it, the prolonged agony of the war was the responsibility of those who governed at the time and especially of an elite few, McNamara included. Americans wanted to trust their government, but the "...leadership at the top carries...the guilt of having hidden the truth from the American people," said the editorial.
"But DDN misses the point--as it must--that it took an enormous collaborative effort to hide the "truth." And the mainstream media was crucial to that collaboration, the News included.
"The media cooperated in a White House strategy of burying inconvenient facts, and omitted critical perspectives in covering the war. Such editorial policy facilitated the physical devastation of Vietnam, submerged the deepening impoverishment of parts of the United States and, ultimately undermined faith not only in American government, but in the media as well.
"After all, the truth about the war was known fairly early. In 1964, Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf resolution that authorized President Johnson "to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force" to oppose the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. But in March 1968, I. F. Stone reported in the New York Review that the alleged North Vietnamese attack in international waters on U.S. ships--the incident that the Johnson administration used to obtain passage of the declaration--actually had been a violation of North Vietnamese coastal waters and an attack provoked by the actions of the U.S. Navy. The News ought to check its own file library to see when, if ever, the paper reported that the Congressional quasi-declaration of war had been passed in response to an invented incident.
"Anti-war organizing [at the time] was based on a variety of different considerations. The United States, activists believed, had no legitimate national interest at stake in Vietnam and no reason to fight to maintain client regimes in the old outposts of French colonialism. Of course, rich ore and oil deposits in Southeast Asia and Indonesia were at stake, but access to these resources was not an admitted goal of U.S. war policy.
"Instead, we were fighting to stop a communist takeover and protect the "free world," even though a Vietnamese election in 1956 and agreed to by Ho Chi Minh was stopped by the Eisenhower administration. The News can check to see when it reported that Ngo Dinh Diem was installed with the support of the United States in preference to a freely elected Communist government."
"The national news media, and local outposts like the News, were delighted with the spectacle of protest, which they covered, and uninterested in the substance of these protests. The News, which helped to perpetuate the myth that opposition to the war tied the hands of the U.S. military, ought to go back and check its files to see when, if ever, it reported that more tons of bombs were dropped on Vietnam than were dropped on Europe and Japan during all of World War II.
"Thought the media was comfortable with the studied and persistent omission of the facts about the air bombardment of Vietnam, they delighted in reporting about alleged abuses of returning Vietnam vets by war protestors. The News might consider how many times it covered abuses of vets compared to the far more frequent physical assaults on protestors. Further, compare that to coverage of the estimated 200 or more massacres of Vietnamese villagers by American ground forces. These events were common knowledge among Vietnam vets and war protestors. They were "truths" that Washington elites and a cooperative press ignored.
"The cost of the military build-up resulted in severely underfunding anti-poverty programs. That is one reason why Dr. Martin Luther King spoke out against the war. The News might check its files to see how ofteh the paper reported on Dr. king's opposition to the war.
"Yes, it is terrible that Robert McNamara waited so long to confess. After all, 60,000 Americans and 400,000 Vietnamese died in the war. But mainstream dailies told precious little truth about the war and the Dayton Daily News' editorial maintains that tradition. "Awfully late" is too soon to expect an apology from the News."
"McNamara didn't lie alone," Dayton Voice, April 20, 1995.
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label media. Show all posts
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Monday, March 11, 2013
The Dayton Voice, Again
David Esrati and Chuck Porter responded to a previous post: The Dayton Voice and A.J. Wagner. I could have used the comment section of that post to follow up, but there is so very much to say it seemed better to use a whole new post to further explore the life and times of the Dayton Voice.
The first message excerpted below is from David, a Dayton-area iconoclast of the first rank, a blogger on local political issues, and a candidate for Dayton City Commission in the upcoming election. (Read the full text in the comment section at the end of The Dayton Voice and A.J. Wagner):
Letter from David Esrati
"Jeff," David writes,
"Although I think AJ is a much better candidate than the democratic party endorsed Nan Whaley, I think of AJ as a career politicians, with a boatload of baggage."
"Although I think AJ is a much better candidate than the democratic party endorsed Nan Whaley, I think of AJ as a career politicians, with a boatload of baggage."
The truth, David, is we all travel with "boatload[s] of baggage. It's the human condition. Ad hominem attacks don't accomplish much, except to muddy the water.
"[Incumbent Mayor] Leitzell is an independent, who challenged all candidates to run for less than $10K. Nan and AJ have each raised in excess of $60K already- and are going to spend much more.
"I'd have to think you'd respect that."
"[Incumbent Mayor] Leitzell is an independent, who challenged all candidates to run for less than $10K. Nan and AJ have each raised in excess of $60K already- and are going to spend much more.
"I'd have to think you'd respect that."
Well, I suppose I can respect that, and it might make Leitzell's defeat more noble when it happens. But it will still be a defeat.
"Also- the part you leave out about AJ is that he's still a political animal. He quit his last elected position as Judge, so his friend Steve Dankof could get nominated by Strickland before he left office. When Dankof wouldn't keep AJ's friends and family on the patronage payroll- AJ wanted to "un-resign." They worked a backroom deal so AJ's pal could keep her job. This is what we need to put a stop to in Dayton."
"Also- the part you leave out about AJ is that he's still a political animal. He quit his last elected position as Judge, so his friend Steve Dankof could get nominated by Strickland before he left office. When Dankof wouldn't keep AJ's friends and family on the patronage payroll- AJ wanted to "un-resign." They worked a backroom deal so AJ's pal could keep her job. This is what we need to put a stop to in Dayton."
I actually omitted a lot about A.J.--mostly because I wasn't making any attempt to be comprehensive. But here's the thing, David--when A.J. published a few official county notices in the Voice, he was being a good steward of public funds and opposing policy that mandated purchasing from the Dayton Daily News at monopoly prices. That's the sort of frugal government expenditure you believe in and support, yes?
As for A.J.'s on-again, off-again retirement, why wouldn't I simply conclude that A.J. was trying to protect a competent colleague and public employee? Indeed, it seems awkward and there might be more to the story, but your implication that it was a corrupt ("back room") move ought to be supported by more rigorous journalism.
"Just because AJ put some cash in your pockets- doesn't make him a good guy, or a good choice for Mayor.
"Just because AJ put some cash in your pockets- doesn't make him a good guy, or a good choice for Mayor.
"David Esrati"
Actually, David, none of the money the county paid for those public announcements made it all the way to my pockets. In the heat of unpaid bills, it all evaporated before it hit the ground.
Who knows, maybe it paid for a press run that included an article about you--one in which we likely treated you with more respect than you ever got from the Dayton Daily News.
The next message, also excerpted, is from Chuck Porter, who worked for the Voice for several years as paper carrier, bookkeeper and circulation manager. When he finally left Dayton, Chuck and his family moved to Nebraska to manage an organic farm. Chuck's still out there, making his committed, diligent and trying-to-be-green way.
Letter from Chuck Porter
"Jeff," Chuck writes,
"I have very limited memory of AJ Wagner, and, so, won't comment about his character or fitness for leadership. But, I couldn't let a read of your post go by without thanking you (and I sincerely mean this) for letting me see and experience a way in which speaking truth to power and embracing diversity could be guiding principles for a business. The Voice was much more (and, I know, sometimes much less) than a business.
Well, our mission--to treat working people, women, people of color and the LGBT community as legitimate readers, sources and audiences for the news was a very good thing, but I'm not sure about the guiding-principles-for-a-business thing. Regardless, it seemed the right thing to do.
"I look fondly back on my years as a staff member, and I proudly remember that we paid delivery drivers $8/hr -even in the mid-to-late 90's- because we knew they were people of the utmost importance to our mission. I was proud and happy to be one of those drivers, and I was even more delighted to remain on staff in other roles, even after your departure.
"It is my hope that you and Marrianne look at those years in Dayton as important and formative, not just for you, but for a city that needed a Voice."
Thanks, Chuck for the "atta-boy." Marrianne and I hope that the Voice told stories that were relevant and unique, but what we know is that being part of the Voice and working with everybody there and developing real relationships with readers and activists was singularly enriching. No other work experience in my lifetime has taught me more or been more rewarding. We had the privilege to be part of something much bigger than ourselves.
"...I do believe countless people were changed -if even in a small way- by picking up The Dayton Voice off the rack somewhere in the Miami Valley. Awareness was given where it hadn't been before...regarding racial/sexual/gender inequality, ecological/financial negligence, and political/media shenanigans, eyes that were closed were pried open with the possibilities for local performance and visual art.
"I came into that mix of people because you invited me.
"Chuck Porter"
Whatever we accomplished we did it together, and you were part of the mix because you recognized what the Voice was trying to do and made yourself part of that effort. Too bad we couldn't make it last, but like you say, the Voice is still there, part of us.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Michelle Rhee's achievement
It says here: DC schools are not the very worst
Check out the most recent edition of Lapham's Quarterly. In his preamble,"Dancing with the Stars", Lapham sketches out the anatomy and history of celebrity, associating it with earlier manifestations like, "the vanity of princes" or the "wish for kings" or the "pretension to divinity " found in some leaders in all societies, including ours, especially "since John F. Kennedy was king in Camelot, and the collective effort [to manufacture fame]--nearly fifty years of dancing with the stars under the disco balls in Hollywood, Washington and Wall Street..."
There is always, always, a hot new thing, and always a new niche opening. For the moment, former DC public school chancellor Michelle Rhee occupies a celebrity niche in education; type Michelle into a search engine and Rhee will pop up before Obama.
But her moment is likely passing. Rhee has moved on to her own nonprofit organization, Students First, and to Sacramento where she will live. The Students First website promotes the organization as the agent of a national movement that will influence educational policies down to the state and local level. The website features glowing generalities about great teachers, informed parents and motivated students, but little about the Rhee's confrontational attitude toward teachers unions, the ultimate basis for her celebrity. Rhee and Students First, according to Washington Post writer Valerie Strauss, "are attempting to raise $1 billion for her new effort to take on the teachers unions." Rhee, it appears, still prizes confrontation with teachers unions above all else.
In her short turn as chancellor, a little over three calendar years on the job (but likely less than that in real time), Rhee crafted her own image as a teachers union nemesis. And the media responded. See, for example, Time magazine's 2008 take on Rhee, who posed on their cover holding a broom with which she would presumably sweep out the "bad" from America's schools as a way to get on the right track, or Fast Company's 2008 cover story, "The Iron Chancellor," which applauded Rhee's serve-the-children-damn-the-adults rhetoric, or the same magazine's 2010 follow-up on Rhee, which included her off-with-their-heads explanation for the firing of some 250 teachers, "I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school," Rhee says. "Why wouldn't we take those things into consideration?"
Standardized test scores improved after Rhee's first year on the job, but the results from the next two years were mixed. Nevertheless, Rhee gets lots of credit for "fixing" a disastrously bad school system. "When Rhee took over in 2007, D.C. schools were tied with Los Angeles for worst-in-the-nation status," writes Richard Whitmire (author of The Bee-Eater: Michelle Rhee Takes on the Nation's Worst School District), in "Rhee's necessary toughness." Her achievement, Whitmire, observes, "boosted the District off the cellar floor." Such an improvement hardly seems worth celebrating, but Whitmire is pleased with it and pronounces his disappointment at being unable to "identify one state poised to make Rhee-style academic gains."
So in the wake of Rhee's scorched-earth march through DC, we are now looking for other leaders who will, at a minimum, literally decimate the teachers unions in various school districts, abandon her post in three years or so, and leave behind minimal gains on standardized tests that cannot be correlated with specific, sustainable reforms. Such are the gifts of celebrity.
Check out the most recent edition of Lapham's Quarterly. In his preamble,"Dancing with the Stars", Lapham sketches out the anatomy and history of celebrity, associating it with earlier manifestations like, "the vanity of princes" or the "wish for kings" or the "pretension to divinity " found in some leaders in all societies, including ours, especially "since John F. Kennedy was king in Camelot, and the collective effort [to manufacture fame]--nearly fifty years of dancing with the stars under the disco balls in Hollywood, Washington and Wall Street..."
There is always, always, a hot new thing, and always a new niche opening. For the moment, former DC public school chancellor Michelle Rhee occupies a celebrity niche in education; type Michelle into a search engine and Rhee will pop up before Obama.
But her moment is likely passing. Rhee has moved on to her own nonprofit organization, Students First, and to Sacramento where she will live. The Students First website promotes the organization as the agent of a national movement that will influence educational policies down to the state and local level. The website features glowing generalities about great teachers, informed parents and motivated students, but little about the Rhee's confrontational attitude toward teachers unions, the ultimate basis for her celebrity. Rhee and Students First, according to Washington Post writer Valerie Strauss, "are attempting to raise $1 billion for her new effort to take on the teachers unions." Rhee, it appears, still prizes confrontation with teachers unions above all else.
In her short turn as chancellor, a little over three calendar years on the job (but likely less than that in real time), Rhee crafted her own image as a teachers union nemesis. And the media responded. See, for example, Time magazine's 2008 take on Rhee, who posed on their cover holding a broom with which she would presumably sweep out the "bad" from America's schools as a way to get on the right track, or Fast Company's 2008 cover story, "The Iron Chancellor," which applauded Rhee's serve-the-children-damn-the-adults rhetoric, or the same magazine's 2010 follow-up on Rhee, which included her off-with-their-heads explanation for the firing of some 250 teachers, "I got rid of teachers who had hit children, who had had sex with children, who had missed 78 days of school," Rhee says. "Why wouldn't we take those things into consideration?"
Standardized test scores improved after Rhee's first year on the job, but the results from the next two years were mixed. Nevertheless, Rhee gets lots of credit for "fixing" a disastrously bad school system. "When Rhee took over in 2007, D.C. schools were tied with Los Angeles for worst-in-the-nation status," writes Richard Whitmire (author of The Bee-Eater: Michelle Rhee Takes on the Nation's Worst School District), in "Rhee's necessary toughness." Her achievement, Whitmire, observes, "boosted the District off the cellar floor." Such an improvement hardly seems worth celebrating, but Whitmire is pleased with it and pronounces his disappointment at being unable to "identify one state poised to make Rhee-style academic gains."
So in the wake of Rhee's scorched-earth march through DC, we are now looking for other leaders who will, at a minimum, literally decimate the teachers unions in various school districts, abandon her post in three years or so, and leave behind minimal gains on standardized tests that cannot be correlated with specific, sustainable reforms. Such are the gifts of celebrity.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Journalist misses truth about Israeli occupation
Quelle surpris!
this is my umpteenth letter to the Washington Post about how often their columnists ignore the basic truths about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict--like the fact that Israel is an occupying power and, under international law, is barred from appropriating occupied territory, which is an actual war crime--and Jackson Diehl is a decision maker at the Post, routinely deciding what should run and what shouldn't, and he should know better than to pretend that the problem here is the Palestinian leadership or the Obama administration.
Assuming that the U.S. really wants to midwife worthwhile negotiations between the two parties, rather than merely give the appearance of working hard, the Obama administration ought to be far more concerned with naming Israeli transgressions (subsidized by U.S. aid) than with affirming Israeli-U.S. friendship. No true friend would spend so much time enabling dysfunctional behavior. Anyway, here's the letter:
Editor,
President Obama has made “flagrant mistakes” in dealing with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, says Deputy Editorial Page Editor Jackson Diehl (“A Mideast obstacle, ignored,” Mar. 22). Diehl asserts that the Bush administration’s handling of Israel would be a better model for managing the many obstacles that crop up on the path to a negotiated settlement, a claim that has me scratching my head.
Outside of Diehl, AIPAC and partisan Republican observers, I’m hard put to identify another source for such a high opinion of Bush administration statecraft in the Middle East. This should not be surprising considering that there were no negotiations, at all, between Israel and the Palestinians for seven years after the end of peace talks in 2001. At the time Bush administration Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice managed to restart talks, the Israeli government was led by the relatively moderate Ehud Olmert, not by the likes of hardliner Binyamin Netanyahu, a distinction that Diehl acknowledges while dismissing its significance.
Historically, the United States has been the most important guarantor of Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. The U.S. has also subsidized Israel with almost $1 trillion since the founding of the state. Accordingly, the Obama administration reacted critically to the recent announcement that Israel would build an additional 1,600 housing units in Arab East Jerusalem. That criticism was leavened, as all U.S. criticism has been, by repeated affirmations of the unique and “special” relationship between the two countries. Diehl, however, says the current White House “went ballistic.” I think “ballistic” would be a better description of what Israel “went” last year in Gaza.
this is my umpteenth letter to the Washington Post about how often their columnists ignore the basic truths about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict--like the fact that Israel is an occupying power and, under international law, is barred from appropriating occupied territory, which is an actual war crime--and Jackson Diehl is a decision maker at the Post, routinely deciding what should run and what shouldn't, and he should know better than to pretend that the problem here is the Palestinian leadership or the Obama administration.
Assuming that the U.S. really wants to midwife worthwhile negotiations between the two parties, rather than merely give the appearance of working hard, the Obama administration ought to be far more concerned with naming Israeli transgressions (subsidized by U.S. aid) than with affirming Israeli-U.S. friendship. No true friend would spend so much time enabling dysfunctional behavior. Anyway, here's the letter:
Editor,
President Obama has made “flagrant mistakes” in dealing with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, says Deputy Editorial Page Editor Jackson Diehl (“A Mideast obstacle, ignored,” Mar. 22). Diehl asserts that the Bush administration’s handling of Israel would be a better model for managing the many obstacles that crop up on the path to a negotiated settlement, a claim that has me scratching my head.
Outside of Diehl, AIPAC and partisan Republican observers, I’m hard put to identify another source for such a high opinion of Bush administration statecraft in the Middle East. This should not be surprising considering that there were no negotiations, at all, between Israel and the Palestinians for seven years after the end of peace talks in 2001. At the time Bush administration Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice managed to restart talks, the Israeli government was led by the relatively moderate Ehud Olmert, not by the likes of hardliner Binyamin Netanyahu, a distinction that Diehl acknowledges while dismissing its significance.
Historically, the United States has been the most important guarantor of Israel’s existence as a Jewish state. The U.S. has also subsidized Israel with almost $1 trillion since the founding of the state. Accordingly, the Obama administration reacted critically to the recent announcement that Israel would build an additional 1,600 housing units in Arab East Jerusalem. That criticism was leavened, as all U.S. criticism has been, by repeated affirmations of the unique and “special” relationship between the two countries. Diehl, however, says the current White House “went ballistic.” I think “ballistic” would be a better description of what Israel “went” last year in Gaza.
Friday, February 12, 2010
Media News That Fails Us
Collaborators in the news room
In 1967, I informed my draft board that I considered both the draft, in general, and student deferments from the draft, in particular, to be immoral and that I wished to be reclassified from 2S to 1A. Ignoring my larger moral argument, the board sent me a new card with a new classification making me immediately eligible to be drafted. I then notified them that I intended to burn my card in public at an appointed time and place. Though they did not show up for the event, they did draft me shortly thereafter, whereupon I departed for Canada, the location of further adventures only tangentially related to the focus of this post.
Since those halcyon days of antiwar protest, I have fervently believed that reducing military spending and ending militarism ought to be critically important to activists regardless of their issue focus. Since the news media, historically, has been the handmaiden of American military interventions, it follows that journalism, journalistic practice and media ought to be another point of strategic concern for all issues activists. A case in point is the major media's abject failure to investigate the full story of the Bush administration's duplicity in making the case for the invasion of Iraq and to tell that story early and often, with the result that the Iraq War has gone on for a tortuously long time at a cost of nearly $1 trillion.
Writer Sebastian Jones has produced a well-researched piece, "The Lobbying-Media Complex" that adds to the indictment of cable and network news media. The story, running in The Nation, gets right to the point in its first three paragraphs, detailing how ex-Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge and retired general Barry McCaffrey appeared recently on news shows as experts on energy and the Afghanistan war, respectively, without the relevant disclosures that the two men have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments from energy companies and military contractors.
To end his piece, Jones quotes Arizona State University journalism professor Aaron Brown's observations following 2008 election coverage, which featured endless line-ups and roundtables of analysts sharing little of real value: "We live in a time when there are no shortages of opinions and an incredible deficit of facts."
The point needs augmenting, I think. Having and sharing opinions, after all, seems part of human DNA, but the constitutionally protected function of news media is to uncover and share relevant information that good citizenship requires. Otherwise media is nothing but a toady for the rich and powerful, collaborating with their policy goals.
In 1967, I informed my draft board that I considered both the draft, in general, and student deferments from the draft, in particular, to be immoral and that I wished to be reclassified from 2S to 1A. Ignoring my larger moral argument, the board sent me a new card with a new classification making me immediately eligible to be drafted. I then notified them that I intended to burn my card in public at an appointed time and place. Though they did not show up for the event, they did draft me shortly thereafter, whereupon I departed for Canada, the location of further adventures only tangentially related to the focus of this post.
Since those halcyon days of antiwar protest, I have fervently believed that reducing military spending and ending militarism ought to be critically important to activists regardless of their issue focus. Since the news media, historically, has been the handmaiden of American military interventions, it follows that journalism, journalistic practice and media ought to be another point of strategic concern for all issues activists. A case in point is the major media's abject failure to investigate the full story of the Bush administration's duplicity in making the case for the invasion of Iraq and to tell that story early and often, with the result that the Iraq War has gone on for a tortuously long time at a cost of nearly $1 trillion.
Writer Sebastian Jones has produced a well-researched piece, "The Lobbying-Media Complex" that adds to the indictment of cable and network news media. The story, running in The Nation, gets right to the point in its first three paragraphs, detailing how ex-Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge and retired general Barry McCaffrey appeared recently on news shows as experts on energy and the Afghanistan war, respectively, without the relevant disclosures that the two men have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments from energy companies and military contractors.
To end his piece, Jones quotes Arizona State University journalism professor Aaron Brown's observations following 2008 election coverage, which featured endless line-ups and roundtables of analysts sharing little of real value: "We live in a time when there are no shortages of opinions and an incredible deficit of facts."
The point needs augmenting, I think. Having and sharing opinions, after all, seems part of human DNA, but the constitutionally protected function of news media is to uncover and share relevant information that good citizenship requires. Otherwise media is nothing but a toady for the rich and powerful, collaborating with their policy goals.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Health Care News from Commie Rag
Health Care Fight Isn't Over
The May 23rd issue of People's Weekly World came in the mail today. "Public option is 'core fight' in health reform battle," announced the headline on the lead story. Well, quelle surprise!
I thought the fight for a public insurance plan was all but over. That, I suppose is because I have become a consumer of primarily mainstream versions of the news. I read Washington Post. I catch a little CNN and clearly not enough Daily Show. And, I'm thinking as a direct consequence of where I get my news, I had come to believe that the stars (and the lobbyists and the insurance companies and the Republicans and the privileged few who don't care what they have to pay to get decent medical coverage) were lined up against a public plan (government-operated health care coverage) and that said public plan was therefore doomed.
But it's not doomed. According to PWW (here's a link to one Weekly World article) the fight for a public plan ain't over. That's great news and, unsurprisingly, not clearly the case in the sources I've been relying on for most of my news. I should be ashamed, but more to the point, we still have a chance to pass health care legislation that includes a public plan. Now, better informed as I am, what am I gonna do about it?
The May 23rd issue of People's Weekly World came in the mail today. "Public option is 'core fight' in health reform battle," announced the headline on the lead story. Well, quelle surprise!
I thought the fight for a public insurance plan was all but over. That, I suppose is because I have become a consumer of primarily mainstream versions of the news. I read Washington Post. I catch a little CNN and clearly not enough Daily Show. And, I'm thinking as a direct consequence of where I get my news, I had come to believe that the stars (and the lobbyists and the insurance companies and the Republicans and the privileged few who don't care what they have to pay to get decent medical coverage) were lined up against a public plan (government-operated health care coverage) and that said public plan was therefore doomed.
But it's not doomed. According to PWW (here's a link to one Weekly World article) the fight for a public plan ain't over. That's great news and, unsurprisingly, not clearly the case in the sources I've been relying on for most of my news. I should be ashamed, but more to the point, we still have a chance to pass health care legislation that includes a public plan. Now, better informed as I am, what am I gonna do about it?
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Letter to the Washington Post, #6
I sent this one on March 17. I don't think it will be published, either.
I'm thinking I might be going about this wrong. Maybe I should see how many letters-to-the-editor I can write without being published by the Post. Here's the letter:
Thanks to Fareed Zakaria for at least half-truths about Iraq (In Iraq, Still Stuck in a Loop, Mar. 17). Though the reality is that we started the Iraq War already stuck, if not worse, it is nice to see a media go-to guy suggesting that well, yes, maybe, the surge ain’t working.
It would be nicer still if analysts would get off the notion that the surge is meant “to buy time for the Iraqis to make political progress,” which has always been as credible as the idea that we ought to invade Iraq because Saddam has WMDs. Arguably, the surge was really intended to buy time for the Bush administration to get off the stage before it became clear that the whole war was, and remains, a really bad idea.
That surge, by the way, isn’t working, either.
Jeff Epton
807 Taylor St., NE
Washington, DC 20017
202 506-7470
I'm thinking I might be going about this wrong. Maybe I should see how many letters-to-the-editor I can write without being published by the Post. Here's the letter:
Thanks to Fareed Zakaria for at least half-truths about Iraq (In Iraq, Still Stuck in a Loop, Mar. 17). Though the reality is that we started the Iraq War already stuck, if not worse, it is nice to see a media go-to guy suggesting that well, yes, maybe, the surge ain’t working.
It would be nicer still if analysts would get off the notion that the surge is meant “to buy time for the Iraqis to make political progress,” which has always been as credible as the idea that we ought to invade Iraq because Saddam has WMDs. Arguably, the surge was really intended to buy time for the Bush administration to get off the stage before it became clear that the whole war was, and remains, a really bad idea.
That surge, by the way, isn’t working, either.
Jeff Epton
807 Taylor St., NE
Washington, DC 20017
202 506-7470
Letter to the Washington Post, #5
This is the fifth letter I've written to the Post since early February
Jim Hoagland’s March 2 column, “Long Winter for the Media,” was a very satisfying read. Given major media’s general inclination to deny a significant role in the shaping of public opinion, Hoagland’s frankness and honesty was refreshing.
He could have gone further, but the admission that print media, in competition with broadcast and cable, sometimes presents “complex events and trends…at the expense of understanding and fairness” is an important one.
It was all the more surprising, then, to encounter Hoagland’s extreme overstatement of the Bush administration’s “accomplishments” in his column of March 9 (“How to Make an Exit”).
Official silence and covert cooperation with “Turkey’s successfully managed military campaign into northern Iraq that ended Feb. 29” is success for the Bush administration? In what universe? As one foreseeable effect of the dishonestly represented, costly and ill-advised invasion of Iraq, a Turkish foray into Iraq supported by American intelligence is simply one more moment of mayhem closely connected with the war that will smear Bush’s name forever.
I reread the whole column, trying to discern why Hoagland might want to advise George W. Bush on ways to achieve some sort of graceful exit. “[Bush has] touched off changes in the international system that will take years or decades to absorb, repair or appreciate,” writes Hoagland.
Except for the people and countries that have already absorbed all the damage they can.
Jeff Epton
807 Taylor St., NE
Washington, DC 20017
202 506-7470
Jim Hoagland’s March 2 column, “Long Winter for the Media,” was a very satisfying read. Given major media’s general inclination to deny a significant role in the shaping of public opinion, Hoagland’s frankness and honesty was refreshing.
He could have gone further, but the admission that print media, in competition with broadcast and cable, sometimes presents “complex events and trends…at the expense of understanding and fairness” is an important one.
It was all the more surprising, then, to encounter Hoagland’s extreme overstatement of the Bush administration’s “accomplishments” in his column of March 9 (“How to Make an Exit”).
Official silence and covert cooperation with “Turkey’s successfully managed military campaign into northern Iraq that ended Feb. 29” is success for the Bush administration? In what universe? As one foreseeable effect of the dishonestly represented, costly and ill-advised invasion of Iraq, a Turkish foray into Iraq supported by American intelligence is simply one more moment of mayhem closely connected with the war that will smear Bush’s name forever.
I reread the whole column, trying to discern why Hoagland might want to advise George W. Bush on ways to achieve some sort of graceful exit. “[Bush has] touched off changes in the international system that will take years or decades to absorb, repair or appreciate,” writes Hoagland.
Except for the people and countries that have already absorbed all the damage they can.
Jeff Epton
807 Taylor St., NE
Washington, DC 20017
202 506-7470
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