April 18, 2005
-
MONDAY BOOKCrimes Against Nature
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.For 20 years, this member of the Kennedy clan has made it his fight to save American rivers and last year he published this book attacking the environmental policies of the Bush administration. The paperback will be out in July and I for one plan to read it. For now (still ploughing through the book about jazz I reviewed last week – it’s a big one), I will just share an excerpt from the book that appeared in May’s Vanity Fair:
President Bush has opened our national lands and sacred places to the lowest bidder and launched a jihad against the American environment and public health to enrich his corporate sponsors. He has mired us in a costly, humiliating war that has killed more than 1,520 American soldiers and maimed 11,300. He has made America the target of Islamic hatred, caused thousands of new terrorists to be recruited to al-Qaeda, isolated us in the world, and drained our treasury of the funds necessary to rebuild Afghanistan and to finance our own vital homeland-security needs. He has shattered our traditional alliances and failed to protect vulnerable terrorist targets at home–chemical plants, nuclear facilities, air-cargo carriers, and ports. He has disgraced our nation and empowered tyrants with the unpunished excesses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. …baffled Democrats were hard-pressed to believe that their fellow Americans would give a man like this a second term.
I believe…that Democrats lost the presidential contest not because of a philosophical chasm between red and blue states but due to an information deficit
caused by a breakdown in our national media. Traditional broadcast networks have abandoned their former obligation to advance democracy and promote the public interest by informing the public about both sides of issues relevant to those goals. To attract viewers and advertising revenues, they entertain rather than inform. This threat to the flow of information, vital to democracy’s survival, has been compounded in recent years by the growing power of right-wing media that twist the news and deliberately deceive the public to advance their radical agenda.
What Kennedy proposes is a revival of the Fairness Doctrine “so that the airwaves once again belong to the public.” Here is a brief history of what the Fairness Doctrine is. Essentially, it was a policy of the US FCC enacted in 1949 to ensure that issues discussed on a broadcast station be balanced and fair. In the 1980’s under Reagan the doctrine was dissoved. I don’t know about you but I’m getting fed up with the endless sensationalism cluttering up my airwaves interspersed with brief segments of rightwing political coverage. Something’s gotta give and soon. How many Kennedys is it going to take to bring this to a head?
Deep Thought: “Laugh, clown, laugh. This is what I tell myself whenever I dress up like Bozo.”
Today I am grateful for: Indexes
Guess the Movie: “I took a shower washing every body part with actual soap; including all my major crevices; including in between my toes and in my belly button which I never did before but sort of enjoyed. I washed my hair with adult formula shampoo and used cream rinse for that just-washed shine. I can’t seem to find my toothbrush, so I’ll pick one up when I go out today. Other than that, I’m in good shape.” Answer: Home Alone, 1992.
Winner: soobee72.
FCC to TV: Tell the Truth
by John Nichols
Most television viewers don’t know it, but a huge portion of what they watch on the local news programs aired by their favorite stations is not actually “news.” Rather, local television stations around the country have in recent years been taking “video news releases” from the federal government and major corporations – particularly the big pharmaceutical companies – and airing them as if they were news reports.
Video news releases (VNRs) are so common these days that they actually dominate some newscasts, blurring the lines between advertising and news more blatantly than product placements in movies do the lines between advertising and entertainment. (Rest of article here.)
End of Day: 8:34 pm
+ = Finally finally the sun came out and I actually got a little yardwork done.
- = Will I ever lose 10 pounds?!
Comments (11)
Hurray for this book! I’m hoping more and more authors will write and publish anti-bush books. Let’s do more, and make it more widespread. Educate the general public on what’s REALLY been going on, with this so-called ‘faith-based,’ travesty. Plain and simple, bush is a maniacal monster.
I’m aware of the news feeds we get. I don’t even watch network or local news anymore. It’s nearly all pro-bush. I like Jon Stewart and reading the Times and checking sites that tell the truth.
Robert Kennedy is amazing, isn’t he?
And the movie is Home Alone. I can’t believe I remember that. I’m sure the space that knowledge is taking up is somehow displacing some much more important information.
Very amazing – Home Alone is correct! Good work!
The American rivers need to be saved. This is an amazing man, too bad a majority can’t see that.
I hope you don’t mind, lionne, that I’ve recommended your entry on my page. Kudos to yet another Kennedy. We need more Voices to be heard. ~ Paloma
The movie is “Home Alone.” Oh, shoot someone else already got it!
Interesting. I’m not sure we can legislate away the sensationalism in news though, much as I wish we could. Stations still have to make a profit in a free-market environment…
I didn’t know that about the VNRs, might have to read up on that.
The saddest thing is that Bush will have saddled the gov’t down with so many debts that it might be nigh impossible for the next President (surely a Dem) to get a second term as they’ll still be paying off all of Bush’s incurred costs…
Concerning the media there have been a few news stories that either my husband or I were remotely invovled in and when we saw the coverage we had to ask ourselves where those reporters at the same place we where.
Reagan got the ball rolling now Bush is going to push us over the precipice.
I guess it should read, “WERE those reporters at the same place we where.” OOPS!
Personally, I think the reason the Democrats lost is that they were too busy trying to sound like Republicans, and didn’t really offer the voters an alternative to the right wing agenda offered by the Republicans. I do agree with Kennedy, though, that the media is also to blame in all of this mess, and the media doesn’t do nearly enough to inform the public about what is really going on.
Excellent entry! A perfect excerpt that really hits the nail on the head about America today. Definitely his father’s son.
I remember the Fairness Doctrine & it certainly made for more balanced information on the airwaves. Of course Ray-gun would be the one to have eliminated it. There’s going to be a hard fight to reinstate it, the right wing is reaping the benefits of the media free for all, despite how much they pretend to complain about it.