Studs Terkel passed this week. In his honor, here's his final plea to the next president. It is FDR's 2nd inaugural speech:
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Second Inaugural Address
Wednesday, January 20, 1937
WHEN four years ago we met to inaugurate a President, the Republic, single-minded in anxiety, stood in spirit here. We dedicated ourselves to the fulfillment of a vision—to speed the time when there would be for all the people that security and peace essential to the pursuit of happiness. We of the Republic pledged ourselves to drive from the temple of our ancient faith those who had profaned it; to end by action, tireless and unafraid, the stagnation and despair of that day. We did those first things first. 1
Our covenant with ourselves did not stop there. Instinctively we recognized a deeper need—the need to find through government the instrument of our united purpose to solve for the individual the ever-rising problems of a complex civilization. Repeated attempts at their solution without the aid of government had left us baffled and bewildered. For, without that aid, we had been unable to create those moral controls over the services of science which are necessary to make science a useful servant instead of a ruthless master of mankind. To do this we knew that we must find practical controls over blind economic forces and blindly selfish men. 2
We of the Republic sensed the truth that democratic government has innate capacity to protect its people against disasters once considered inevitable, to solve problems once considered unsolvable. We would not admit that we could not find a way to master economic epidemics just as, after centuries of fatalistic suffering, we had found a way to master epidemics of disease. We refused to leave the problems of our common welfare to be solved by the winds of chance and the hurricanes of disaster. 3
In this we Americans were discovering no wholly new truth; we were writing a new chapter in our book of self-government. 4
This year marks the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Constitutional Convention which made us a nation. At that Convention our forefathers found the way out of the chaos which followed the Revolutionary War; they created a strong government with powers of united action sufficient then and now to solve problems utterly beyond individual or local solution. A century and a half ago they established the Federal Government in order to promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to the American people. 5
Today we invoke those same powers of government to achieve the same objectives. 6
Four years of new experience have not belied our historic instinct. They hold out the clear hope that government within communities, government within the separate States, and government of the United States can do the things the times require, without yielding its democracy. Our tasks in the last four years did not force democracy to take a holiday. 7
Nearly all of us recognize that as intricacies of human relationships increase, so power to govern them also must increase—power to stop evil; power to do good. The essential democracy of our Nation and the safety of our people depend not upon the absence of power, but upon lodging it with those whom the people can change or continue at stated intervals through an honest and free system of elections. The Constitution of 1787 did not make our democracy impotent. 8
In fact, in these last four years, we have made the exercise of all power more democratic; for we have begun to bring private autocratic powers into their proper subordination to the public's government. The legend that they were invincible—above and beyond the processes of a democracy—has been shattered. They have been challenged and beaten. 9
Our progress out of the depression is obvious. But that is not all that you and I mean by the new order of things. Our pledge was not merely to do a patchwork job with secondhand materials. By using the new materials of social justice we have undertaken to erect on the old foundations a more enduring structure for the better use of future generations. 10
In that purpose we have been helped by achievements of mind and spirit. Old truths have been relearned; untruths have been unlearned. We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. Out of the collapse of a prosperity whose builders boasted their practicality has come the conviction that in the long run economic morality pays. We are beginning to wipe out the line that divides the practical from the ideal; and in so doing we are fashioning an instrument of unimagined power for the establishment of a morally better world. 11
This new understanding undermines the old admiration of worldly success as such. We are beginning to abandon our tolerance of the abuse of power by those who betray for profit the elementary decencies of life. 12
In this process evil things formerly accepted will not be so easily condoned. Hard-headedness will not so easily excuse hardheartedness. We are moving toward an era of good feeling. But we realize that there can be no era of good feeling save among men of good will. 13
For these reasons I am justified in believing that the greatest change we have witnessed has been the change in the moral climate of America. 14
Among men of good will, science and democracy together offer an ever-richer life and ever-larger satisfaction to the individual. With this change in our moral climate and our rediscovered ability to improve our economic order, we have set our feet upon the road of enduring progress. 15
Shall we pause now and turn our back upon the road that lies ahead? Shall we call this the promised land? Or, shall we continue on our way? For "each age is a dream that is dying, or one that is coming to birth." 16
Many voices are heard as we face a great decision. Comfort says, "Tarry a while." Opportunism says, "This is a good spot." Timidity asks, "How difficult is the road ahead?" 17
True, we have come far from the days of stagnation and despair. Vitality has been preserved. Courage and confidence have been restored. Mental and moral horizons have been extended. 18
But our present gains were won under the pressure of more than ordinary circumstances. Advance became imperative under the goad of fear and suffering. The times were on the side of progress. 19
To hold to progress today, however, is more difficult. Dulled conscience, irresponsibility, and ruthless self-interest already reappear. Such symptoms of prosperity may become portents of disaster! Prosperity already tests the persistence of our progressive purpose. 20
Let us ask again: Have we reached the goal of our vision of that fourth day of March 1933? Have we found our happy valley? 21
I see a great nation, upon a great continent, blessed with a great wealth of natural resources. Its hundred and thirty million people are at peace among themselves; they are making their country a good neighbor among the nations. I see a United States which can demonstrate that, under democratic methods of government, national wealth can be translated into a spreading volume of human comforts hitherto unknown, and the lowest standard of living can be raised far above the level of mere subsistence. 22
But here is the challenge to our democracy: In this nation I see tens of millions of its citizens—a substantial part of its whole population—who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life. 23
I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day. 24
I see millions whose daily lives in city and on farm continue under conditions labeled indecent by a so-called polite society half a century ago. 25
I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children. 26
I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and factory and by their poverty denying work and productiveness to many other millions. 27
I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished. 28
It is not in despair that I paint you that picture. I paint it for you in hope—because the Nation, seeing and understanding the injustice in it, proposes to paint it out. We are determined to make every American citizen the subject of his country's interest and concern; and we will never regard any faithful law-abiding group within our borders as superfluous. The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. 29
If I know aught of the spirit and purpose of our Nation, we will not listen to Comfort, Opportunism, and Timidity. We will carry on. 30
Overwhelmingly, we of the Republic are men and women of good will; men and women who have more than warm hearts of dedication; men and women who have cool heads and willing hands of practical purpose as well. They will insist that every agency of popular government use effective instruments to carry out their will. 31
Government is competent when all who compose it work as trustees for the whole people. It can make constant progress when it keeps abreast of all the facts. It can obtain justified support and legitimate criticism when the people receive true information of all that government does. 32
If I know aught of the will of our people, they will demand that these conditions of effective government shall be created and maintained. They will demand a nation uncorrupted by cancers of injustice and, therefore, strong among the nations in its example of the will to peace. 33
Today we reconsecrate our country to long-cherished ideals in a suddenly changed civilization. In every land there are always at work forces that drive men apart and forces that draw men together. In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up, or else we all go down, as one people. 34
To maintain a democracy of effort requires a vast amount of patience in dealing with differing methods, a vast amount of humility. But out of the confusion of many voices rises an understanding of dominant public need. Then political leadership can voice common ideals, and aid in their realization. 35
In taking again the oath of office as President of the United States, I assume the solemn obligation of leading the American people forward along the road over which they have chosen to advance. 36
While this duty rests upon me I shall do my utmost to speak their purpose and to do their will, seeking Divine guidance to help us each and every one to give light to them that sit in darkness and to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Sunday, October 26, 2008
FISA - A new book on our Constitutional Government in Peril
From Bruce Fein, on how cowardice has set a knife at the throat of our democracy. He's just published a book that expands on this theme.
Originally published 09:25 p.m., December 27, 2005, updated 12:00 a.m., December 28, 2005
. . . or outside the law?
President Bush secretly ordered the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on the international communications of U.S. citizens in violation of the warrant requirement of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, abominations.
The eavesdropping continued for four years, long after fears of imminent September 11 repetitions had lapsed, before the disclosure by the New York Times this month.
Mr. Bush has continued the NSA spying without congressional authorization or ratification of the earlier interceptions. (In sharp contrast, Abraham Lincoln obtained congressional ratification for the emergency measures taken in the wake of Fort Sumter, including suspending the writ of habeas corpus).
Mr. Bush has adamantly refused to acknowledge any constitutional limitations on his power to wage war indefinitely against international terrorism, other than an unelaborated assertion he is not a dictator. Claims to inherent authority to break and enter homes, to intercept purely domestic communications, or to herd citizens into concentration camps reminiscent of World War II, for example, have not been ruled out if the commander in chief believes the measures would help defeat al Qaeda or sister terrorist threats.
Volumes of war powers nonsense have been assembled to defend Mr. Bush's defiance of the legislative branch and claim of wartime omnipotence so long as terrorism persists, i.e., in perpetuity. Congress should undertake a national inquest into his conduct and claims to determine whether impeachable usurpations are at hand. As Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist 65, impeachment lies for "abuse or violation of some public trust," misbehaviors that "relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself."
The Founding Fathers confined presidential war powers to avoid the oppressions of kings. Despite championing a muscular and energetic chief executive, Hamilton in Federalist 69 accepted that the president must generally bow to congressional directions even in times of war: "The president is to be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States. In this respect, his authority would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces; while that of the British king extends to declaring war and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies -- all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature."
President Bush's claim of inherent authority to flout congressional limitations in warring against international terrorism thus stumbles on the original meaning of the commander in chief provision in Article II, section 2.
The claim is not established by the fact that many of Mr. Bush's predecessors have made comparable assertions. In Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer (1952), the U.S. Supreme Court rejected President Truman's claim of inherent power to seize a steel mill to settle a labor dispute during the Korean War in reliance on previous seizures of private businesses by other presidents. Writing for a 6-3 majority, Justice Hugo Black amplified: "But even if this be true, Congress has not thereby lost its exclusive constitutional authority to make laws necessary and proper to carry out the powers vested in the Constitution in the Government of the United States."
Indeed, no unconstitutional usurpation is saved by longevity. For 50 years, Congress claimed power to thwart executive decisions through "legislative vetoes." The Supreme Court, nevertheless, held the practice void in Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha (1983). Approximately 200 laws were set aside. Similarly, the high court declared in Erie Railroad v. Tompkins (1938) that federal courts for a century since Swift v. Tyson (1842) had unconstitutionally exceeded their adjudicative powers in fashioning a federal common law to decide disputes between citizens of different states.
President Bush preposterously argues the Sept. 14, 2001, congressional resolution authorizing "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines" were implicated in the September 11 attacks provided legal sanction for the indefinite NSA eavesdropping outside the aegis of FISA. But the FISA statute expressly limits emergency surveillances of citizens during wartime to 15 days, unless the president obtains congressional approval for an extension: "[T]he president, through the attorney general, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order... to acquire foreign intelligence information for a period not to exceed 15 calendar days following a declaration of war by the Congress."
A cardinal canon of statutory interpretation teaches that a specific statute like FISA trumps a general statute like the congressional war resolution. Neither the resolution's language nor legislative history even hints that Congress intended a repeal of FISA. Moreover, the White House has maintained Congress was not asked for a law authorizing the NSA eavesdropping because the legislature would have balked, not because the statute would have duplicated the war resolution.
As Youngstown Sheet & Tube instructs, the war powers of the president are at their nadir where, as with the NSA eavesdropping, he acts contrary to a federal statute. Further, that case invalidated a seizure of private property (with just compensation) a vastly less troublesome invasion of civil liberties than the NSA's indefinite interception of international conversations on Mr. Bush's say so alone.
Congress should insist the president cease the spying unless or until a proper statute is enacted or face possible impeachment. The Constitution's separation of powers is too important to be discarded in the name of expediency.
Bruce Fein is a constitutional lawyer and international consultant with Bruce Fein & Associates and the Lichfield Group.
Originally published 09:25 p.m., December 27, 2005, updated 12:00 a.m., December 28, 2005
. . . or outside the law?
President Bush secretly ordered the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on the international communications of U.S. citizens in violation of the warrant requirement of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, abominations.
The eavesdropping continued for four years, long after fears of imminent September 11 repetitions had lapsed, before the disclosure by the New York Times this month.
Mr. Bush has continued the NSA spying without congressional authorization or ratification of the earlier interceptions. (In sharp contrast, Abraham Lincoln obtained congressional ratification for the emergency measures taken in the wake of Fort Sumter, including suspending the writ of habeas corpus).
Mr. Bush has adamantly refused to acknowledge any constitutional limitations on his power to wage war indefinitely against international terrorism, other than an unelaborated assertion he is not a dictator. Claims to inherent authority to break and enter homes, to intercept purely domestic communications, or to herd citizens into concentration camps reminiscent of World War II, for example, have not been ruled out if the commander in chief believes the measures would help defeat al Qaeda or sister terrorist threats.
Volumes of war powers nonsense have been assembled to defend Mr. Bush's defiance of the legislative branch and claim of wartime omnipotence so long as terrorism persists, i.e., in perpetuity. Congress should undertake a national inquest into his conduct and claims to determine whether impeachable usurpations are at hand. As Alexander Hamilton explained in Federalist 65, impeachment lies for "abuse or violation of some public trust," misbehaviors that "relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself."
The Founding Fathers confined presidential war powers to avoid the oppressions of kings. Despite championing a muscular and energetic chief executive, Hamilton in Federalist 69 accepted that the president must generally bow to congressional directions even in times of war: "The president is to be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States. In this respect, his authority would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the military and naval forces; while that of the British king extends to declaring war and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies -- all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature."
President Bush's claim of inherent authority to flout congressional limitations in warring against international terrorism thus stumbles on the original meaning of the commander in chief provision in Article II, section 2.
The claim is not established by the fact that many of Mr. Bush's predecessors have made comparable assertions. In Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer (1952), the U.S. Supreme Court rejected President Truman's claim of inherent power to seize a steel mill to settle a labor dispute during the Korean War in reliance on previous seizures of private businesses by other presidents. Writing for a 6-3 majority, Justice Hugo Black amplified: "But even if this be true, Congress has not thereby lost its exclusive constitutional authority to make laws necessary and proper to carry out the powers vested in the Constitution in the Government of the United States."
Indeed, no unconstitutional usurpation is saved by longevity. For 50 years, Congress claimed power to thwart executive decisions through "legislative vetoes." The Supreme Court, nevertheless, held the practice void in Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha (1983). Approximately 200 laws were set aside. Similarly, the high court declared in Erie Railroad v. Tompkins (1938) that federal courts for a century since Swift v. Tyson (1842) had unconstitutionally exceeded their adjudicative powers in fashioning a federal common law to decide disputes between citizens of different states.
President Bush preposterously argues the Sept. 14, 2001, congressional resolution authorizing "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines" were implicated in the September 11 attacks provided legal sanction for the indefinite NSA eavesdropping outside the aegis of FISA. But the FISA statute expressly limits emergency surveillances of citizens during wartime to 15 days, unless the president obtains congressional approval for an extension: "[T]he president, through the attorney general, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order... to acquire foreign intelligence information for a period not to exceed 15 calendar days following a declaration of war by the Congress."
A cardinal canon of statutory interpretation teaches that a specific statute like FISA trumps a general statute like the congressional war resolution. Neither the resolution's language nor legislative history even hints that Congress intended a repeal of FISA. Moreover, the White House has maintained Congress was not asked for a law authorizing the NSA eavesdropping because the legislature would have balked, not because the statute would have duplicated the war resolution.
As Youngstown Sheet & Tube instructs, the war powers of the president are at their nadir where, as with the NSA eavesdropping, he acts contrary to a federal statute. Further, that case invalidated a seizure of private property (with just compensation) a vastly less troublesome invasion of civil liberties than the NSA's indefinite interception of international conversations on Mr. Bush's say so alone.
Congress should insist the president cease the spying unless or until a proper statute is enacted or face possible impeachment. The Constitution's separation of powers is too important to be discarded in the name of expediency.
Bruce Fein is a constitutional lawyer and international consultant with Bruce Fein & Associates and the Lichfield Group.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
"Our drum is broken"
It's been a long time since my last post. As you may have noticed, I follow politics a bit and this is a season unlike no other. November Presidential Elections are always a big time for me, but this year it is 10 times normal. I started following Barack Obama after watching his 2004 Democratic Convention Speech, amazed at the idealism of his convictions and his view of what makes our country great.
When Obama announced, I was in the first wave of donors. I'm still not sure why, and though I have given it serious thought, the only real reason I can come up with is that, like Mulder from the X-Files, I need to believe. I need to believe that I live in a country that really is like the one idealized in my youth - that cared for its people and fought for people around the world. My adult life has seen little evidence that any of those things I learned as a child - of the ideal of American exceptionalism. I don't know why it is so important to me, but I've come to accept that it is. I have traveled around the world and met many amazing people along the way, and I know that they too love their country. Perhaps it is something shared, a sort of tribalism that recognizes the essentially great and unique aspects of our respective societies that live more in our idealism than in reality.
It is perhaps the very idea of hope that attracted me to this campaign. For the first time in my adult life, I have an investment in hope that is tied to this election. And hope can be a frightening thing as you get older and have seen it dragged through the mud like a villain in some old movie. It has been hard to write much lately for fear of revealing my anxiety around the possibility that this would happen again. If you have followed this election, you have seen the efforts to do just that by the McCain campaign and apologists. I've watched videos of scenes from across my country of people that have said such terrible things - and the scariness of their fear and anger and beliefs in things I was taught didn't exist in my country any more. I ran across this video recently and it actually gave my hope a boost:
I have never been as invested in the outcome of an election in my life. And while an Obama win would at least begin to justify my faith in my country's essential humanity, a loss would, I fear, send my essential optimism - the fuel of my very existence - to the bottom of a very deep well. I doubt that I will write here again before the election is done and the results are unequivocal and I wonder now whether I will be writing an obituary or a birth announcement. I'm happy that it will be less than 2 weeks before I know. The wait has, on this occasion, taken its toll and I long to be free of it.
When Obama announced, I was in the first wave of donors. I'm still not sure why, and though I have given it serious thought, the only real reason I can come up with is that, like Mulder from the X-Files, I need to believe. I need to believe that I live in a country that really is like the one idealized in my youth - that cared for its people and fought for people around the world. My adult life has seen little evidence that any of those things I learned as a child - of the ideal of American exceptionalism. I don't know why it is so important to me, but I've come to accept that it is. I have traveled around the world and met many amazing people along the way, and I know that they too love their country. Perhaps it is something shared, a sort of tribalism that recognizes the essentially great and unique aspects of our respective societies that live more in our idealism than in reality.
It is perhaps the very idea of hope that attracted me to this campaign. For the first time in my adult life, I have an investment in hope that is tied to this election. And hope can be a frightening thing as you get older and have seen it dragged through the mud like a villain in some old movie. It has been hard to write much lately for fear of revealing my anxiety around the possibility that this would happen again. If you have followed this election, you have seen the efforts to do just that by the McCain campaign and apologists. I've watched videos of scenes from across my country of people that have said such terrible things - and the scariness of their fear and anger and beliefs in things I was taught didn't exist in my country any more. I ran across this video recently and it actually gave my hope a boost:
I have never been as invested in the outcome of an election in my life. And while an Obama win would at least begin to justify my faith in my country's essential humanity, a loss would, I fear, send my essential optimism - the fuel of my very existence - to the bottom of a very deep well. I doubt that I will write here again before the election is done and the results are unequivocal and I wonder now whether I will be writing an obituary or a birth announcement. I'm happy that it will be less than 2 weeks before I know. The wait has, on this occasion, taken its toll and I long to be free of it.
Friday, October 03, 2008
Solomon - how come only the Daily Show can speak truth to power?
Are 'Real' Journalists Jealous of Jon Stewart?
By Norman Solomon, AlterNet
Posted on September 12, 2008, Printed on October 3, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/98590/
As corporate media coverage of the presidential race becomes even more notably stingy with intrepid journalism, the mainstream press enthusiasm for "The Daily Show" seems more cloying than ever.
The pattern is now a routine feature of the media landscape: "The Daily Show" gets laudatory attention from major news organizations, where countless journalists watch like shackled prisoners in awe of Superman.
Look -- up in the media sky -- it's a bird, it's a plane, it's Jon Stewart!
While news accounts note how many viewers hold faux "news anchor" Stewart in higher esteem as a journalist than the "real" ones at the top of the media pack, there's a sheepish quality to much of the coverage about "The Daily Show."
After all, many big-name journalists have earned their keep by describing and analyzing the embroideries of the emperor's new clothes. It blows their conformist minds to see a network program that regularly exposes right-wing rulers without a stitch.
Last month, a Sunday edition of the New York Times devoted more than two full broadsheet pages to "The Daily Show," starting with a color photo of Stewart that filled nearly half the cover page of the newspaper's "Arts & Leisure" section. The program "has earned a devoted following that regards the broadcast as both the smartest, funniest show on television and a provocative and substantive source of news," eminent Times critic Michiko Kakutani wrote.
Consider the subtexts of this passage in the story: "Mr. Stewart ... and his writers have energetically tackled the big issues of the day -- 'the stuff we find most interesting,' as he said in an interview at the show's Midtown Manhattan offices, the stuff that gives them the most 'agita,' the sometimes somber stories he refers to as his 'morning cup of sadness.' And they've done so in ways that straight news programs cannot: speaking truth to power in blunt, sometimes profane language, while using satire and playful looniness to ensure that their political analysis never becomes solemn or pretentious."
Well, OK. That says a lot about "The Daily Show." But what does it say about the "real" news media -- and especially about the most important and self-important huge media outlets that dispense news with enormous ripple effects across the media terrain?
If -- as the New York Times soberly reported in the article -- "straight news programs cannot" tackle the "big issues of the day" while "speaking truth to power," we should ask a key question: Why not?
But this is not a question that media outlets like the Times seem interested in pursuing to any depth.
Contrasts with the overwhelming bulk of corporate media are primarily drawn to underscore the uniqueness and extraordinary qualities of "The Daily Show." It's exceptional as an exception. Comedy Central's most famous program is in the spotlight, and the vast expanses of the corporate media are the arrays of darkness that make it so conspicuous. What sheds light is punched up by what blocks it.
Absent from the fawning media coverage of "The Daily Show" is evident self-awareness that the elaborate praise is a tacit form of convoluted self-loathing -- in professional terms anyway -- among the likes of, say, Times journalists. Their own media institution is so circumscribed and so lumbering in its daily incarnation that they're apt to be amazed and envious at the incisively documented presentations on "The Daily Show."
That's the way it goes in medialand. What isn't conspicuous is apt to be insidious. The tick-tock of U.S. media hypnosis may be passably good at looking back -- reexamining some aspects of propaganda for the Iraq invasion, for instance, years after it occurs -- while now helping to mesmerize the country into escalation of the war in Afghanistan. But let's not quibble. Everybody has a job to do.
Norman Solomon's latest book Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State (PoliPointPress) is available now. For more information go to www.madelovegotwar.com.
© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/98590/
By Norman Solomon, AlterNet
Posted on September 12, 2008, Printed on October 3, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/98590/
As corporate media coverage of the presidential race becomes even more notably stingy with intrepid journalism, the mainstream press enthusiasm for "The Daily Show" seems more cloying than ever.
The pattern is now a routine feature of the media landscape: "The Daily Show" gets laudatory attention from major news organizations, where countless journalists watch like shackled prisoners in awe of Superman.
Look -- up in the media sky -- it's a bird, it's a plane, it's Jon Stewart!
While news accounts note how many viewers hold faux "news anchor" Stewart in higher esteem as a journalist than the "real" ones at the top of the media pack, there's a sheepish quality to much of the coverage about "The Daily Show."
After all, many big-name journalists have earned their keep by describing and analyzing the embroideries of the emperor's new clothes. It blows their conformist minds to see a network program that regularly exposes right-wing rulers without a stitch.
Last month, a Sunday edition of the New York Times devoted more than two full broadsheet pages to "The Daily Show," starting with a color photo of Stewart that filled nearly half the cover page of the newspaper's "Arts & Leisure" section. The program "has earned a devoted following that regards the broadcast as both the smartest, funniest show on television and a provocative and substantive source of news," eminent Times critic Michiko Kakutani wrote.
Consider the subtexts of this passage in the story: "Mr. Stewart ... and his writers have energetically tackled the big issues of the day -- 'the stuff we find most interesting,' as he said in an interview at the show's Midtown Manhattan offices, the stuff that gives them the most 'agita,' the sometimes somber stories he refers to as his 'morning cup of sadness.' And they've done so in ways that straight news programs cannot: speaking truth to power in blunt, sometimes profane language, while using satire and playful looniness to ensure that their political analysis never becomes solemn or pretentious."
Well, OK. That says a lot about "The Daily Show." But what does it say about the "real" news media -- and especially about the most important and self-important huge media outlets that dispense news with enormous ripple effects across the media terrain?
If -- as the New York Times soberly reported in the article -- "straight news programs cannot" tackle the "big issues of the day" while "speaking truth to power," we should ask a key question: Why not?
But this is not a question that media outlets like the Times seem interested in pursuing to any depth.
Contrasts with the overwhelming bulk of corporate media are primarily drawn to underscore the uniqueness and extraordinary qualities of "The Daily Show." It's exceptional as an exception. Comedy Central's most famous program is in the spotlight, and the vast expanses of the corporate media are the arrays of darkness that make it so conspicuous. What sheds light is punched up by what blocks it.
Absent from the fawning media coverage of "The Daily Show" is evident self-awareness that the elaborate praise is a tacit form of convoluted self-loathing -- in professional terms anyway -- among the likes of, say, Times journalists. Their own media institution is so circumscribed and so lumbering in its daily incarnation that they're apt to be amazed and envious at the incisively documented presentations on "The Daily Show."
That's the way it goes in medialand. What isn't conspicuous is apt to be insidious. The tick-tock of U.S. media hypnosis may be passably good at looking back -- reexamining some aspects of propaganda for the Iraq invasion, for instance, years after it occurs -- while now helping to mesmerize the country into escalation of the war in Afghanistan. But let's not quibble. Everybody has a job to do.
Norman Solomon's latest book Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State (PoliPointPress) is available now. For more information go to www.madelovegotwar.com.
© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/98590/
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