Being the information junkie that I am, reading books, subscribing to the daily paper and news magazines, and watching the evening news isn't quite passe in our home.
Lately, when our barely competent postal worker's brain isn't down for maintenance, each Tuesday he drops a NEWSWEEK in the mailbox and I find myself wishing he'd deliver it to the other house with our house number two streets over.
When August comes my NEWSWEEK subscriptions goes and it can't come soon enough. What pushed me over the line of disgruntled reader to a ex-reader was the seven pages lavished upon Katie Couric.
I'm as big a sucker as the next slob for a tearjerker sob story about a white woman who has to get up really early in the morning and drink copious amounts of coffee for a measly $7 million a year. Yeah, yeah, I know she lost her husband and all that. I'm fairly confident that with the hefty pay raise NBC is giving Miss Perky she won't lack for dates.
Switching back to TIME isn't a option. I left them to go to NEWSWEEK and the memories of why I did are still fresh. U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, maybe? That one is only if you're really desperate. Whenever I read it in the waiting room of my dentist it numbs me from the neck up quicker than novocaine.
What's a believer in the written word to do?
Despite the well-publicized recent screw-ups of our corporately controlled media machine (CNN's retraction, The Cincinnati Enquirer $10 million payout to Chiquita Bananas for a reporter's over zealous reporting, the firings of Patricia Smith from the Boston Globe and Stephen Glass by the New Republic) most Americans take their news with a big shaker of salt anyway, so whassup with the drama? It's not as if the press wizards are subject to any kind of sanction when they fabricate, misrepresent and generally engage in gross abuses of power.
Nobody wants real reform of journalism. It's fine to talk about it, but just look at all the wailing that came out of newsrooms when Steven Brill's CONTENT revealed that Kenneth Starr has fed information to Washington reporters like so many trained seals. There has been a lot of self-flagellation going on the Sunday talk shows about "misconduct" and "a lack of standards".
If some of these guys don't stop their hand wringing they're going to break their wrists.
Maybe nobody heard all over the specious speech making about killing "new journalism" but the FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting) survey that debunked the myth of the "liberal" Washington journalist is a story about the media being ignored by the media.
The enduring fable of left-wing bias by the press is one it desperately clings to.
It allows them to feel good liberal guilt about a proposal by the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) to back off 20 year old pledge to increase racial diversity in their newsrooms.
In 1978 , ASNE agreed unanimously that it was "fair and obtainable" that by the year 2000 the racial composition of newspapers should mirror that of the nation. At that time, minorities made up approximately 17 percent of the population and 4 percent of newsroom staffs. Now just two years away from the targeted date, ASNE will vote on a plan to delay fulfillment of the goal until 2010 and set the percentage at 20 percent. The minority population in ten years will move well past its present 26 percent. Twenty years after the ASNE resolution, minorities make up 11.4 percent of the newspaper staff.
As the print media retreats from racial diversity I pull back my financial support of their publications. To fill TIME and NEWSWEEK black hole of celebrity mush I turn for well-written commentary instead to LIBERAL OPINION and online to The American Politics Journal.
Every week my shot of left-of-center adrenaline comes freshly processed out of Vinton, Iowa. A somewhat unlikely locale for a gathering of so many unabashed lefties, but that's where Norman Solomon, Ralph Nader, Jesse Jackson, Alexander Cockburn and my Texas sweetie, Molly Ivins come together to go upside the head of the Republican Revolution. This week's issue served up a typical all-u-can-eat feast from the They Only Look Dead Left. Jackson on wage disparity between job insecure workers and handsomely compensated CEO's, Clarence Page on ad bias against black radio stations, Richard Cohen trashing Senator Trent Lott's gay bashing, and Donald Kaul proving liberals DO have a sense of humor. (Available only by subscription call 1-800-338-9355 for information.)
The American Politics Journal is one of those happy accidents you chance upon when following a weblink back to the source. . Where else could you buy a "LINDA TRIPP: TRANSSEXUAL JUDAS" bumper sticker or catch up on the "Best & Worst" section where you can find the answer to "Most Politicians Owned By An
Individual (Dwayne Andreas of Archer-Daniels Midland corporation).
But it's the words, the gut-slamming, take-no-prisoners prose that has me weeding out my bookmarks to make room for this site. This excerpt is from an July 3 editorial by David Corn:
"When the House Republicans passed a budget resolution in June calling for $101 billion in spending reductions, there was not
much noise about what the GOP was targeting. It was, in part, because the sneaky Republicans refused to specify what would be slashed. But there were plenty of clues to be found in budget documents released earlier by Representative John Kasich, the fresh-faced chair of the House Budget Committee who sees a future President in the mirror every time he shaves. Even though he yanked the details from his committee's final report on its budget scheme, he still said that these documents represented the recommendations of his committee."
"As sussed out by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Kasich guidelines earmark $30 billion in entitlement spending for eradication in the next five years, and $25 billion of that would come for programs that serve low-income families and individuals.(This is highly disproportionate. Only about a quarter of all federal entitlement spending goes to the poor.) These cuts are likely to include eliminating $2 billion for certain state workfare programs and further restricting food stamps for the poor. Block grants used to
fund child care would be reduced. The Kasich scheme also calls for slicing the Earned-Income Tax Credit for the working poor by $2.7 billion. His guidelines assume a $10 billion reduction in Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor. In other words, Kasich has declared war against low-income Americans."
Somehow in the midst of Monicagate and Starr search the reputed "liberal" media hasn't discussed much the latest G.O.P. plan to rape the poor. Maybe if poor folks spent less on the lottery and baby formula they could buy a paper and spin the bias in their favor.
My fellow G21 scribe Bob Powers used to swear by New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd. Me, I just swore at her for her smart-assed, mean put-downs. Instead of insight Dowd comes off as the Joan Rivers of journalism. Talkin' loud and saying nothin' is her manner and too many of her ilk. Forget the "experts" who try to prove impartiality by dwelling on President Clinton's libido while the plans of the hard Right to reshape America into some time warped rerun of "Father Knows Best" goes unchallenged. It could be that crusty old Barry Goldwater was onto something when he rapped [paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson] about "eternal vigilance" being the cost of freedom. Liberal Opinion and the American Politics Journal don't just understand, they practice it too.
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