Republican 2008 election season tactics have sought to cash in on the notion that Senator Barack Obama might somehow not be American, Christian, or patriotic enough.
From Fox News to Sarah Palin rallies, these themes have hauled the snide and nasty spirit of McCarthyism into the 21st century. Let’s send it back to the days of poodle skirts, where it belongs.
It’s worth confronting the Orwellian abuse of language behind the snearing, and finger-pointing, to examine a fundamental issue at the very heart of American democracy: the right to vote.
How patriotic is it to undermine American democracy?
Chest-thumping Republican patriots in battleground states have announced that they plan to impede American democracy and seek to disenfranchise voters at the polls—by contending that anyone who has lost a home to mortgage foreclosure has forfeited their residency status.
They are betting of course, that those folks who have lost their homes to mortgage foreclosure aren't Republicans. For anyone who really wants to talk about "anti-American" behavior, let’s suggest this might be a mighty fine place to start.
In tonight’s final debate, John McCain should be challenged on this point, and asked whether he is prepared to publicly call back his party thugs from attacking Americans who seek to exercise their right to vote.
Unfortunately: that won’t happen.
So please: it is imperative that we all summon the best of American neighborhood spirit to combat these tactics aimed at subverting democracy.
Use this website’s Speak Out tool, and write to your local newspaper:
Insist that the struggling folks who have lost their homes should not lose their right to vote as well.
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Here is an excerpt from a New York Times editorial on the subject, with the link to the full article below:
The foreclosure crisis could do considerable damage to the nation’s voting system. More than a million people have lost their homes in the past two years. And because voter registration is based on people’s residences, they could face politically motivated challenges at the polls.
The problem may be especially acute in the presidential battleground states. In Ohio, more than 5 percent of home mortgages are seriously delinquent or in the foreclosure process, and there were more than 67,000 foreclosure actions in the first half of 2008. Michigan and Florida have also been hard hit.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/opinion/05sun2.html
Essential reading appeared in yesterday’s New York Times about Andy Martin, one of the key figures behind the smear campaign against Senator Obama.
Among other things, Martin is a radical and virulent anti-Semite. A motion he filed in a 1983 bankruptcy case called the judge “a crooked, slimy Jew who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race.” In another motion, filed in 1983, Mr. Martin wrote, “I am able to understand how the Holocaust took place, and with every passing day feel less and less sorry that it did.”
Brace yourself, because here comes the clincher, and the ugliness of it strains credulity, even for Fox TV:
Last week, in "an appearance in a documentary-style program on the Fox News Channel watched by three million people thrust the man, Andy Martin, and his past into the foreground. The program allowed Mr. Martin to assert falsely and without challenge that Mr. Obama had once trained to overthrow the government."
What is our responsibility as people who honor and respect Barack Obama, and are outraged (but unfortunately, not surprised) by what qualifies as “news” on Fox TV? Let’s take the following steps in response:
1) If anyone you know watches Fox, send them the link below—or better yet, print out a copy of the article and put it into their hands.
2) Use this site’s “Speak Out” tool to protest and reject Andy Martin’s smear campaign—and to challenge the unethical behavior of Fox TV in allowing this radical slander to be perpetuated in the name of “news.”
Andy Martin's rantings do not constitute journalism.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/us/politics/13martin.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Today, Khalid Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, published a moving, powerfully eloquent commentary in The Washington Post in response to the racism that has tainted the McCain/Palin campaign.
His article, “McCain and Palin Are Playing With Fire” (10/12/08, B05) constitutes essential reading for Democrats and Republicans alike. An excerpt is attached below, with the link to the complete article. Please pass it on to friends, family, and acquaintances:
"I prefer to discuss politics through my novels, but I am truly dismayed these days. Twice last week alone, speakers at McCain-Palin rallies have referred to Sen. Barack Obama, with unveiled scorn, as Barack Hussein Obama. [....] The real affront is the lack of firm response from either McCain or Palin. Neither has had the moral courage, when taking the stage, to grasp the microphone, turn to the presenter and, right then and there, denounce the use of Obama's middle name as an insult. Instead, they have simply delivered their stump speeches, lacing into Obama as if nothing out-of-bounds had just happened. The McCain-Palin ticket has given toxic speeches accusing Obama of being a friend of terrorists, then released short, meek repudiations of some of the rough stuff, including McCain's call Friday to "be respectful." Back in February, the Arizona senator apologized for the "disparaging remarks" from a talk-radio host who sneered repeatedly about "Barack Hussein Obama" before a McCain rally. "We will have a respectful debate," McCain insisted afterward. But pretending to douse flames that you are busy fanning does not qualify as straight talk.
What I find most unconscionable is the refusal of the McCain-Palin tandem to publicly condemn the cries of "traitor," "liar," "terrorist" and (worst of all) "kill him!" that could be heard at recent rallies. McCain is perfectly capable of telling hecklers off. But not once did he or his running mate bother to admonish the people yelling these obscene -- and potentially dangerous -- words.
They may not have been able to hear the slurs at the rallies, but surely they have had ample time since to get on camera and warn that this sort of ugliness has no place in an election season. But they have not. Simply calling Obama "a decent person" is not enough.
Is inaction tantamount to consent?"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/10/AR2008101002456.html?referrer=facebook
Longtime Michigan Gov. William Milliken (b. 1922), a Republican, held office for fourteen years while I was growing up in the state. He loomed large as a political figure who earned appreciation and support on both side of the partisan aisle. My parents, who were ardent, lifelong Democrats, always voiced their respect for Milliken—and it was a mighty rare occasion for them to speak well of a Republican leader, especially in the era of Nixon and Watergate.
I had not heard Milliken speak out in years, until this morning, when a Michigan friend sent me the article below. The former governor has clearly maintained his ability to think beyond political boundaries. Although he originally endorsed John McCain, he backed away from his endorsement this month after McCain's campaign began attacking Barack Obama.
Milliken told The Grand Rapids Press: "He is not the John McCain I endorsed."
It's interesting to note Milliken's closing sentence in the article: "Increasingly, the party is moving toward rigidity, and I don't like that. I think Gerald Ford would hold generally the same view I'm holding on the direction of the Republican Party."
More prominent Republicans elsewhere are voicing the feeling that their party has been hijacked—above all, when McCain/Palin rallies spout venom and hatred, calling Senator Obama a terrorist because his name is not "Smith”—and McCain himself fails to come forward to unequivocally challenge and reject these events.
A further example of this disconcertion within McCain’s own party occurred when Republican Sen. Paul Laxalt’s daughter, Fox political commentator Michelle Laxalt, spoke out with great passion on Larry King Live about her disgust with the McCain smear campaign.
On her left in this interview, incidentally, is fellow Republican, Kathleen Parker, who wrote the National Review article, calling on Palin to step down as VP nominee:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQRBZGVagcQ&eurl=http://www.thoughttheater.com/2008/10/
As a Democrat, I reach out today to such Republicans, and thank them for their integrity, in rejecting the political thuggery of smears and innuendo heavy with jingoism and racism.
I encourage both Democrats and Republicans among my friends and relatives to join me in what must be a cross-partisan effort to honor the political process of this election, without inciting hatred.
As financial markets and institutions collapse around the world, our armed forces continue to die in Iraq, and unemployment and mortgage foreclosures rise—this country needs to mobilize across all boundaries of race, religion, and partisanship for our recovery.
Please reach beyond your comfort zone today, and initiate this handshake to someone who does not match your own demographic or partisan profile. As Milliken says, we "ought to be talking about the issues." He has earned my handshake.
=======================
Former governor Milliken backs away from McCain
by Pat Shellenbarger | The Grand Rapids Press
Friday October 10, 2008, 6:57 AM
GRAND RAPIDS -- He endorsed John McCain in the presidential primary, but now former Republican Gov. William Milliken is expressing doubts about his party's nominee.
"He is not the McCain I endorsed," said Milliken, reached at his Traverse City home Thursday. "He keeps saying, 'Who is Barack Obama?' I would ask the question, 'Who is John McCain?' because his campaign has become rather disappointing to me.
"I'm disappointed in the tenor and the personal attacks on the part of the McCain campaign, when he ought to be talking about the issues."
Milliken, a lifelong Republican, is among some past leaders from the party's moderate wing voicing reservations and, in some cases, opposition to McCain's candidacy.
During a stop in Grand Rapids on Thursday, Lincoln Chafee, a former Republican U.S. senator from Rhode Island, said he's voting for Obama and urging others to do likewise.
McCain campaigned for Chafee's unsuccessful re-election bid in 2006, but Chafee said he is concerned McCain has swung to the right, a divisive strategy that could make it difficult for him to govern.
"That's not my kind of Republicanism," said Chafee, who now calls himself an independent. "I saw what Bush and Cheney did. They came in with a (budget) surplus and a stable world, and look what's happened now. In eight short years they've taken one peaceful and prosperous world, and they've torn it into tatters."
As for McCain's choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for his running mate, "there's no question she's totally unqualified," Chafee said.
He had similar reservations about Obama's lack of experience, but said the Democrat's handling of the campaign convinced him he's ready to lead.
Chafee said he has spoken with several other moderate Republican leaders, and "there are a whole lot of us deserting."
One of them is Phil Arthurhultz, a former Republican state senator from Whitehall, who was traveling the state with Chafee to drum up support for Obama.
Bob Eleveld is a former Kent County Republican chairman who led McCain's West Michigan campaign in 2000. This year, he has remained mum unless asked.
"I'm not supporting either of them at this point," he said. "Suffice it to say there are a number of people who have been strong Republicans in the past, including party chairs, who feel as I do." He declined to name them.
In the past, McCain was more of a moderate known for his straight talk, Eleveld said.
"I think the straight talk is gone," he said, describing himself as a member of the party's moderate wing. "I think he's pandering to the Christian right. That's some straight talk from me."
Whether they represent a widespread movement or a few disenchanted members in the Republican Party is unclear.
"I don't think for one minute John McCain has violated the trust we put in him," said Marge Byington Potter, a former chairwoman of the Kent County Commission, who calls herself a moderate Republican. "I think McCain understands people are in a situation that people are hurting terribly."
Milliken stopped short of saying he will vote for Obama, but said he differs with McCain on the Iraq war and his choice of Palin.
"I know John McCain is 72. In my book, that's quite young," said Milliken, 86, Michigan's longest-serving governor. But he added, "What if she were to become president of the United States? The idea, to me, is quite disturbing, if not appalling.
"Increasingly, the party is moving toward rigidity, and I don't like that. I think Gerald Ford would hold generally the same view I'm holding on the direction of the Republican Party."
Lori Hall Steele, a fiercely talented writer and single mom in northern Michigan, who appears in the picture above, is an urgent example of why healthcare reform is so desperately needed in the US—and why we need Barack Obama and his allies to give impetus to this historic change.
Lori and I met when we were both in the midst of divorce, trying to reestablish our lives alone. Over bottles of red wine and dinners, we spoke about daring to date again—and how we could dredge up enough freelance work to create viable financial security for ourselves. There was immense solidarity in that friendship, and Lori made me feel at home in Michigan's northern tundra.
One year ago, Lori experienced inexplicable tingling in her hands and feet. Gradually she lost feeling and mobility of her limbs. For a long time, her symptoms defied medical diagnosis. Lori was forced to battle her health insurance company for coverage and ended up $50,000 in debt.
Finally, she could no longer use a computer keyboard at all—and her livelihood as a freelance journalist and sole means of supporting her little boy, Jackson, evaporated. As I write to you today, Lori is confined to a hospital bed and relies upon a Bi-Pap breathing machine. Doctors have issued a diagnosis of chronic Lyme Disease and ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease).
While Lori's health declined, the northern Michigan writing community has been stalwart and resolutely activist on her behalf. People such as my old friend, Aaron Stander, Kristen Hains, and countless others have cared for Lori with tenderness and staggering generosity of spirit. Day after week after month: home-made dinners have been cooked and delivered, housework done, childcare organized, and fundraising undertaken at the grassroots level. It is the best of American neighborhood activism—the welling up of intense compassion and help for a family in crisis. I am proud of my community, my colleagues and friends.
But in the end there is an awful sobering fact: this incredible mobilization of love for Lori cannot replace a functioning health care system.
While taxpayer billions will bail out Wall Street, Lori and her son Jackson are at risk of losing their home to mortgage foreclosure. I believe that something is terribly, terribly wrong here.
No doubt, some folks might by now be checking on Snopes.com to see if this story is an urban legend. If only. If only Lori's case were not reality. Why do I bother writing this..?! Because I feel so frustrated, angry—no, outraged, that while Lori struggles to breathe in hospital, she and her son Jackson are also at risk of having their house taken away.
Lori could easily be me (without health insurance for the past six years), or you, or anyone you love.
Action is the antidote to despair. We can refuse indifference.
In honor of Lori, here is the action that I wish to ask: take the next few weeks to mobilize on behalf of Lori and the countless other Americans who have been failed by our lack of a healthcare system that provides equal access and standard of care to all citizens.
Urge your friends and family to vote for Barack Obama and the Democratic Party—the candidates who insist that healthcare is not a privilege of the wealthy, but a right for all. If our country can fund a $700 billion Wall Street bail out, we must be able to summon an equal sense of urgency for healthcare.
For more information on Lori's story, and to contribute to the online fund to save her house from foreclosure, visit the website compiled by her friends:
http://www.hallsteele.blogspot.com
To read a deeply moving article by Lori on a conversation with her then 4-year-old son about mortality (written before she knew of her illness), please see:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/22/AR2008062201867.html
Warmest thanks.
Melanie Drane
Americans for the Arts Action Fund, the bipartisan arts advocacy group, has just released summary of the Arts Positions of the 2008 Presidential Candidates. It is urgent viewing for all of us who believe in the need to support the arts and arts education in the US.
To take action on this issue, please consider the following:
With only 32 days left to Election Day, now is the time to act and show your support for the arts!
Yesterday, the Humane Society Legislative Fund (a non-partisan organization with both Democrats and Republicans on its board of directors) for the first time in its history issued an endorsement for a presidential candidate. The letter carried a photo of Barack Obama holding a poodle, rescued from a puppy mill—and let there be no doubt here: there are voters, both Democrat and Republican, who will consider this perspective to be frivolous.
In fact, it is worth paying attention, for this event is far more revealing about the content of this campaign than may be apparent at first glance.
The ability to feel compassion is one of the key characteristics that defines what it is to be human. History has documented that when humans abdicate their capacity for compassion, atrocities occur. The absence of empathy is one of the hallmarks of psychopathology. Not surprisingly then, research also shows that one of the key psychiatric predictors of a violent and abusive personality is cruelty toward animals.
Statistics and research testify repeatedly that domestic and child abuse often occur in households with animal abuse. For example, a 1997 Northwestern University study in association with the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals found that people who abuse animals are five times more likely to commit violent crimes than non-abusers.
Simply put: there is a case to be made that how we interact with our co-inhabitants of this planet is an essential litmus test of our humanity.
If we aspire to a government that treats its own citizens with compassion, then we cannot be oblivious to the way politicians interact with the natural world. Empathy cannot be compartmentalized—reserved and parcelled out for a few, an elite, a particular passport, or a single species—and still maintain its integrity.
So it really does not matter whether you have a four-legged member of the family or not—the Humane Society's campaign endorsement makes for a compelling read on the most fundamental subject that affects us all: the capacity for human decency exists at the heart of how we treat each other, and the rest of the world, including those most vulnerable among us.
Here's an excerpt from the September 22 Obama endorsement statement by Mike Markarian, President of the Humane Society Legislative Fund:
"While McCain's positions on animal protection have been lukewarm, his choice of running mate cemented our decision to oppose his ticket. Gov. Sarah Palin's (R-Alaska)retrograde policies on animal welfare and conservation have led to an all-out war on Alaska's wolves and other creatures. Her record is so extreme that she has perhaps done more harm to animals than any other current governor in the United States.
Palin engineered a campaign of shooting predators from airplanes and helicopters, in order to artificially boost the populations of moose and caribou for trophy hunters. She offered a $150 bounty for the left foreleg of each dead wolf as an economic incentive for pilots and aerial gunners to kill more of the animals, even though Alaska voters had twice approved a ban on the practice. This year, the issue was up again for a vote of the people, and Palin led the fight against it -- in fact, she helped to spend $400,000 of public funds to defeat the initiative.
What's more, when the Bush Administration announced its decision to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, Palin filed a lawsuit to reverse that decision. She said it's the "wrong move" to protect polar bears, even though their habitat is shrinking and ice floes are vanishing due to global warming.
The choice for animals is especially clear now that Palin is in the mix. If Palin is put in a position to succeed McCain, it could mean rolling back decades of progress on animal issues.
Voters who care about protecting wildlife from inhumane and unsporting abuses, enforcing the laws that combat large-scale cruelties like dogfighting and puppy mills, providing humane treatment of animals in agriculture, and addressing other challenges that face animals in our nation, must become active over the next six weeks to elect a president and vice president who share our values. Please spread the word, and tell friends and family members that an honest assessment of the records of the two presidential tickets leads to the inescapable conclusion that Obama-Biden is the choice for humane-minded voters."
Yesterday, Joe Lieberman proclaimed at the Republican Convention: "Don't be fooled. God only made one John McCain, and he is his own man." To many Democrats, Lieberman has become an odious character, but on this point, he's right. Indications are that a McCain foreign policy would differ significantly from the Bush era—and it's something that mandates closer scrutiny and articulation by Democrats and the Obama campaign.
McCain's history testifies to his advocacy of a confrontational, antagonistic approach toward Iran, Russia, and China. His campaign has steadfastly sought to portray him as the reassuring, practiced hand in foreign policy.
Yet his statements and behavior suggest that McCain's hawkish instincts combined with his impetuous, mercurial way of moving through the world could in fact result in the most incendiary, risk-taking US foreign policy has known in the nuclear age.
In the Financial Times (9-2-08), Gideon Rachmon offers one of the most intelligent, sober analyses on McCain's foreign policy inclinations that I've encountered anywhere. As Rachmon observes:
"Opinion polls consistently show that the American public has more faith in Mr McCain as commander-in-chief. He looks like the safe choice for dangerous times.
But this is wrong. Mr McCain will not run a "safe" foreign policy. He adores rolling the dice. His decision to select Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate typifies the man. It is a big risk. It could turn out to be inspired. Or it might turn out to be a disaster. But it is not "safe".
Mr McCain approaches international affairs in the same spirit. His instinct is always to take the radical option and to march towards the sound of gunfire.
It was indeed courageous to back the idea of sending more troops to Iraq, at a time when the war was going so badly. But it was the same instinct to choose the bold, aggressive option that made Mr McCain such an enthusiastic backer of the Iraq war in the first place. Indeed, he was arguing for the invasion of Iraq well before the terror attacks on New York and Washington. That now looks reckless."
The Financial Times cannot be painted by the McCain troops as a radical leftwing bastion. This is not a partisan blog preaching to the choir. Rachmon's analysis deserves to be taken seriously by Republicans and Democrats alike:
The world cannot afford a US foreign policy driven by anger and spleen, in a global environment already rendered vastly more precarious by eight years of Bush rule.
This is the real message that Democrats need to get out into the world: Don't be fooled. John McCain is not George W Bush.
And paradoxically, in this case, that news is not reassuring.
For the complete article:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6e016c06-7885-11dd-acc3-0000779fd18c.html
Traditionally, Republicans are considered the natural partisan allies for British Conservatives. Yet in this morning's London's Sunday Times (8.31.08), a candid and moving piece appears by Conservative MP Simon Burns, writing about how he and others in the Tory Party have aligned their hopes with Barack Obama.
As a Conservative parliamentarian, Simon Burns has identified with Democrats since he spent time in the US before starting university in 1972. But what’s strikingly new, he notes, is that he no longer feels isolated within his party in his support for US Democrats.
Burns articulates today how the Republican Party has drifted to become so "extremely rightwing" in recent years that many UK Conservatives no longer find their most “basic belief” in the party of George W. Bush and John McCain:
In Burns' words:
"Fortunately now – and I have George W Bush to thank for this – there are numerous colleagues who are sympathetic to the Democratic party. Part of that is because the Republican party today is not the Republican party of Nelson Rockefeller and John Lindsay, it’s actually an extremely right-wing and in some ways unpleasant political party.
I am trying to avoid the word nasty for obvious reasons but it has become a nasty party. There’s no compassion.
In Britain, whether you are a Tory or a socialist or whatever, we do have the basic belief that you should help and give a leg up to the less well off in society. Well, over the past 15 years the Republican party, since Newt Gingrich and the loonies took over, has given the appearance that it just does not care. It was obvious that the feeling among the Tory party was starting to change four years ago after George Bush’s first presidency."
For John McCain, who prides himself on the notion that he would be best equipped to lead US foreign policy in an ever more complicated world—what does it say that even among the most stalwart US allies, he and his party have become the source of disenchantment and defection?
With Miss Alaska 1984 Sarah Palin as his hand-picked deputy, McCain has exposed himself to yet another hard hit in the area where his campaign has trumpeted his experience and expertise. Palin is no Hillary Clinton, and she's no Condi Rice either. Sure, she's governor of a great state with 700,000 inhabitants. Yet her service as councilwoman and mayor do not prepare her to add meaningfully to the resolution of foreign policy crises. No doubt she'll undergo careful and rigorous tutoring, but right now, to imagine her in a foreign policy debate with Joe Biden summons up the wildly silly farce of a real-life Monty Python moment.
McCain may have the grey hair, but where is his gravitas here? His judgement in choosing a running mate does not show the stuff of a wise elder statesman. No doubt, the UK Tories discern the difference between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin—and in an international crisis, I'm not sure that Palin's lifetime NRA membership will be enough to reassure them that US security policy is in good hands.
In the ultimate irony, John McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate is an insult to women of all political stripes—and to none more so than Hillary Clinton. On 29 August, Palin was sent onstage in Dayton Ohio to issue an appeal to Hillary supporters, praising Clinton for her "determination and grace" in her nomination campaign. Chances are that Hillary found the flattery utterly resistible.
Two possibilities are at work in Palin's nomination, and neither suggests that the McCain campaign "gets" women:
1) McCain and his strategist cronies conceive of women in politics as tokens, whose pretty presence can help polish an image. Ergo: if their role is to merely serve as political props, the level of their qualification becomes irrelevant. One skirt is as good as the next.
2) The McCain camp thinks that American women might possibly be so gullible and undiscerning as to confuse Palin's political credentials and positions with those of Senator Clinton.
Did he imagine that we'd squeal "Oooh, Girlfriend, she's one of us!" when we heard his running mate describe herself as a "hockey mom"?
Did McCain think we'd be thrilled to learn that a woman who not long ago served as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska (pop. 9000) could now be thrust into foreign policy decisions on issues as volatile and complex as our relationship with Russia, or the Iraq War?
Did he think that we would see Palin as our ally, with her staunch refusal to allow women reproductive choice—opposing abortion even in cases of incest or rape?
Did he think we'd be so delirious at the nomination of a female VP candidate, we'd overlook that he is a 72-year-old who has undergone four bouts of cancer, and has just placed an untested, unheard of neophyte just "a heartbeat from presidency"?
Did he believe we'd fail to grasp that apart from the fact Palin has a uterus, she has virtually nothing in common with Hillary Clinton?
No matter how you slice or dice it, it's tough to see the selection of Palin as a triumph for women. Paradoxically, McSame's bid to capture the hearts of women has revealed that the more things change, the more they stay the same in the Republican Party. After all, Miss Alaska 1984 can stand on stage, smiling and waving with the boys—but make no mistake:
Who out there, even among McCain loyalists, is ready to seriously contemplate her as a US president?
That crucial point, John, is where you have fatally failed to understand the difference between Hillary Clinton and Sarah Pallin. And by the way, this is also the moment when some Republican women like Kay Bailey Hutchinson must now be questioning your judgement, and feeling just a little hard done by.
On 15 July 2007, as a result of intensive DC lobbying by media giant Time-Warner, the US postal rate structure was overhauled to favor mass-circulation publications. In the process, rates were devastatingly hiked up as much as 30-50% for smaller, independent magazines—often those publications that are most vigorous in promoting the exchange of opinions and information in the American landscape of ideas.
Yet once again in the Bush era, the deep wallets of corporate big interests triumphed. Media consolidation occurs to the detriment of democratic pluralism. For folks who get riled up about patriotism, this might be an important place to start soul-searching.
One of the historical, and most honorable independent voices to be at risk from this change is The Nation magazine—America’s oldest weekly news magazine. In 1984, when I celebrated my 21st birthday as university student, my parents gave me a subscription to The Nation, and to this day, I remain a grateful, thirsty reader [http://www.thenation.com/].
In a news landscape dominated by corporate oligarchs like Time-Warner and Rupert Murdoch, it can be hard work to find investigative, independent, and critically-thinking journalism that is willing to be irreverent of the powers that be. The Nation resolutely sustains the courage to announce in print when our emperor wears no clothes. When even The New York Times buries essential stories at the bottom of page 24B (or fails to include them at all), The Nation won’t let critical news go missing or ignored. It is simply the most gutsy, integrity-driven journalism that I know in the US. Yet the magazine is among those at risk because of crushing postal rate hikes for smaller publications.
Yet the crisis extends beyond any single publication: this change in our postal rate structure has endangered the US democracy of ideas. Searching my code of ethics, I rate this issue more highly than I do partisanship. Publications across the political spectrum are at risk—and here, the same standard holds true as with human rights:
When one voice is suppressed, we are all at risk.
Consider this excerpt from a report by Callie Enlow in The New York Review of Magazines:
[In February 2007] “periodicals with circulations of fewer than 250,000 (some with much fewer—even in the hundreds) had just discovered that the rates they paid the USPS for postage were about to skyrocket, and they had only eight business days to dispute the proposed increase. While these independent publishers had expected the rates to rise, they believed it would be by about 12 percent, which had been the USPS’ own suggestion. However, during an arduous 10 months of hearings on postal rates in 2006, during which the small-magazine community was conspicuously absent, the stakes changed dramatically.
Instead of a simple markup, the entire rate system was overhauled, imposing a cost-based structure on a branch of government originally established to provide a public good, one that the Founding Fathers deemed vital to our democratic society. The Postal System was built on the premise of promoting the free flow of ideas by giving preferential treatment to their most common method of conveyance: the printed pages of periodicals.
Of particular concern to Free Press [a group specializing in fighting media concentration], was the discovery that the biggest force behind the formula by which rates were to be increased was none other than Time Warner, the largest magazine publisher in the United States, which had been working overtime to influence the outcome of the hearings.
Journals of opinion, the idea-laden niche that has hewed closest to the Founding Fathers’ conception of the kind of periodicals whose availability would benefit our fledgling democracy, collected rate-increase data among themselves as soon as they had hard figures. American Conservative, a biweekly magazine with a circulation of 13,000, faced an increase of 58 percent. Eagle Publishing, producer of Human Events, paid the USPS an additional $211,000 in 2007. Jack Fowler, publisher of National Review, was so incensed that he co-authored an editorial in The Los Angeles Times with Teresa Stack, president of The Nation, denouncing the rate hikes. Like National Review, its strange bedfellow The Nation faced an additional $500,000 on its 2007 postal bill. The New Republic and The New York Review of Books each faced increases in excess of 15 percent.”
My WWII veteran father raised me to be wary of ostentatious nationalism. To this day, and in any context, nationalist fervor makes me acutely ill at ease—because I believe that indulgence in the delirium of national pride renders us susceptible to an us-or-them view of the world, in which it becomes easy to demonize “the other.” In the process, it is too easy to deny the humanity of those whom we do not know. History testifies to this phenomenon again and again, as I have learned, for example, as a student of German and Japanese politics.
The moments when I feel the strongest, most joyful awareness of belonging to the US occur when I glimpse its full spectrum of its complexity: with all the shades and flavors of faith, belief, ideas, and passions that compose a democracy. We are a country large enough to be inclusive, and my appreciation for that vast and magnificent space makes me an American by conviction, not just passport.
Barack Obama as a candidate personifies this rich multiplicity of heritage. It is an American democratic pluralism that I believe is worthy of our advocacy to protect. If you share this conviction, please join me in speaking up for independent journalism, free and unfettered by corporate imperatives that render journalists mute and uncritical when commercial interests are at stake.
If you have never read The Nation, I urge you to go online or to your local public library, and take a look. If you are stimulated by what you see (as I have been for two decades), then please consider subscribing, or donating to defray the postal bill of this honorable publication:
https://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/1555/t/3538/shop/custom.jsp?donate_page_KEY=2155
If you wish to investigate this issue in a broader context, visit the Free Press website for more ways to become an activist for an affordable freedom of speech for all. You can take action from your own computer keyboard—and on an issue so urgent, that minimal investment of time will be well worth the effort. Free Press is a national, non-partisan organization working to reform the media:
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Greetings from Melanie
—in the spirit of speaking aloud about what matters.
I awoke this morning to an email from my alert, funny, and whip-smart friend Ed Huddleston, a graduate student at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Ed wrote: "Barack Obama near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, standing before a throng of 200,000 Germans listening with rapt attention...and John McCain in German Village in Columbus OH, standing in front of a sign that says, in faux-German Gothic script, ‘Schmidt's Fudge Haus.' And no, I'm not making this up. So let's see..which man do you think has the stuff of a world leader?"
On BBC 1 last night in London, I watched Obama speaking in Berlin. His mere presence there is an indication of his commitment to reaching out, and restoring dialogue in the world. I don't think Europeans have been as excited and grateful for a US politician, truly, since Kennedy. It's electrifying and deeply moving to witness here.
At the same time, however, in sober reality of the election, it's vital to remember that the folks at Schmidt’s Fudge Haus can vote for him, unlike the citizens of Berlin.
As an American voter, I believe that we have a responsibility to contemplate how our choices impact those who cannot vote in US elections—such as the people whose lives have been marred forever by the US practice of water-boarding. The same day as Obama’s Berlin speech, the Bush Administration's 2002 top secret torture memo was released, with 10 out of 18 pages blacked out. The remaining text reveals how semantics were manipulated to create a safety clause for torturing with impunity.
CNN reports: “The Bush administration told the CIA in 2002 that its interrogators working abroad would not violate U.S. prohibitions against torture unless they ‘have the specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering,’ according to a previously secret Justice Department memo released Thursday. The interrogator's "good faith" and "honest belief" that the interrogation will not cause such suffering protects the interrogator, the memo adds.”
In weeks and months after 9/11, I felt a pang of alarm that the Bush Administration might use the country's terrible period of numbness, anger, and grief to justify rolling back the mid-1970s reforms of US intelligence practices. The release of this top secret torture memo has confirmed that this is exactly what ensued. It will be a tough feat for the next president to put such practices back into the box, and to dismantle the reasserted culture of laxity and tolerance for torture once more. If McCain is elected, chances are good that it simply won't occur.
Yet human rights cannot be doled out selectively—as if the portion to which an individual is entitled depends upon his/her passport.
The Bush Administration has operated as if Americans are somehow "more human" than the rest of the world—entitled to a more rigorous standard of protection and honor. When we fail to acknowledge the fundamental humanity of others, we make possible the most egregious abuses.
If we do not vigilantly uphold equality of protection, regardless of nationality, religion or race, then the term “human rights” itself is degraded into a grotesque farce.
I was born in Cleveland, Ohio—much closer to the German Village in Columbus, than to Berlin. And today, I yearn to ask the people at Schmidt’s Fudge House to consider how they would vote if one of their sons, brothers, or husbands had been subjected to waterboarding, or disappeared, to be held for years without charges.
When John F. Kennedy exclaimed at the peak of the Cold War: “Ich bin ein Berliner,” he was declaring himself in solidarity with other human beings. That solidarity is the basis of human rights—and it the very basis for compassion, the capacity for which distinguishes what it is to be human.
Obama’s appearance in Berlin—on the same day as the torture memo’s release—brings us back to the premise at the heart of the US Declaration of Independence. It is worth inserting here, because these are among the most thrilling words I know in the English language:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
When Americans wish to talk about patriotism, these rebellious lines are the finest place to start. Thank you, Barack Obama, for reminding us with your speech in Berlin.
My recently widowed, 77-year-old mother and I have always agreed on politics-- even at times when we diverged on other things. She is a lifelong, ardent Democrat. I grew up in a household where my parents expected that their daughters would pay attention to the world, and would fiercely resist the inertia of indifference.
The 2008 Democratic primaries were the first time we'd ever parted ways. She announced her support for Hillary, while I felt passionately committed to Obama. The situation surprised us both, and we had many telephone discussions to examine why and how we had come to different conclusions.
Clearly, people's reasons for supporting Hillary have varied-- from loyalty and yearning for the best moments of the Clinton years; to the desire to finally see a strong, intelligent woman make it into the White House; and countless other issues that relate to policy positions. So it can be daunting to come up with a single, neat set of answers for bringing Hillary fans into the great, unruly and diverse crowd that constitutes the Obama community.
But my mother and I both feel it is essential to draw attention to the reality that Hillary and Barack have substantively far more in common with each other than either has with McCain. This reality has often been blurred in the media—as well as by Republicans who would like nothing more than to exacerbate antagonism and divisions among Democrats to their advantage. We must not allow that to happen.
I'm attaching below an email that I sent this morning to a handful of friends. It features a short film clip from the Jed Report. In the space of a few minutes, this little film reveals one of the most compelling points in this election that should send us united to the polls:
The hemorrhaging of lives and funds in Iraq is an untenable loss that must be stopped.
For my mother and me, this overwhelming point trumps any other perceived differences. So onward then, together: Mother, daughter, and my sister as well. We are voting in honor of my dad who is no longer with us, but who witnessed the devastation of war himself as a young man, and was changed forever.
