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SWORD_OR_SHIELD
November 14, 2006
I've been an occasional
listener to "Democracy
Now" for years now, I'm surprised that it started only
but only in recent as far back as far as 1996...
years have I become
a fan. Within a few years it
seemed like a fixture
of the scene.
A casualty of the Iraq War:
a complete loss of
whatever faith I had left If I've become a flaming
in the mainstream media. leftist you can blame it
on the Bush Administration.
(And it's not
like I had much SMALL_THUMB_RULE
left to lose.)
It takes a certain
fortitude to listen
to Amy Goodman's Talk about a
grim, rapid-fire "Voice of Doom"...
delivery, precisely
detailing how the
world has continued
to fall apart in the
last 24 hours...
Grim duties for grim times.
Not long ago, I got word that
Amy Goodman was going to be in
a bookstore in downtown
Huntington, and so I sent word
to my Long Island dwelling At "Encore Books": an
brother. excellent independant
book store.
He responded that he knew about
it already, and didn't really
feel like going over there
somehow, because "those I don't know what
Amy Goodman fans are *weird*." he's talking about.
Myself, I never fantasize
about Amy Goodman in black
leather whipping Condoleeza
I saw Amy Goodman speak Rice bound to a wagon wheel
for the first time at in a dude ranch in Texas.
the Green Festival in
San Francisco this month.
It was interesting
being in a group of
thousands of people
who had raced over
to see Amy Goodman
speak in person.
In the introduction, Medea
Benjamin asked "How many
people here can't wait to
get up in the morning to So maybe
listen to Amy Goodman?", my brother
and a sea of hands went up. has a point.
The subject of her talk
was largely on the
quality of the
mainstream media and the
problems with their
coverage of issues such
as the Iraq war.
The Bush regime has to
carefully insulate the
American public from images
of the dead and maimed -- She tells the story of
they've gone as far as to a woman who rebelled
rule against filming the against this, and
flag-draped coffins of dead invited reporters to
US servicemen. photograph her son's
coffin: "My son did not
She was making the point go to Iraq in darkness,
that Americans really do he will not return in
"have a heart", and if they darkness."
saw images like this there
would be an uproar about
the war...
The really interesting thing
here though was her angle on
the events with Katrina --
The Bush regime famously sat
on their butts throughout the
Katrina crisis -- Goodman
reminds that they really had
been alerted it was
coming: she recited a litany
of ignored warnings, and Condoleeza Rice was out
blatant non-action even shopping, being accosted
*after* the hurricane hit. by citizens asking why
she wasn't at work on the
This had and an interesting emergency.
side-effect: there was no
military in New Orleans to
embed the media inside of,
which means that they So the point is that this
reported what happened, or obsession with "victim-hood" is
as Goodman put it, they not just a psychological oddity:
reported the events "from it's a politically important
the victim's point of view". topic -- a point of view that
citizen's need to make
decisions.
This speech is It might seem like a flaw
the tightest in our decision-making process,
presentation it might seem like we should
I've ever heard be able to make moral decisions
on this theme. Well, okay, just based on statistics and
so when she principles...
really gets
going maybe But the American public is
she does sound clearly not composed of
a little like such pure intellects --
Mussolini... maybe it's impossible to
to be one -- and the decision
An endearing to shield us from the unpleasant
quirk. can *only* be politically
motivated manipulation.
Given a choice,
She closes: shouldn't we
prefer access to
"We have a choice; more information
we can be the sword rather than less?
or the shield."
And she adds: "Those damn bleeding heart
whiners, always full of
"_Democracy_ _Now_." sympathy, never willing
and raises her fist. to tell people to pull
themselves up by their
The audience responds bootstraps -- "
with a standing ovation.
Is there some way to
stretch that to cover
New Orleans?
The poorest half of
the city was supposed
to have made their
own evacuation plans?
They should've taken up
a collection to inspect
the dikes, and rebuild
them themselves?
What should a
Lebanese citizen
do to evade an
Israeli cluster
bomb?
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