Op-Ed

FREEP HERO

U.S. Senator Jim Jeffords

Not since the Nazi Party ascended to power with only a third of the vote in the early 1930’s has there been such a shameless political power grab as that of George W. Bush. Despite losing the popular vote, and the appearance that family and friends rigged the results in Florida, Bush embarked on a five-month blitzkreig to make the world safe for fossil fuels and global warming. Under his so-called “charm offensive” that comes across as Jethro Bodine on downers, he undermined the U.S. tax system and was well on his way to building an unneeded and brand new missile defense system. He appeared unstoppable. And then Senator Jim Jeffords uprooted the shrub and moved the country back to the center with his bold and beautiful defection from the Republican Party. Jeffords’ action is not only heroic, it’s historic. Too bad he didn’t get to confront Junior and ask him the same question asked Senator Joseph McCarthy: “Have you no shame, sir?”

THE FREE PRESS SALUTES

Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul Pfeiffer

AUSTIN — What a glorious year for the summer reading list! Enough gems to stock any list — fiction and non-, funny and tragic, sometimes both simultaneously; plus a perfect plethora of peppy public policy books.

But there are two books I especially want to recommend, both by women I admire and know slightly: Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich and Washington by the late Meg Greenfield of The Washington Post. If you read them in conjunction, it more than doubles the strength of each.

Ehrenreich’s book, it seems to me, is the stronger of the two. She did what reporters used to do before they became so unbearably self-important: She reports what the society actually looks like from the bottom. Starting in 1998, she went out and got successive and sometimes simultaneous no-skills, close-to-minimum wage jobs and tried to make it from one month to the next. She couldn’t do it. As she so painfully shows, the joker in the deck for low-wage workers is the cost of housing.

As police fired rubber bullets through tear gas in Quebec City, many reporters echoed the claim that “free trade” promotes democracy. Meanwhile, protesters struggled to shed light on a key fact: The proposed hemispheric trade pact would give large corporations even more power to override laws that have been enacted — democratically — to protect the environment, labor and human rights.

Newsweek responded to the turmoil at the Summit of the Americas with a column by Fareed Zakaria, a favorite policy analyst in elite circles. He declared that “the anti-globalization crowd is antidemocratic ... trying to achieve, through intimidation and scare tactics, what it has not been able to get through legislation.” In recent decades, of course, the same was said about cutting-edge demonstrations for such causes as civil rights, peace in Vietnam and environmental safeguards.

In a five day period in early May, the United States was justifiably slapped around at the United Nations. It’s about time. While the mainstream media encourages U.S. citizens to angerly mutter “Why are they picking on us? We’re so good,” the reality is the U.S. deserved to be voted off the Human Rights Commission on May 3. This is the first time in the history of that body that the U.S. has not had a seat on the Commission. It would be an irony of the highest sort to keep the U.S. on the Commission when our current president routinely executed people as Governor of Texas at a rate higher than the vast majority of nations in the world. The U.S. came in last of the four nominated countries – Sweden, France and Austria. Not only do they all have better records on Human Rights, they all have significantly higher rates of voter turnout. With the recent findings by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission – the fact that for every ten black votes not counted in Florida’s last election, only one white vote was voided – perhaps the first thing the U.N. Human Rights Commission could do would be to investigate the massive human rights violations in the rogue state of Florida.

I still remember the shock of May 4, 1970 after hearing the news of the shootings at Kent State – the unnerving feeling that they were coming for me and my friends next -- as a Detroit 9th grade hippie greaser/MC5 listener/White Panther Party supporter. My rage grew in high school fueled in part by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

By the time I became a college radical and activist in the fall of ’73, and a mistaken supporter of Eldridge Cleaver, I firmly believed that the students should have been better organized with well-armed militias and shot back. Hell, I dreamed about getting down to it, as Neil Young advised. It’s one of the reasons I spent the 70’s boycotting Wendy’s -- you know, the Rhodes/Dave Thomas connection -- and fighting to stop the construction of the gym at the death site at Kent State. I have these vivid flashbacks of October 1977, tear gas everywhere, and I swear Dana Beal and a group of yippies emerged from the fog to line dance wearing gas masks. It still makes me smile.

When the Ameritrade company launched a $200 million marketing drive to explain the joys of online trading in autumn 1999, a barrage of TV commercials invited viewers to join in the fun. The news was bullish, and the firm's motto -- "Believe in yourself" -- provided an upbeat message. Tech stocks led advances in self-affirmation.

A senior vice president at Ameritrade proclaimed that online investing "empowers individuals to take control of their financial lives." Within several months, the Nasdaq composite index nearly doubled. When spring 2000 began, plenty of satisfied new customers were glad to be playing the click-and-invest game.

Now, four seasons later, the Nasdaq is less than half of where it was. Losses have been particularly devastating for many of the investors who'd found the get-with-it advertisements and other media hype too irresistible to resist a year ago.

It's not easy to look at ourselves as others might see us. For a country, the need is especially acute in times of international crisis -- but that's when nationalism and other reflexive biases are most likely to become pivotal.

One of the ways to test for media slant is to put the shoe on the other foot. A big story this month provides an opportunity for inquiry in the world of intense media spin.

Here are some excerpts from actual U.S. news coverage, with only one type of change -- I've reversed the references to China and the United States. The mirror-image narrative is worth pondering.

ABC World News Tonight: "There are concerns about national security and a Chinese military flight crew that was forced to make an emergency landing during a surveillance flight along the East Coast of the United States. The Chinese spy plane was equipped with sophisticated intelligence-gathering technology."

CNN: "Chinese military officials say that they are, first and foremost, concerned about the safety of the crew. They want that crew returned back to China."

FREEP HEROES

Subcommandante Marcos and the Zapatistas

As the Zapatistas say, “Our struggle is yours.” As we go to press, Subcommadante Marcos and the Zapatista delegation are in Mexico City attempting to negotiate an indigenous Bill of Rights, long overdue after 509 years of the conquistadors. We salute their efforts and stand in solidarity with their struggle against corporate “neo-liberal” economics ravaging Central America under the guise of “Free Trade.”

THE FREE PRESS SALUTES

Columbus City Councilwoman Charleta Tavares

Once again, we salute Charleta Tavares. With the School Board moving in the opposite direction in restricting citizen input, Tavares has courageously opened up the committee she chairs on Council, the Health, Housing and Human Services Committee, to more citizen’s input. Tavares understands that when democracy isn’t working just right the solution is not to hide in the bunker, but to invite more participation.

ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE

Ex-Columbus Public Schools Superintendent Rosa Smith

WASHINGTON -- During the first days of spring, cold winds blew through the nation's capital. The weather was an apt metaphor for the chilling effects of a perennial news industry desensitized to its own numbing. Don't worry, we've been told countless times: Media outlets are diverse enough to maintain vigilance.

"I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that doesn't have a slant," E.B. White observed in a 1956 essay. To that candid assessment he added a more dubious one: "The beauty of the American free press is that the slants and the twists and the distortions come from so many directions, and the special interests are so numerous, the reader must sift and sort and check and countercheck in order to find out what the score is. This he does."

Many Americans have seen the digital dream of global communications vividly expressed on TV commercials for Cisco Systems. Eager to promote its theme of "empowering the Internet generation," the giant high-tech firm paid for a lot of lovely ads with adorable children from different countries asking: "Are you ready?"

By now, we understand that our response is supposed to be -- must be -- affirmative. But our best answer may be a question: "Ready for what?"

History tells cautionary tales. After the first rudimentary telegraph went into operation 207 years ago in Europe, media analyst Armand Mattelart says, "long-distance communication technology was promoted as a guarantee of the revival of democracy." During the next several decades, a powerful concept took hold -- "the ideology of redemption through networks."