Meister Eklöf’s Blog
http://blog.cliftonuu.org
Meister Eklöf’s Blog
Playing Hardball
It has been personally disheartening, and at times terrifying, to watch our nation's journalistic standards steadily and exponentially eroding ever since 1981 when Ronald Reagan appointed Mark Fowler as Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Fowler abolished those guidelines establishing minimal amounts of non-entertainment programming; along with the Fairness Doctrine, which required broadcasters to act in the“public interest” by covering important policy matters while providing equal time to both sides an issue (in other words, truly "fair and balanced news."); and, worst of all, the number of stations permitted to be owned by a single corporation has continued to expand ever since. The result, as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has noted in his book, Crimes Against Nature, “The right-wing radio conglomerate Clear Channel, which in 1995 operated 40 radio stations, today owns over 1,200 stations and controls 11 percent of the market. Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation is the largest media conglomerate on the planet, one of seven media giants that own or control virtually all of the United States’ 2000 TV stations, 11,000 radio stations, and 11,000 newspapers and magazines.” In brief, our nation's national media has fallen into the hands of just seven CEO's.
Having begun working in Television news in the midst of this dire transformation (from 1989 to 1999), I saw firsthand what happens to journalistic standards when the media is owned by mega corporations that are usually headquartered far away from the communities they effect. First to go were the prehistoric news directors who understood the importance of keeping the Sales Department out of the Newsroom. There was a time when those who worked in sales knew well to stay the hell out! Their presence in the newsroom, even if only by implication, threatened all self-imposed journalistic standards. I say "self-imposed" because in the old days, journalists had to adhere to their own set of ethics. This is so because in this country we have a "free press," meaning no outside organization that can force journalists to do what is right. Yet, for more than two hundred years, journalists learned their industry's basic ethics--fairness, impartiality, three sources, and and unyielding commitment to the truth--from each other, and held themselves and one another to these standards.
When corporations began conglomerating media outlets, however, their main concern was not with the quality of the product they made (as it was when more stations and papers were locally owned) but with making as much profit as possible for their shareholders and investors who, again, could care less about the communities they influenced. So the dinosaur station managers, news directors, and veteran reporters were "let go," and were replaced with upper management concerned only with the new owners' primary concern, money! Conditions in the stations I worked for became absolutely oppressive. The pay was well below the poverty level for those entering the business, and many of those who had been in long enough to make good money were terminated. In one of the stations I worked for, even videotapes, the lifeblood of TV news, were in such short supply that photojournalists had to write their names on them, and often fought over them. In one instance, one fellow was caught using alcohol to wipe the name off a coworker's tapes so he could use them for himself. But the real point here is that most the veterans who passed their ethical heritage on to the younger journalists became extinct. Or, even worse, the new breed of news management continually threatened to fire anyone who disagreed with them, and often did. So the old vets that are still around have learned to keep their mouths shut. And now, what was once nearly impossible has become a regular occurrence; members of the sales department make regular visits to the newsroom, contacting reporters to pitch story ideas that might benefit their prospective advertisers.
I've been out of "the business" now for nearly a decade, and have often found myself incensed and disgusted, particularly with the national media, for not doing its job, for not asking the questions vital to our nation's Democracy. Prior to the Iraq war, the mainstream media, as a whole, not only failed to ask the tough questions about Bush's false assertions, which seemed obvious to hundreds of millions of people around the world, but they used the power of their forum to beat the drums of war, presumably, on behalf of the interests of the seven corporations that own them.
But all is not lost! Just last week, I witness firsthand what I believe is a glimmer of hope in this grave threat to our freedom. I was watching "Hardball" with Chris Matthews, who was interviewing a conservative radio talk show host, Kevin James, about Bush's ridiculous implication that Barack Obama is an "appeaser." James began railing against Obama from the get go. He sounded more like a World Federation wrestler than a radio host. After a few minutes Matthews began asking him to explain the historical context of the term "appeaser," which he was using quite "liberally." James ignored and evaded the question, which Matthews asked 24 times in all, until it became obvious he did not know what he was talking about. Here's a portion of their interaction:
MATTHEWS: You don’t know what you’re talking about, Kevin. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Tell me what Chamberlain did wrong.
JAMES: Neville Chamberlain was an appeaser, Chris. Neville Chamberlain was an appeaser, all right? […]
MATTHEWS: I’ve been sitting here five minutes asking you to say what the president was referring to in 1938 at Munich.
JAMES: I don’t know.
MATTHEWS: You don’t know, thank you.
If you'd like to take a few minutes to watch for yourself, click on the link below:
The next day I brought up Youtube to show the interview to a friend and, to my delight, discovered it was the top clip of the day. That night Chris Matthews, who seemed a little taken aback by the response, showed a portion of it again on his show. It is my hope that what he learned, and, more importantly, what he proved to other journalists, is that, even in a post 9-11 world, even in a corporate owned industry, it is possible to really play hardball by asking the tough questions, and not lose your ratings or your job. In fact, quite the opposite happened. Matthews elevated his standing as a hard-hitting journalist in the minds of millions, and secured his position and value to MSNBC.
More important yet, later that same night he was interviewed about the story by Rachel Maddow, who was filling in for Keith Olbermann. Here's a portion of what he said:
"The whole mindset of the last several years, let's put it that way, since 2000 has been to shut up critics. If you don't like a war policy you get branded with a name. You're unpatriotic. You're a cut-and-runner. You're an appeaser. You can't argue politics in American anymore. You can't question power, because if you question it, you're gonna be drummed out of acceptable society. You're gonna be called an appeaser. These magic words are used for one purpose; to shut you up so that they can proceed with the policy. And I think that's a real problem. I think, I was just in Washington U today Rachel, and I made the point that in a society like ours arguing over policy, arguing over what our role should be in the world, shouldn't be unpatriotic or seen as unpatriotic, and most cases should be seen as the essence of patriotism, giving a damn about our policy, what it ought to be, arguing, standing up and having a real debate. We didn't have that when we went to war in Iraq. Some of it's the media's fault. Some of it's just that people were intimidated out of challenging this President and his war policy."
The entire exciting and important interview is well worth your time. You can watch in on Youtube by clicking the link below.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mpAvSSQ9OU
If ratings are positive reinforcement in the news world, I'm elated that Matthews and other journalists have now seen the overwhelming response that happens when they, like him, have the courage to really do their jobs and ask the tough questions. Critical thinking is, in my opinion, the greatest gift of human intelligence. I dare say, if we began teaching our children critical thinking skills in school today, we will solve most of our world's worse problems in a single generation. If we had taught them just thirty years ago, the Iraq war could have never happened. My fervent prayer is that what happened last week on Hardball with Chris Matthews is but the harbinger of good things to come.
[As a footnote to this article, it should be understood that prior to these FCC deregulations, Fox News and Rush Limbaugh could not have existed, anymore than those progressive programs and mediums like Keith Olbermann and Air America Radio. Indeed, many of the cable news programs that now center around opinionated hosts would have had to remain more neutral under the old regulations, or, at least, give fair time to those with opposing philosophies.]
You Tube Stuff
Now that I have a blog, I thought I'd put up links to the few times in recent years I've been on Youtube.
The first was taken at a March 2007 protest during which George W. Bush was in Louisville to raise funds for Senator Mitch McConnell. I must admit, I got a little carried away:
I was definitely a little more solemn during this next clip which was taken March 19, 2007, four years after the war in Iraq began:
This next clip is a brief news story that happened after a top executive at Kentucky Farm Bureau admitted to firing me for taking a stand on gay rights:
For more on this particular story you should also check out:
A Laughing Matter?
Monday night (May 12), 2008, while watching MSNBC's "Race for the White House," I watched in dismay and disbelief as all four of the program's panelists, and its host, David Gregory, began chuckling after Rachel Maddow began teasing Pat Buchanan about all the votes he received from some of Florida's most Democratic counties during his run for the Presidency in 2000. The conversation when like this:
Buchanan: Make no mistake, Obama's got a real problem with the Jewish community. This Hamas thing is being pushed for that reason. What are we talking about? Broward, Dade, and Palm Beach county.
Maddow: Pat I love you talking about winning the Jewish vote in Palm Beach county.
Buchanan: Well I did very well down there.
[Gregory laughs, followed by Buchanan]
Maddow: You did spectacularly well there! I mean, like, really well!
[Everyone begins laughing hysterically]
As all of us should remember, Buchanan, as candidate for the Reform Party, inexplicably won thousands of votes in the the very counties he joked about last night, votes that even he, to his credit, admitted were meant for Al Gore. How did this happen? Although Al Gore's name appeared second on the election ballet, voters had to punch the third hole to vote for him, whereas the second hold counted as a vote for Buchanan on the second page of the ballet. This explains why thousands of Democrats ended up voting for Buchanan, and why thousands more ballets were discounted after those voters realizing their mistake punched the third hole after having already punched the second. George W. Bush claimed victory in Florida based on a lead of less than 500 votes, which surely would have completely dissipated had the partisan U.S. Supreme Court not forbidden the State of Florida to conduct a recount. The reason the major news networks first declared Al Gore the winner in Florida is because they correctly based their conclusion on accurate exit polls, that is, on the candidate voters thought they were voting for, rather than confusing ballots that either did not reflect their intentions, or were thrown out entirely.
My concern here, however, is not to cry over spilled milk [although I am still shedding plenty of tears, believe me]. Rather, I'm disturbed to see members of the national media making light of something they failed to adequately cover when it counted most, eight years ago. It cannot be disputed that the 2000 election was stolen from Al Gore through grave election irregularities and unexplained shenanigans, which the national media hardly investigated or brought to light. Most of what we have learned since then about it has come from independent sources like blogs and lesser known media sources. I wish the national, corporate-owned-and-controlled, media would have spent as much time exposing these irregularities as they have spent lately covering the out of context statements of Jeremiah Wright, or, as much as they are now spending speculating as to when Hillary Clinton will withdraw from the race, or even as much as they spent the past few years covering Britney Spears, Anna Nicole Smith, and O.J. Simpson.
There is nothing funny about what happened in Florida in 2000. It's sad. It's tragic for the American people and for the democratic values we hold. And now, eight years after the fact, having heard little to nothing about these irregularities then, the media is now getting a kick out of it, making light of an injustice that has had dire consequences for people around the world. Of course I realize humor is an emotional defense mechanism that can help us get through difficult circumstances by making light of them, that is, taking them less seriously. If we can joke about something, we can get through it. In this way, comedy and tragedy go hand in hand, but we must earn the right to laugh at tragedy by first comprehending the severity of circumstances. We have to "suffer with," before we "all have a good laugh about this someday." Members of the national media have not yet earned the right to laugh at what happened in Florida because they have not yet fully covered or exposed our nation to the severity of those events. To be quite honest, I was shocked to seem them laughing, mostly because it's the first time I'd seen anyone in the national news even hint at what had happened. To hear such a serious and unfortunate American tragedy brought up so nonchalantly through unrepressed laughter was disturbing, to say the least.
If you choose, you can watch it for yourself at www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/24585691#24585477.
USA vs. Al-Arian
Although it's a troubling film to watch, the "USA vs. Al-Arian" is an important documentary about Dr. Sami Al-Arian, the tenured college professor at the University of South Florida who was arrested and accused of being a terrorist in February of 2003. Although, after being kept in prison for 33 months before he was finally tried, and months later acquitted by a jury of his peers of all 51 charges the U.S. government accused him of, he remains in solitary confinement to this day. Dr. Al-Arian is only one of more than 5000 arrestees just like him, but the significance of this film is that it puts a human face on the issue by intimately exposing us to just one person and lets us into the difficult, sometimes nightmarish, world of his spouse and children who long to have him returned to their arms and lives. You can see the 52 minute version of the film online, or order the longer version at: www.usavsalarian.com. My rating: ****
Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains
I highly recommend the documentary, "Jimmy Carter: Man from Plains," about the former President's recent book, "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid" and all the subsequent trouble it's caused him. The thing I enjoyed about it most was getting to know this great man who, now in his 80's, has the stamina and resilience of a marathon runner. It's beautifully filmed and edited, and allows Carter to largely tell his own story by overlaying his voice on images of him interacting with his friends and neighbors in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, where he still lives, and of him in action touring the country to promote his best selling book even though the powers-that-be work to negatively stigmatize him as an anti-Semitic bigot. "Man from Plains" exposes us to the soul of this great man, in a rare and expiring glimpse of a gentle giant who maintains the same compassion and composure for which he was known as a President, yet also reveals the growth he has undergone in the past thirty years, transforming him into a wise grandfather who no longer plays politics and isn't afraid to say what's on his mind or in his heart, no matter what the personal risk to himself. My most memorable line from the movie is when he says, "The media is abominable. There is no degree of objectivity in the media..." I rented it from my local movie store on the New Releases isle, but you can also order it at www.sonyclassics.com/jimmycartermanfromplains. My rating: ****
Daddy Dearest
Pope Benedict's recent visit to the U.S. has stirred up some troubling feelings for me. It's not that I dislike the Pope, although there are many ways in which I find we are dislike, but that he was so ubiquitously and magnanimously welcomed with very little criticism from the masses or the media. Again, it's not that I wanted the Pontiff to be treated disrespectfully or with hostility, or even met with mass protests regarding some of his controversial positions. I'm simply disturbed to have been so forcefully reminded that our species remains so overwhelmingly and collectively fixated at such an immature stage of moral and cognitive awareness. Despite the fact that Jesus himself debunked such patriarchy by saying, "call no man on earth your father," we still, after at least 2000 years, use religion to work out our personal father issues by propping up figures like the Pope [a word that means "father," or, more precisely, "poppa"), and even turn our immature idea of God into a father substitute. In his work, Civilization and its Discontents, Sigmund Freud seemed equally as disturbed by this when he wrote, "The whole thing is so patently infantile, so incongruous with reality, that to one whose attitude to humanity is friendly it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life."
It is not that I disrespect the right of every person to undertake a free and responsible search for truth and meaning which, obviously, has led many to Catholicism, or, at least, to remain a part of their family's religious tradition. But, I also realize, as Carl Jung said, "The small world of the child, the family milieu, is the model for the big world." When this happens, when we live neurotically, relating psychologically and emotionally to the present as if it were the past, we miss out on reality as it is, and foster a world based on fiction rather than fact, on wishes rather than actualities, on delusion rather than sense. In dressing reality up in our neuroses, we too often remain profoundly ignorant of the real injustices we create beneath our illusions. In this instance, our childish wish to please our father, or, as Freud would remind us, to free ourselves of the guilt we have over our patricidal feelings, we have collectively given birth to system of patriarchy and domination, which is authoritarian, punitive, and, therefore, oppressive for those who don't "please" or "appease" the Father in the prescribed (religious) way.
Freud believed this "Father worship" began before civilization when a band of brothers who "hated the father who stood so powerfully in the way of their sexual demands and their desire for power, but they also loved and admire him," murdered him. Their ambivalent feelings of hate and love for their living father, turned into equally as ambivalent feelings of guilt and adoration after his death; two feelings which today remain central to patriarchal religion, including Christianity. I'm reminded here especially of Pope Benedict repeatedly telling American Catholics to make "obedience" to Papal "authority" the foundation of their faith, in light of Freud's words, "What the father's presence had formally prevented they themselves now prohibited in the psychic situation of 'subsequent obedience' which we know so well from psychoanalysis." Hence, the father, whom we simultaneously love and hate, becomes God, King, Pope, Minister, Dictator, or whoever else we can project these persistent feelings onto in the present, even though our actual father is no longer present, and no longer a threat. "The surrogate for the father," Freud wrote, 'was perhaps used in the attempt to assuage the burning sense of guilt, and to bring about a kind of reconciliation with the father."
In Christianity, in particular, this archetypal human drama took an interesting spin. The crucified son became elevated to the place of God, completely supplanting the Father, even as Divine surrogate [as God]. As Erich Fromm explained, "The belief in the elevation of a man to god was thus the expression of an unconscious wish for the removal of the divine father." This was the case among those who were extremely oppressed by the Roman authorities who justified their unjust behavior by considering their Emperor, like the Pope, a hierophant, that is, a human incarnation of God. Thus, those they oppressed hated the idea of an omnipotent father in the sky, and were eager and relieved to elevate one of their own in "his" place. But, alas, as the drama unfolded, their guilt increased and they began to reinstate the supremacy of their surrogate Father. So, in the end, the communitarian/egalitarian societies of the first Christians, returned to the old ways of patriarchy, elitism, and dominion over others. Again, as Fromm, put it, "The truth is, rather, that the original religion was transformed into another one, but the new Catholic religion had good reason for concealing this transformation." And with this regressive transformation, this step backward, the progressive humanitarian teachings of Jesus about equality, inclusion, compassion, forgiveness, and sharing, became completely overshadowed, and eventually buried, by the restoration of the patriarchy [father worship]. Fromm wrote, "Christianity, which had been the religion of a community of equal brothers, without hierarchy or bureaucracy, became 'the Church,' the reflected image of the absolute monarchy of the Roman Empire."
So what's my problem? Why do I not wish to tolerate such belief, even though I strive to be accepting of others? I'm quite sure it's because of my commitment to both justice and sanity. We cannot create a just world so long as we remain "out of touch" with the real world, that is, so long as we can't see the injustices around us because of the illusions we unconsciously create in our minds; so long, that is, as we continue to view reality as it is filtered by our thoughts, our ideals about the world, rather than through our senses, that is, as it truly exists in the here and now instead of diluted through emotional remnants and unfulfilled longings of the past. Christianity began, very early on, as a religion of social justice, seeking to transform the world by alleviating the all too real suffering and oppression of others. Soon, however, it reverted to typical Father Worship and became a mere opiate that numbed its adherents to their own suffering and oppression as well as to the suffering and oppression of those around them, making them, at least to some degree, delusional.
The real historical world no longer needed to change; outwardly everything could remain as it was--state, society, law, economy--for salvation had become an inward, spiritual, unhistorical, individual matter guaranteed by faith in Jesus. The hope for real, historical deliverance was replaced by faith in the already complete spiritual deliverance. The historical interest was supplanted by the cosmological interest. Hand in hand with it, ethical demands faded away. The first century of Christianity was characterized by rigorous ethical postulates, in the belief that the Christian community was primarily a fellowship of holy living. This practical, ethical rigorism is replaced by the means of grace dispensed by the Church."
[Erich Fromm, The Dogma of Christ]
Food for Thought
Unfortunately the most pertinent issues of the day are rarely presented as the news of the day by the general media. If it were up to me the lead story everyday these days would be something like, "Coming up, All the Latest on the End of the World," or "Apocalypse Now." Nowadays most of us are forced to admit that we're facing global climate changes directly caused by humans, and that we must change our ways immediately. Given the massive heat waves, rising sea levels, category 5 hurricanes, tornadoes, and tsunamis, ice glaciers melting enough each day to provide fresh drinking water to San Francisco for an entire year, severe decade long droughts from coast to coast, water wars in the U.S. and around the world, it's become clear that global warming and its disastrous effects can no longer be denied.
But the story we're still not hearing, which scientists have also been warning us about for decades, is that the Earth is in the midst of its sixth mass extinction in history. It's estimated that we're losing, and have been losing for some time, between 120 to 150 species each day. Although it can be argued that extinction is the way of life, that 99 percent of all species ever to have existed have gone extinct, it would be better to say that evolution is the way of life. In other words, species don't just disappear, they change, through adaptation. That's the nature of life. What's happening now is not evolution, it's extinction, like what happened with the dinosaurs. Evolution has stopped. Species aren't evolving into something new, they're dying off because the Earth can no longer sustain them due to rapid environmental changes happening too fast to adapt to.
And now, at the end of the world (at least as we know it), we're facing a global food shortage that in recent days has sparked millions of hungry people to riot in numerous countries. Even here in the U.S. companies like COSCO and Sam's Club are limiting the amount of rice that can be purchased during a single visit. There seem to be several contributing factors for this crisis.
1) Rising oil prices are pushing up the petroleum based fertilizer products which makes it more expensive to grow food.
2) In turn, the rising cost of gasoline has made food transportation more expensive.
3) "Freak weather" around the world has taken a toll on crops, making produce less available.
4) Potential profits from the growing biodiesel industry (despite the fact biodiesel fuel takes as much petroleum fertilizer to produce it as it saves) has led many producers to shift from food production to fuel production.
5) One reason for the food shortage we're not hearing a lot about seems to be the Federal Government's corporate welfare program through which it continues to print or borrow money it doesn't have to bailout troubled industries. Flooding the market with dollars lessens the value of the dollar, which is why it's now worth 40% less than it was just a few years ago. This causes inflation (a hidden tax on the poor) which causes food and commodity prices to skyrocket.
6) Yet another reason for the problem, which also gets little mention, but seems to be its most obvious and primary cause, is the fact that during the past 100 years the human population has exploded from 1.5 billion people to well over 6 billion people. The earth is not an endless frontier to be continually conquered, but a small blue circle with defined limits. The Earth simply can't sustain all of us. At the current rate of exploitation we have already far exceeded the Earth's capacity to keep up with our demands. Cheap oil/energy was the cause of the human population explosion, and its rising costs will be the cause of our decline. It's simple math. Simple logic.
As a species, we have arrived at a pivotal time in our history. But we do have a choice. We can behave as we always have by taking the easy way out, which is what we will most likely do. Or we can take the more difficult path by overhauling our entire worldview and way of doing things. The easy way means allowing the poorest 3 or 4 billion people in the world to suffer and starve into oblivion. It is the Katrina response--talk about how tragic it is, about how our hearts go out to the poor victims, yet do nothing to alleviate their suffering. This way we get the population back down to a sustainable number and can maintain the status quo in which one percent of the population still controls most the world's resources without completely depleting them.
The more difficult solution, on the contrary, allows us to keep our current population in tact, while promoting birth control. This means authoritarian/patriarchal/chauvinistic leaders like George W. Bush and the Pope can no longer frown upon abortion while condemning sex-education and birth control. Rather, as history has proven here in the U.S., affluence is a natural type of birth control. People who have adequate resources have fewer children. Thus, by taking control of the resources away from the ruling elite, the top one percent, and more justly distributing the world's wealth among its 6+ billion human inhabitants, we can stop the population explosion in its tracks. In the meantime, we must all begin to live more sustainably by reducing our dependence on petroleum based energy and products, reducing our greenhouse emissions and our overall use of the Earth's precious and limited resources.
Many of us are already putting new habits into practice by;
1) Driving more fuel efficient vehicles.
2) Driving less often.
3) Buying local as much as possible.
4) Using window fans instead of air-conditioning when we can in the summer.
5) Converting to compact florescent bulbs.
6) Growing our own gardens.
7) Recycling.
8) Joining a CSA (Consumer Supported Agriculture) or buying produce from a farmer's market.
But, perhaps the single most important thing you can do to curb this global food shortage is to shift to a plant based diet. If you can't get completely off meat, then try reducing the amount of meat you eat each week. Most of the grain grown in the world is grown to feed livestock, most of which is consumed by the U.S., only 5 percent of the world's population, at the terrible expense of everyone else. Eating less meat will free up a lot of cropland to grow food for human consumption. Currently, there are more than 20 billion livestock animals on the planet, more than one cow, pig, and chicken for everyone on the planet to eat everyday! This is an unnatural and unsustainable number that not only takes up cropland and grains that could be used directly to feed humans, but is wrecking havoc on the environment by polluting our waterways, destroying topsoil, and fouling the air with methane gas. If you feel you must eat meat, then try buying it and butchering it locally, maybe one grass fed cow in your freezer at a time, rather then a pound or two at a time from a corporate supermarket.
Ultimately we must, as a species, evolve very quickly into a new species, from homo sapien into homo ethicus, a being that has finally learned to base its behavior on people rather than profits; on fairness rather than selfishness; on love rather than fear; on kindness, compassion and justice, rather than greed, ignorance, and exploitation.