Keith Cylar, co-founder of Housing Works, has died. I have never known of an organization that started out as a grass-roots activist organization and grew into something serving so many people while keeping its activist credentials. They have always helped the people — drug users, people with AIDS — that the other service and homeless organizations didn’t want to deal with.
James has a post about him.
I stopped my subscription to The Economist last year because I felt they were being intellectually dishonest with their unquestioning backing of Bush and the attack on Iraq. I always knew they were a relatively conservative news magazine, but I thought of them as principled, and a good source of non-USA news. I felt betrayed by their attitude towards the Bush administration.
Things seem to be looking up on that front.
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Updated: OK, once I actually read the article I decided to keep my money.
As regular readers will know, The Economist endorsed Mr Bush in the 2000 election once he had beaten our preferred candidate, John McCain. That still looks the right choice for that election. Indeed, Al Gore served a handy reminder of his unsuitability and poor judgment by endorsing Howard Dean. This newspaper also supported Mr Bush’s most controversial action, the Iraq war—and despite the continuing instability in that country we do not regret that, either.
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In this helpful New York Times article, we learn what really matters to the Catholic Church.
The senator is aligned with his church on many social justice issues, including immigration, poverty, health care and the death penalty. But he diverges on the litmus issues, like abortion and stem cell research, that animate church conservatives and many in the hierarchy.
Save those unborn babies, but they’re on their own after that.
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Air America Radio has launched. I’m listening to The O’Franken Factor.
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I was reading an article about Jocelyn Elders, and she pointed out that about half of the children in America qualify for free or reduced lunches. I just went searching for the government numbers on this. As far as I can tell from the chart, the number for FY2003 is 58.5%.
We are #1 in GDP, in wealth, in military technology, in military spending, in health technology, but we haven’t figured out how to be better than last in rankings of child poverty among the 18 wealthy industrialized nations.
Wondering about the title of my post?
“Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”
— George W. Bush, Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000
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I’m headed out to vote for Dennis Kucinich in the primary. Go read Matt Taibbi on the Congressman from Ohio who actually believes we all deserve health care.
There are a lot of people out there who are inclined to laugh at this candidate. A few do so because they genuinely find him laughable, but most do it because they see him being laughed at in the news media. In this country we generally take our cues about whom we can safely laugh at from the mainstream press, and for the most part we laugh at the weak, the earnest, the sincere, the emotionally vulnerable. We laugh at people who are fat and ugly or who work as temps or at McDonaldÂ’s because none of us want to admit that weÂ’re not the ripped six-pack guy on the cover of MenÂ’s Health, or a member of the Sharper Image target market. WeÂ’re cowards, afraid of admitting to being who we are, and we laugh at people on the margins to avoid being identified as outsiders by the remorseless center.
ItÂ’s the same with politics. Over and over again we have been told, in a million different ways, that a certain kind of idealism is actually childish weakness, and that the only pragmatic way of approaching life upholds force and commerce as the chief engines of social organization. That is why we laugh at people who use words like peace and community but praise as tough, responsible leaders anyone whoÂ’s willing to drop the most mother-of-all bombs on defenseless foreign populations. We laugh at a person who uses the word peace for the same reason that we laugh at the person who works as a temp or at McDonaldÂ’s: because weÂ’re afraid of being lumped together with him.
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I will never forgive America for what Dennis Kucinich went through this year. Because he has had the audacity to call for an end to all wars, to announce plans for the creation of a Department of Peace, to question the very culture of viciousness and intolerance and crass commercialism that rules our public discourse, he has been labeled a lunatic by nearly every “responsible” press organ in this country and cruelly mocked to a degree that no civil society should allow an honorable man to endure. The New Yorker, that revolting beacon of glib, self-satisfied affluence, runs a cartoon showing Kucinich sweeping to victory in a primary held on Mars. The New York Times first angrily demands that he not waste any more of our time, then actually physically disposes of him after the passing of some self-imposed fictional electoral deadline. Even the more genuinely funny and more intelligent people in American public life–IÂ’m thinking particularly of Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon–canÂ’t resist savaging Kucinich whenever they get a chance. All because heÂ’s funny-looking, and because he uses the word peace without kidding.
I am a Dennis Kucinich supporter because I believe AmericaÂ’s greatest problem is its incivility, its intolerance to new ideas, its remorseless hatred of weakness and failure, the willingness of its individual citizens to submerge their individual cowardice within the vicious commerce-driven standards of our national self-image. George Bush is a terrible president, but he is merely a by-product of these wider national tendencies, which exist outside of him and independently of him. And these tendencies are symbolized exactly in the laughter directed at Dennis Kucinich. To vote for Dennis Kucinich, I believe, is to vote for manÂ’s right to publicly be who he is and not be ridiculed for it. If we are peaceful people, it is a vote for our right to merely be who we are.
This is not a small thing, because we are in danger of losing that right in this country. If you are the wrong kind of person, even the New York Times would have you disappear from the stage entirely. That is why it is important to understand this vote not as a pragmatic choice for a winner, but as a passionate act of self-preservation. We must stand with the man who is taking all the abuse that most of us are too afraid to take in our own lives.
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Well, enough of that. Getting back to the conversation with Kucinich on Saturday: I found the congressman in what appeared to be a good mood, as he negotiated the New York Times afterworld. Because IÂ’m interested in this question personally, I first tried to ask him what he thought the reasons were for the mediaÂ’s persistent calls for him to leave the race. After all, heÂ’s not spending their money. But he seemed less interested in talking about the reasons the press insists on thinning the herd than in pointing out why itÂ’s important to ignore them. One interesting point he made was that being ignored by the press was not automatically a bad thing.
“ItÂ’s like being covered by corporate cops,” he said. “I mean, they certainly didnÂ’t do Howard Dean any favorsÂ… So this idea of having a press corps cover you relentlessly may be overrated.”
He went on to suggest that even regularly consuming media can be as bad for you as being covered was for Howard Dean. “The thing is,” he said, “if you depend on the media for your life, for approval, then you end up being bound by its logic. I donÂ’t, so IÂ’m not.”
Kucinich wrapped up his remarks about the media with a classic Kucinichism, taking a moment to expound upon the reasons why people in the media who behave this way should be treated with compassion. One would call this a common rhetorical technique of his, except that most of the time when he talks this way, he appears actually to mean it. This time was no exception.
“[People in the media] have a terrible cross to bear,” he said. “LetÂ’s look at it from their point of view, okay? What a great responsibility they take on. They have to decide the fate of the world every day. They have to be able to tell people who their leaders should be, what the right decisions are to makeÂ…and itÂ’s very hard to do that, itÂ’s hard to be able to make those decisions.”
He went on:
“You have to remember that this is kind of a throwback to another era, when there were vast amounts of people who could barely read, who couldnÂ’t really make decisions on their own. So they had to be guided. So what a difficult position to be in, to know that you always have to guide people as to exactly what to thinkÂ… So you have to have compassion for people in that situation.”
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Q: But a lot of us who were on the outside, who didnÂ’t even have the privilege of being in Congress, we supposed automatically that this whole weapons of mass destruction business was a pretext for an invasion that was planned all along for other reasons. Is that correct? Is the idea that they were fooled a little strange to begin with?
A: Of course it is. And of course thatÂ’s what was going on. But there were a number of things that went into this, that played a part. One of those things was the whole dramaturgy of the constant threat, the lions and tigers and bears, oh my, and that was played up. And then there was the realpolitik search for hegemony in the region. And on top of that there was the posturing of various political leaders who were engaged in this ridiculous struggle to look tough. So this raises the question of what category of person you want your president to be in. ThatÂ’s not to say that the others arenÂ’t fine people in their own right. But it does say that when we entered a war that was totally unnecessary, thatÂ…I challenged the White House, I challenged the members of my own party, I challenged the media. And they did not [act] and so having given in to the administration on the war, it made it impossible for the party to challenge the White House on economic issues.
Q: WasnÂ’t the vote that Kerry and Edwards made also just generally an endorsement of the whole idea of pre-emptive war?
A: Absolutely. It licensed pre-emptive attack.
Q: Because when the newspapers today talk about the vote that the two senators made, they generally discuss it only in the context of their having believed there were weapons of mass destruction. But wasnÂ’t there a larger issue, which involved lessening the standards for going to war?
A: Yes–but again, what are the implications of their having believed there were weapons of mass destruction? It’s not just about a vote, the vote was what it was, but what information did they have? It just raises the question–what were they thinking? I mean, if they were fooled by George Bush–who else would they be fooled by?
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In case you havenÂ’t seen Kucinich in a debate or havenÂ’t read this in the newspapers: He is the only candidate in favor of ending the for-profit system of health care and replacing it with free, universal single-payer health care. When I asked him how this compares with KerryÂ’s plan of making the Senate health plan available to everyone, he explained:
“The Senate health plan is a government-subsidized for-profit health plan. IÂ’m talking about eliminating those for-profit costs entirely. Plus my plan covers everything–dental, mental health, ambulatory careÂ…”
“Wait a minute,” I interrupted, “the Senate health plan doesnÂ’t have dental? Or mental health?”
“Oh, no,” he said.
“So what does John Kerry do when he falls down and breaks a tooth?”
Kucinich didnÂ’t laugh. “I canÂ’t speak for John Kerry, but IÂ’m sure he can make other arrangements. He probably has another plan.”
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I’ve set up Jay’s web site (jayblotcher.com) with Movable Type and started putting some more information up for him.
For people looking for background information or articles and letters related to the NY Times dismissal, that’s the place to look.
This is considered an appropriate question from a New York Times reporter in a debate between the Democratic presidential candidates?
Q. Really fast, last, on a Sunday morning, President Bush has said that freedom and fear have always been at war and God is not neutral between them. He’s made quite clear in these speeches that he feels God is on America’s side. Really quick: Is God on America’s side?
I love the “really quick” part.
Becoming an expatriate in Germany or France is looking better and better.
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Our friend Jay Blotcher, a freelance writer, has been sacked as a stringer for the New York Times because he was involved with ACT UP over ten years ago.
Blotcher, who has been involved with gay and AIDS groups in the past, joined the newspaper as a stringer––a freelance reporter––in 2001 after he left New York City for the Hudson Valley. For much of his employment he contributed stories or reporting without ever getting a byline in the paper.
In late 2003, Blotcher published two stories and, under a new Times policy, his name appeared on those pieces. One story dealt with the trial of a woman who was accused of killing her three children. The second concerned some vandalism on a college campus.
“I never dealt with gay issues or AIDS issues,” Blotcher said.
Someone, an editor, another reporter, or a reader noted BlotcherÂ’s name and recalled that he was once a member of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, or ACT UP.
“There was no complaint,” wrote Susan Edgerley, the Times metropolitan editor, in response to a Gay City News e-mail query. “We recognized the name from his work with ACT UP.”
That was it for Blotcher. On January 12, Lew Serviss, a Times editor, told him the paper would no longer use him in any section. When he appealed to Edgerley she responded, “I am setting the bar high to protect against any appearance of conflict of interest that might result through the hiring of stringers and leg-people. My motivation is expediency as well as ethics––we simply do not spend as much time checking into the backgrounds of independent contractors as we do of fulltime staff people.”
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The real problem here is that The Times isnÂ’t committed to its own ethics policy. LetÂ’s look at just two Times reporters.
Lawrence K. Altman is a former employee of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and he regularly reports on that agency. Altman also sits on an advisory board that administers a CDC fellowship program. In other words, his relationship with the CDC continues. That would be an actual conflict of interest.
Bernard Weinraub covers the film industry in Los Angeles and his wife heads Columbia Pictures. A portion of their household income, probably the majority, comes from a major player in the industry Weinraub covers. That would also be an actual conflict of interest.
If The Times believed in its ethics policy then it would defend a Jay Blotcher when he follows that policy, but then the newspaper would have to do something about Weinraub and Altman. Neither man returned a phone call seeking comment.
The Times isn’t serious about ethics. The paper, to use Edgerley’s word, is concerned with “expediency.”
Updated: Atrios has more information on The Times’s idea of ethics. Also, I see that this was mentioned in the Washington Post last week in Howard Kurtz’s column.
The last time I posted about the Education Secretary, he was praising “Christian Values” in the schools. Now he says the teachers union is a terrorist organization:
Education Secretary Rod Paige called the nationÂ’s largest teachers union a “terrorist organization” during a private White House meeting with governors on Monday.
Democratic and Republican governors confirmed the educationÂ’s secretaryÂ’s remarks about the National Education Association.
“These were the words, ‘The NEA is a terrorist organization,’” said Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin.
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