I wanted to start off the week by giving my impression of the Republican national convention—of which Clint Eastwood’s mortifyingly ludicrous “speech” was the “high” point, meaning he must have been high on some extracurricular substance—but that was before I had a chance to catch Amy Goodman and “Democracy Now” on the radio this weekend providing, its own take on the proceedings. I should point out that while most of my views are left of center, that is simply a label; the truth is that I simply believe what I believe and it someone happens to believe the same thing, that is merely coincidence. No one tells me what to think, regardless of their ideological or political affiliation.
Thus when I listen to a program like “Now,” which is unabashedly socialist in its outlook, I am as likely to be put-off as I am moved by its take on the issues. This is more usually case when “Now” does its U.S.-as-Evil-Empire foreign policy reports, with Israel as its partner in international thuggery; rarely is there any discussion of U.S. policy objectives. But when it sticks to domestic issues, it is more likely to receive favorable reviews from me, because it goes deep into the darkness of problems the mainstream media typically ignores—like the right’s current attempt to destroy one person-one vote democracy in this country by indiscriminately purging voting rolls in predominately Democratic districts and requiring state-approved ID cards so close to the election; the poor, who are more likely to vote Democratic, are less likely to have cars and thus driver’s licenses—and this is yet another effort to make voiceless the most vulnerable people in this country.
But even when “Now” provides lucid commentary on occasion, I don’t always trust the “facts” I am receiving. For example, since the convention was being held in Florida, Goodman had to mention the Trayvon Martin case; once more—as much of the left has done—Goodman chose to distort and ignore facts of the case that didn’t drive the chosen narrative. George Zimmerman was not a “self-appointed” neighborhood watch captain; as I noted before, Zimmerman was asked to be his neighborhood watch captain, as part of a city-wide initiative by Sanford police after angry citizens demanded action after a tsunami of robberies and burglaries in the city that seemed to go largely unsolved and unpunished. It just so happened that in Zimmerman’s neighborhood, most of the home invasions and burglaries were perpetrated—according to residents—by newly arrived “transients” who were mainly “young black males.” Goodman repeated the mantra of racism against an “innocent,” unarmed youth; the truth, once more, is that fists—when used to intentionally hurt, maim or even kill someone by battering someone’s skull—can be classified as a “weapon.”
It also should be pointed out that in a civilized society, simply being “followed” is not sufficient excuse to beat someone; it merely suggests that the person doing the beating has the mentality of a common thug, which there is evidence that Martin was. As for the racism accusation—which an FBI investigation found no evidence of—one could accuse Martin’s own action as being racially-motivated; would he have attacked a “real” white man as quickly as a man he no doubt believed was Latino—and who cares if you beat on a “Mexican?” The media’s easy demonization of Zimmerman also suggests that it was less willing to “understand” someone who the public obviously was more willing to apply “criminal” defects to simply because of his “ethnic” appearance; on the other hand, the recent Colorado theater mass killer, a white man, is more the subject of curiosity rather than unbridled hatred. And should I not mention the Daniel Adkins case, the unarmed, developmentally-disable “white” Hispanic who was shot to death by a black male while he was walking his dog? This was the opposite of the Martin case, except an even more egregious example of the “stand your ground” law. Absolutely nothing about this from Goodman, and no thanks to the national media that after four months—and only after the shooter was arrested on a drug and drive-by charge—was a second-degree murder charge filed.
Such hypocrisy is bad enough, but Goodman’s “coverage” of the Republican convention slipped badly on the “war on women” crusade, which she obviously feels so strongly about that she is barely capable of rational thought when discussing it. When she should have kept to the core issues, such as this election being bought and paid for by the greed-ridden likes of the billionaire Koch brothers (it was pointed out that the mainstream media completely ignored the implications of Mitt Romney greeting David Koch on the convention floor in a most unseemly and obscene manner), Goodman preferred to go into a lather when Wisconsin governor Scott Walker derided her attempt to make abortion the compelling issue of the election. She immediately equated abortion with “women’s rights” and opposing it a “war on women," and was soon waxing outrageous over Paul Ryan’s talking points concerning Planned Parenthood. The problems here are several. First of all, as I’ve discussed before, much of rhetoric about abortion from the fringe left is seen as little more than self-obsessed paranoia. A voter from the “center” is more likely to be put-off by the attempt to reduce the election to a single issue like this. After all, although most people support the right to have an abortion, you shouldn’t give them a reason to think about it too much. Most people have moral misgivings about abortion, and they’d prefer not to have it jammed like a cow patty down their throats—and Goodman and the pro-abortion people she spoke to only appeared to be possessed by barely suppressed hysteria. As for Planned Parenthood, Goodman again over-estimates public support for it; it is mainly known as an abortion mill--and its sordid genesis doesn't help--and again it is wrong to assume that in private, most people really choose a national candidate based on their position concerning the organization.
But also disturbing on a certain level is the fact that white women in general do very well in this country compared to other demographics in this country (which is why Goodman’s concern about racism often sounds merely patronizing), and they seem to be demanding extra special treatment they don’t require; the wallowing in narcissistic self-victimhood sometimes makes it is hard to differentiate who is the greedier—the billionaires or those who arrogance demands recompense for every perceived slight. While I do not doubt that white women suffer from discrimination now and again, a more likely scenario is the one I wrote about awhile back, that I observed many years ago while working for a temp agency: Two dozen temps were sent to a firm to put together paperwork in folders; at the end of the first day, the white male supervisor counted all the white women present and told the rest of us we were no longer needed. Usually such favoritism isn't so blatantly exposed. My own feeling was that he picked out his “harem.”
At the top I mentioned the “Now” foreign affairs reporting, and how it negatively portrays U.S. and Israeli policy. Frankly, for having an ideology that is decidedly left, it often seems to try to alienate progressive voters against Barack Obama. Add to this the alienating of undecided and centrist voters who see only fanaticism and disingenuousness in the attempt to nail “guilt” on the forehead on an issue that many of them have ambiguous feelings about, one suspects that such has the effect of driving away more voters to the “cause” than it attracts. Fortunately for “Now,” since its viewer and listenership is limited to those who are true believers, the actual damage it causes is also limited. Which is a shame, for when it keeps to the issues that have truly dangerous implications for democracy in this country—voter suppression, the dominance of moneyed oligarchs in elections, unregulated greed, the proposed destruction of social safety nets that maintain a civil society, the reduction of the labor force to Third World status, so on and so forth—“Now” is not only informative, but a much-needed breath of honest discussion on the issues that actually matter.
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