With sanity and good sense so media rare these days, when Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck star in "The 100 Most Influential People in the World," the loss of Bill Moyers' voice on PBS every weekend is hard to bear.
His retirement at 75 marks the last of a generation of 20th century journalists, inspired by Edward R. Murrow, dedicated not to getting the story first but getting it right, to concentrating on what used to be scoffed as "soft news" but, in today's 24/7 flood of facts, factoids and fakery, is the news that really counts.
Starting out as an ordained minister, the young Texan was derailed into national politics by LBJ, emerging from Great Society idealism and the bitter reality of Vietnam into a media world, never losing the liberal, populist bent inherited from his father, an East Texas laborer, who thought of FDR as a friend in the White House:
"My father knew FDR was talking for him when he said life was no longer free, liberty no longer real, men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness--against economic tyranny."
In his final Journal this weekend, Moyers was still his father's son, warning that now the "marriage of money and politics has produced an America of gross inequality at the top and low social mobility at the bottom, with little but anxiety and dread in between, as middle class Americans feel the ground falling out from under their feet...
"So it is that like those populists of that earlier era, millions of Americans have awakened to a sobering reality: they live in a plutocracy, where they are disposable. Then, the remedy was a popular insurgency that ignited the spark of democracy.
"Now we have come to another parting of the ways, and once again the fate and character of our country are up for grabs."
Agree or not, losing that media voice is bad for the country at a time when Sarah Palin, in Time Magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential Americans, can rhapsodize about her fellow designee and Fox News colleague, Glenn Beck:
"Though he sometimes dismisses himself as an aw-shucks guy or just a 'rodeo clown,' he's really an inspiring patriot who was once at the bottom but now makes a much needed difference from the very, very top."
Somewhere in Media Heaven, Edward R. Murrow must be frowning, and Time's founding father Henry Luce can't be too thrilled, either.
Showing posts with label Bill Moyers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bill Moyers. Show all posts
Monday, May 03, 2010
Monday, May 19, 2008
"Because He's Black"
With Hillary Clinton's chances fading, the issue of race is boiling to the surface, as it did in West Virginia and will again in Kentucky tomorrow.
Last night on PBS, Bill Moyers quoted one of last week's voters telling a BBC interviewer why Barack Obama can't win the White House: "Because he's black."
"There it was," Moyers pointed out, "no longer a whisper but out in public, on the record: Because he is black. The fault line in American history is now a dividing line in this election...We heard it all week and now the political world is asking: Could the candidate who has won more votes, more states and more delegates lose in November and could the reason be race?"
Ugly as the question is, it will be asked and answered between now and November, but what it says about America, regardless of whether Obama wins or loses, is something we all need to know.
How deep does the prejudice go? As he loses two border states, Obama drew 75,000 people in Oregon yesterday, a huge crowd that brings back visual memories of Martin Luther King in Washington over 40 years ago making his "I have a dream" speech.
The New York Times reports Obama's reaction: “Wow! Wow! Wow!” were his first words as he surveyed the multitude, which included people in kayaks and small pleasure craft on the river on an unseasonably hot day in Oregon.
"It is 'fair to say this is the most spectacular setting for the most spectacular crowd' of his campaign, he told the audience."
Obama is living out King's dream this year, but how will it end? In a replay of yesterday's heartening spectacle or as a nightmare in the darkest part of the American heart silently voting its fears and prejudices in the solitude of ballot boxes in November?
Last night on PBS, Bill Moyers quoted one of last week's voters telling a BBC interviewer why Barack Obama can't win the White House: "Because he's black."
"There it was," Moyers pointed out, "no longer a whisper but out in public, on the record: Because he is black. The fault line in American history is now a dividing line in this election...We heard it all week and now the political world is asking: Could the candidate who has won more votes, more states and more delegates lose in November and could the reason be race?"
Ugly as the question is, it will be asked and answered between now and November, but what it says about America, regardless of whether Obama wins or loses, is something we all need to know.
How deep does the prejudice go? As he loses two border states, Obama drew 75,000 people in Oregon yesterday, a huge crowd that brings back visual memories of Martin Luther King in Washington over 40 years ago making his "I have a dream" speech.
The New York Times reports Obama's reaction: “Wow! Wow! Wow!” were his first words as he surveyed the multitude, which included people in kayaks and small pleasure craft on the river on an unseasonably hot day in Oregon.
"It is 'fair to say this is the most spectacular setting for the most spectacular crowd' of his campaign, he told the audience."
Obama is living out King's dream this year, but how will it end? In a replay of yesterday's heartening spectacle or as a nightmare in the darkest part of the American heart silently voting its fears and prejudices in the solitude of ballot boxes in November?
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Wright's Jeremiads
Bill Moyers did his best last night on PBS to put Barack Obama's controversial pastor into perspective. He succeeded in showing the man's brilliance but created unease in an observer who, by taste and temperament, is not attracted to apocalyptic preaching about the human condition.
From the interview, it's easy to see what Obama found in Jeremiah Wright and his church that gave a new dimension to his secular desire to help the poor and dispossessed during his early days in Chicago.
Wright's church apparently did and does good work in uplifting its community, but the social benefits come with a moral price--the preacher's selective view of good and evil in the political world.
Consider Wright's use of Martin Luther King to justify his own history. "Dr. King, of course, was vilified," he told Moyers, asserting that, after King talked about racism, militarism and capitalism, he was "ostracized not only by the majority of Americans in the press; he got vilified by his own community. They thought he had overstepped his bounds...He was vilified by all of the Negro leaders who felt he'd overstepped his bounds talking about an unjust war."
Martin Luther King's opposition to the war made him unpopular with Lyndon Johnson but not the rest of America, least of all African-Americans and, unlike Wright, he did not use it to condemn all of American history, from the mistreatment of Native Americans to plotting drug addiction in black communities.
The Rev. Wright's need to "damn" America leads him to a peculiar view of history. He goes back centuries to mine our national past for evil but, when asked about Louis Farrakhan's racist and anti-Semitic speech, dismisses it with "That was twenty years ago" and praises him for getting African-Americans off drugs and giving them self-respect.
Perhaps most troubling of all is his smiling intimation that Barack Obama is only distancing himself from his views for political expedience: "(W)hat happened in Philadelphia where he had to respond to the sound bites, he responded as a politician. But he did not disown me because I'm a pastor."
From the interview, it's easy to see what Obama found in Jeremiah Wright and his church that gave a new dimension to his secular desire to help the poor and dispossessed during his early days in Chicago.
Wright's church apparently did and does good work in uplifting its community, but the social benefits come with a moral price--the preacher's selective view of good and evil in the political world.
Consider Wright's use of Martin Luther King to justify his own history. "Dr. King, of course, was vilified," he told Moyers, asserting that, after King talked about racism, militarism and capitalism, he was "ostracized not only by the majority of Americans in the press; he got vilified by his own community. They thought he had overstepped his bounds...He was vilified by all of the Negro leaders who felt he'd overstepped his bounds talking about an unjust war."
Martin Luther King's opposition to the war made him unpopular with Lyndon Johnson but not the rest of America, least of all African-Americans and, unlike Wright, he did not use it to condemn all of American history, from the mistreatment of Native Americans to plotting drug addiction in black communities.
The Rev. Wright's need to "damn" America leads him to a peculiar view of history. He goes back centuries to mine our national past for evil but, when asked about Louis Farrakhan's racist and anti-Semitic speech, dismisses it with "That was twenty years ago" and praises him for getting African-Americans off drugs and giving them self-respect.
Perhaps most troubling of all is his smiling intimation that Barack Obama is only distancing himself from his views for political expedience: "(W)hat happened in Philadelphia where he had to respond to the sound bites, he responded as a politician. But he did not disown me because I'm a pastor."
Friday, April 25, 2008
Obama's Preening Pastor
What emerges from watching the endless YouTubing of Jeremiah Wright is not the picture of a religious or political fanatic but a world-class attention-seeker. In those operatic video clips, there is a dashiki-dressed performer playing to the crowd, a soulmate, not of Louis Farrakhan, but of Bill Maher, whose imprudent comments on 9/11 cost him his network gig.
Now Obama's pastor is back on stage, coming out of his recent retirement, with Bill Moyers on PBS tonight and at the National Press Club in Washington next Monday, flamboyantly defending himself to the possible political detriment of his former congregant:
"I think they wanted to communicate that I am unpatriotic, that I am un-American, that I am filled with hate speech, that I have a cult at Trinity United Church of Christ. And by the way, guess who goes to his church, hint, hint, hint?"
If Hillary Clinton's campaign were paying him, the Rev. Wright couldn't being doing more for them than to keep Obama's embarrassment front and center in the days leading up to the final critical primaries.
But we may be underestimating him. By continuing to call attention to himself, Wright may be deviously trying to show that Obama is not under the Svengali-like influence of a dangerous man, just bedeviled by the antics of a showoff.
If so, that would be too subtle for most voters. All that may register with them is Obama's unfortunate choice in a spiritual adviser.
Now Obama's pastor is back on stage, coming out of his recent retirement, with Bill Moyers on PBS tonight and at the National Press Club in Washington next Monday, flamboyantly defending himself to the possible political detriment of his former congregant:
"I think they wanted to communicate that I am unpatriotic, that I am un-American, that I am filled with hate speech, that I have a cult at Trinity United Church of Christ. And by the way, guess who goes to his church, hint, hint, hint?"
If Hillary Clinton's campaign were paying him, the Rev. Wright couldn't being doing more for them than to keep Obama's embarrassment front and center in the days leading up to the final critical primaries.
But we may be underestimating him. By continuing to call attention to himself, Wright may be deviously trying to show that Obama is not under the Svengali-like influence of a dangerous man, just bedeviled by the antics of a showoff.
If so, that would be too subtle for most voters. All that may register with them is Obama's unfortunate choice in a spiritual adviser.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
A Friend in the White House
On The Nation's web site, Bill Moyers talks about his father who never made over $100 a week in his life and voted for Franklin Roosevelt in four elections "because the President's my friend."
As a Depression child a decade older than Moyers, I can top that--my father never made more than $55 and worked up to 60 hours a week for it.
Our paths, Moyers' and mine, crossed in the 1960s and 1970s when he worked in Lyndon Johnson's White House and afterward as a commentator for CBS and NBC before finding a home in public television. As the voice of Americans who work hard for what they get, he has always been his father's son.
"My father got it," Moyers says "when he heard his friend in the White House talk about how 'a small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor--other people's lives.' My father knew FDR was talking for him when he said life was no longer free, liberty no longer real, men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness--against economic tyranny."
Contrast this with Moyers' assessment of Karl Rove who "modeled the Bush presidency on that of William McKinley, who was in the White House from 1897 to 1901, and modeled himself on Mark Hanna, the man who virtually manufactured McKinley. Hanna had one consummate passion--to serve corporate and imperial power...that businessmen should run the government and run it for personal profit."
Whoever takes over the White House next will be somebody's friend. The questions won't be as simple as they were in the last century or the one before that, but voters might want to give a thought to Moyers' father and Rove's role model before they make their choice.
As a Depression child a decade older than Moyers, I can top that--my father never made more than $55 and worked up to 60 hours a week for it.
Our paths, Moyers' and mine, crossed in the 1960s and 1970s when he worked in Lyndon Johnson's White House and afterward as a commentator for CBS and NBC before finding a home in public television. As the voice of Americans who work hard for what they get, he has always been his father's son.
"My father got it," Moyers says "when he heard his friend in the White House talk about how 'a small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor--other people's lives.' My father knew FDR was talking for him when he said life was no longer free, liberty no longer real, men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness--against economic tyranny."
Contrast this with Moyers' assessment of Karl Rove who "modeled the Bush presidency on that of William McKinley, who was in the White House from 1897 to 1901, and modeled himself on Mark Hanna, the man who virtually manufactured McKinley. Hanna had one consummate passion--to serve corporate and imperial power...that businessmen should run the government and run it for personal profit."
Whoever takes over the White House next will be somebody's friend. The questions won't be as simple as they were in the last century or the one before that, but voters might want to give a thought to Moyers' father and Rove's role model before they make their choice.
Monday, November 05, 2007
Media Sellouts
From right and left, critics accuse the nation's media of selling out the American people but, while the debate rages, the real selling is not by the media but of them.
On PBS last night, Bill Moyers highlighted the latest attempt to consolidate television, radio, newspapers and magazines even further into the hands of half a dozen conglomerates, Rupert Murdoch's among them.
This time the effort is being rushed along by FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin, who as a 33-year-old lawyer worked on the Bush legal team for the 2000 Florida vote recount and, with no media background, was appointed to the commission less than six months later.
In 2003, an attempt to concentrate media ownership was beaten back after a public outcry by interest groups ranging from the National Organization for Women and Common Cause to the National Rifle Association and the pro-life Family Research Council.
Now, in the waning days of Bush's Administration, his 3-2 majority on the FCC is trying to rush through similar relaxing of cross-ownership rules by next month, but again the public and Congress are trying to head them off at the pass.
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" was a slogan in the mid-nineteenth century when Americans were trying to abolish slavery. It's still applies now when a radical White House seems determined to enslave our minds.
On PBS last night, Bill Moyers highlighted the latest attempt to consolidate television, radio, newspapers and magazines even further into the hands of half a dozen conglomerates, Rupert Murdoch's among them.
This time the effort is being rushed along by FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin, who as a 33-year-old lawyer worked on the Bush legal team for the 2000 Florida vote recount and, with no media background, was appointed to the commission less than six months later.
In 2003, an attempt to concentrate media ownership was beaten back after a public outcry by interest groups ranging from the National Organization for Women and Common Cause to the National Rifle Association and the pro-life Family Research Council.
Now, in the waning days of Bush's Administration, his 3-2 majority on the FCC is trying to rush through similar relaxing of cross-ownership rules by next month, but again the public and Congress are trying to head them off at the pass.
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" was a slogan in the mid-nineteenth century when Americans were trying to abolish slavery. It's still applies now when a radical White House seems determined to enslave our minds.
Monday, June 25, 2007
Journalism 101: Crossing the Line
There was a Hall-of-Mirrors quality to watching reporter Ken Silverstein interviewed by Bill Moyers Sunday about his article in Harper’s describing the sting operation he conducted to get two Washington lobbying firms to pitch for the non-existent account of a repressive government.
The mirrors multiplied into an Orson Welles “Lady in Shanghai” shootout after Howard Kurtz in his Washington Post media column observed that “no matter how good the story, lying to get it raises as many questions about journalists as their subjects.”
So far, so civilized. But Silverstein took the debate into Valerie Plame territory today on the Harper’s blog by quoting an anonymous comment about Kurtz’s column, which also discussed journalists’ political contributions, on the Post web site:
“While Kurtz is wringing his hands about reporters’ campaign contributions, it might be nice of him to disclose who his wife is and what she does for a living. Google ‘Sheri Annis‘ for insight into the non-partisan Kurtz household. Maybe Howie should rename his TV show ‘Resourceable Liars.’”
Googling Ms. Annis reveals that she is “a political commentator and media consultant” who was once “the spokeswoman for Arnold Schwarzenegger” and that she writes for magazines and newspapers. Reading a few turned up nothing sinister. In fact, they were quite well-written.
In interviewing him, Moyers observed that Silverstein’s imposture sounded “like something out of Borat.”
Silverstein replied, “We toyed with the Borat type approach. But...we wanted to make a political point, which was that the rules that apply to these firms are too weak...And so we thought we better do it straight as opposed to doing it as a comedy routine.”
Not a great decision. It’s no terrific public service to show that lobbyists are eager to lie for anybody who pays them. But that’s a matter of opinion.
What isn’t is that Silverstein owes Howard Kurtz and his wife an apology for trying to Scooter Libby them.
The mirrors multiplied into an Orson Welles “Lady in Shanghai” shootout after Howard Kurtz in his Washington Post media column observed that “no matter how good the story, lying to get it raises as many questions about journalists as their subjects.”
So far, so civilized. But Silverstein took the debate into Valerie Plame territory today on the Harper’s blog by quoting an anonymous comment about Kurtz’s column, which also discussed journalists’ political contributions, on the Post web site:
“While Kurtz is wringing his hands about reporters’ campaign contributions, it might be nice of him to disclose who his wife is and what she does for a living. Google ‘Sheri Annis‘ for insight into the non-partisan Kurtz household. Maybe Howie should rename his TV show ‘Resourceable Liars.’”
Googling Ms. Annis reveals that she is “a political commentator and media consultant” who was once “the spokeswoman for Arnold Schwarzenegger” and that she writes for magazines and newspapers. Reading a few turned up nothing sinister. In fact, they were quite well-written.
In interviewing him, Moyers observed that Silverstein’s imposture sounded “like something out of Borat.”
Silverstein replied, “We toyed with the Borat type approach. But...we wanted to make a political point, which was that the rules that apply to these firms are too weak...And so we thought we better do it straight as opposed to doing it as a comedy routine.”
Not a great decision. It’s no terrific public service to show that lobbyists are eager to lie for anybody who pays them. But that’s a matter of opinion.
What isn’t is that Silverstein owes Howard Kurtz and his wife an apology for trying to Scooter Libby them.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Michael Moore, Cheap-Shot Messiah
It must be wonderful to be the smartest guy in a world of morons, the only honest person left on earth, the last great truth-teller in the universe.
On Good Morning America yesterday, Michael Moore took time out from promoting The Word on health care in America, to lecture Chris Cuomo on the failure of “the people in this building” and the rest of the media to prevent the war in Iraq. To his credit, Cuomo was having none of it.
Deconstructing Michael Moore is difficult because his heart is usually in the right place, but his judgment and journalistic ethics are off on some other planet. Documentaries are journalism, not audio-visual polemics, and he has erased the line between them.
Jon Stewart, no defender of MSM, was on point as usual when he told Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala on “Crossfire” that they were partisan hacks: “You should be doing debate, which would be great, but you’re doing theater.”
Moore is purporting to enlighten, but despite his pretensions, he is doing theater. He may give audiences vicarious satisfaction in dramatizing the idiocies of our health care system, but he isn't telling them anything new and he certainly isn't making any positive contribution to the debate over improving it. He is, however, making money and getting a lot of attention for himself.
Analyzing the media’s share of the blame for the war in Iraq is important, as Bill Moyers showed in “Buying the War,” but taking smug cheap shots is something else.
When Moore blithely blamed his hosts for the death of 3500 American soldiers and Cuomo challenged him to be careful about such sweeping assertions, Moore’s answer was “I don’t have to be careful.”
That says it all. Moore has made his reputation and millions of dollars by aspiring to be the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind. But his visions have been, to put it kindly, cockeyed.
On Good Morning America yesterday, Michael Moore took time out from promoting The Word on health care in America, to lecture Chris Cuomo on the failure of “the people in this building” and the rest of the media to prevent the war in Iraq. To his credit, Cuomo was having none of it.
Deconstructing Michael Moore is difficult because his heart is usually in the right place, but his judgment and journalistic ethics are off on some other planet. Documentaries are journalism, not audio-visual polemics, and he has erased the line between them.
Jon Stewart, no defender of MSM, was on point as usual when he told Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala on “Crossfire” that they were partisan hacks: “You should be doing debate, which would be great, but you’re doing theater.”
Moore is purporting to enlighten, but despite his pretensions, he is doing theater. He may give audiences vicarious satisfaction in dramatizing the idiocies of our health care system, but he isn't telling them anything new and he certainly isn't making any positive contribution to the debate over improving it. He is, however, making money and getting a lot of attention for himself.
Analyzing the media’s share of the blame for the war in Iraq is important, as Bill Moyers showed in “Buying the War,” but taking smug cheap shots is something else.
When Moore blithely blamed his hosts for the death of 3500 American soldiers and Cuomo challenged him to be careful about such sweeping assertions, Moore’s answer was “I don’t have to be careful.”
That says it all. Moore has made his reputation and millions of dollars by aspiring to be the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind. But his visions have been, to put it kindly, cockeyed.
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