Early in the coldest season, optimists think of the day after solstice. It’s predictable: the hemisphere will start tilting toward more light and warmth. But in the politics of human societies, there’s no reliable way to tell how long a bone-rattling chill will last — or how far it might go. A government’s harsher policies could provoke kinetic revulsion and progressive resurgence. Or the dominant political atmosphere might have an overall effect of strengthening and perpetuating itself.

By now, the 2004 electorate has been spliced and diced to the culinary standard of American punditry. Countless journalists have joined with other analysts to explain what it all really means. But the news media still don’t tell us much about underlying aspects of mood that can’t be broken out with poll numbers. Wooden questions yield data about stiff answers. Fact-based reporters may not offer much more human truth than a fact-based phone book…

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Top officials in Washington are now promoting jitters about Iran’s nuclear activities, while media outlets amplify the message. A confrontation with Tehran is on the second-term Bush agenda. So, we’re encouraged to obliquely think about the unthinkable.

But no one can get very far trying to comprehend the enormity of nuclear weapons. They’ve shadowed human consciousness for six decades. From the outset, deception has been key…

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Killing Our Own: The Disaster of America’s Experience With Atomic Radiation (Delacorte Press, 1982), a book by Harvey Wasserman and Norman Solomon, is online in html and as a PDF (scroll to the bottom of the page).

When misleading buzzwords become part of the media landscape, they slant news coverage and skew public perceptions. That’s the story with the phrase “Iraqi forces” — now in routine use by U.S. media outlets, including the country’s most influential newspapers.

The New York Times and the Washington Post have been leading the way in news stories that apply the indigenous “Iraqi forces” label to Iraqi fighters who are pro-U.S.-occupation … but not to Iraqi fighters who are anti-U.S.-occupation…

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Right-wing trumpets are making a horrific racket across a ravaged political landscape. For now, hope is barely audible. Progressives seem like fledglings without feathers, weakly tapping from inside thick shells. Four more years sound like hell.

Words from Bertolt Brecht resonate: “… A smooth forehead betokens / A hard heart. He who laughs / Has not yet heard / The terrible tidings.”

Grief, fear, despair, rage — only the emotionally deadened would have none of it. Bush’s victory is a huge defeat for humanity. The consequences will be extremely grim.

Ideological fanatics have extended their control over the Executive Branch while increasing their domination of Congress. The “leaders” who lied the country into war are plunging ahead with escalating carnage in Iraq. Soon they’ll take action to make the Supreme Court more authoritarian — threatening abortion rights, freedom of speech, basic legal protections for defendants and other civil liberties. A theocratic stench is in the air…

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The day before the election, I visited Albuquerque and Las Vegas. Up close, I saw hundreds of people involved in vigorous get-out-the-vote efforts. Most were young; they seemed very idealistic. These Americans had an opportunity to make a difference, and — brought together by labor unions and such groups as the MoveOn PAC — they took it.

Watching the election returns scarcely 24 hours later, I kept an eye on the results from New Mexico and Nevada. The vote tallies were close in both states because of such activism; otherwise, the Bush-Cheney ticket would have won easily.

On Wednesday, as the pundits kept chattering on television, I thought about how far removed the TV studios and newsrooms tend to be from the active idealism of the grassroots. All over this country, literally millions of people cherish the belief that what they choose to do can make a difference. A big difference….

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At the moment, history seems to be holding its breath. The reporters, pundits and pollsters all agree: The presidential race is a dead heat.

Despite the magnitude of what’s at stake, the vast majority of daily reporting has a fragmented quality. Yet the sum is immensely greater than the parts.

Journalism is potentially a terrific clarifying force. During the days and weeks ahead, we’ll see whether the news media are up to the challenge. The signs are not encouraging. So far this election year, under the guise of being evenhanded, the standard news reports just give us snippets of information, misleading assertions, speculation, claims and counterclaims.

The battle between George W. Bush and John Kerry is much more than a struggle for power. It puts to the test our capacity for democracy. Voters are supposed to choose the president. But this essential right is under dire threat. That’s the big story — the GOP elephant in the national living room…

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“There He Is, Mr. America…”

Less than two weeks before Election Day 2004, the ABC television network cancelled Miss America. Fifty years after it premiered on national TV, the famous “beauty pageant” has fallen on hard times. Last month, the annual show drew just 9.8 million viewers, the smallest audience ever.

“The pageant has changed, but not for the better,” commented an editorial in a New Jersey newspaper, the Asbury Park Press. “Eliminating most of the talent portion of the competition from this year’s broadcast was a mistake. Trotting the contestants out in string bikinis rather than one-piece suits probably did more to alienate traditional viewers than attract new ones.”

Despite this year’s modernizing make-over, the Miss America pageant is a throwback to the 1950s, the decade that launched it onto the nation’s TV screens — an era when sexism was inseparable from supposed Americanism. Women were reduced to competitors in bathing suits who could sing and flash their shiny white teeth while they briefly made conversation. Perhaps subtly but pervasively, the spectacle was an exercise in humiliation.

These days, we shouldn’t burn a lot of calories patting ourselves on the back. In 2004, television routinely features a steady flow of rigid gender roles — as a close look at an array of commercials attests — and the use of women’s bodies to sell products is standard media operating procedure…

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