Category: Media Beat column
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The Afghanistan Gap: Press vs. Public
This month, a lot of media stories have compared President Johnson’s war in Vietnam and President Obama’s war in Afghanistan. The comparisons are often valid, but a key parallel rarely gets mentioned — the media’s insistent support for the war even after most of the public has turned against it. This omission relies on the…
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A Progressive Challenge to Jane Harman
There are many reasons progressives will mobilize behind the campaign of Marcy Winograd, who announced on Monday that she’ll challenge incumbent Congresswoman Jane Harman in the 2010 Democratic primary. Some will speak of Harman’s pro-war record. Some will recall her support for warrantless wiretapping, followed by her irony-free indignation when it turned out that NSA…
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We Need a Green New Deal
In the Arctic, sea ice is melting. In the United States, houses are foreclosing. And in Washington, the Senate is becoming a real-life Bermuda Triangle for progressive agendas. Proposals for major limits on carbon emissions aren’t getting far in the Senate, where the corporate war on the environment has an abundance of powerful allies… Read…
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Obama: Beyond Savior or Trickster
As President Obama enters his fourth month in office, two tendencies among progressive-minded Americans seem most hazardous to the political health of the country. The gist of one approach is that Obama can’t do anything seriously wrong; the other is that he can’t do anything seriously right. Among the tendencies, the first is more widespread…
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Getting a Death Grip on Memory
A headline in The New York Times announced a few days ago: “Brain Researchers Open Door to Editing Memory.” This news ran above the fold on the front page. “Suppose scientists could erase certain memories by tinkering with a single substance in the brain,” the article began… Read the full column.