Category: Media Beat column

Norman Solomon had an additional role in Denver last week — he was an elected Obama delegate to the Democratic National Convention. In a blog for CommonDreams, he shared his observations. Beyond the Conventions With varying degrees of confidence or even complacency, many people have assumed that the jig is almost up for the horrendous…

By now, across the progressive spectrum, some familiar storylines tell us the meaning of the Obama campaign. In a groove, each narrative digs its truths. But whether those particular truths are the most important at this historical moment is another story. We can set aside the plotline that touts Obama as a visionary pragmatist who…

A reasonably evenhanded biography of Barack Obama, published last year, describes him as “an exceptionally gifted politician who, throughout his life, has been able to make people of wildly divergent vantage points see in him exactly what they want to see.” The biographer, David Mendell, reports that “the higher he soared, the more this politician…

Speaking in a time of war, Martin Luther King Jr. said: “Somehow this madness must cease.” Forty-one years later, young soldiers are returning to the United States from terrifying zones of carnage. The old claims of a justified war have melted away. So have the promises of a humane society back home. Statistics about the…

With 223 days left in his presidency, George W. Bush laid more flagstones along a path to war on Iran. There was the usual declaration that “all options are on the table” — and, just as ominously, much talk of diplomacy. Three times on Wednesday, the Associated Press reports, Bush “called a diplomatic solution ‘my…