31
Oct
Halloween Is Here
TRICK OR TREAT?
REMAKING IRAQ’S MEDIA
TIMES “UNDERWHELMED” BY TV
Trick or Treat? For a country that has been tricked, Halloween represents a respite. It’s the day that everyone can be someone else, dress as their fantasy, mock their pretensions and make fun of their enemies. Neighbors welcome children, whom they tend to ignore the rest of the year; children approach strangers for goodies. And we are given collective permission to have fun, even if in a ritual way. CNN is giving parents tips on how to protect their kids; Fox is running graphics of a graveyard, with tombstones for CNN and MSNBC.
THE THREAT TO HALLOWEEN
Our friends at Alternet tell us why this day is unlike others.
…. When did something as magical, mysterious, and wonderful as Halloween become about going to a party? Partying and trick-or-treating both involve getting dressed up and following specific rules of social behavior, but the similarities end there. Trick-or-treating is about resourceful costuming, community, the good kind of being scared, neighborliness, silliness, the unexpected warmth of strangers, and finally getting to peek into the house of that strange old lady on the corner. Parties are often about looking good and making small talk. If people go in costume, it’s usually an excuse to wear something revealing, not something deliberately gruesome or transforming.
Maybe I sound curmudgeonly, but I don’t want anyone to take away my second favorite holiday. It was bad enough during the whole razors-in-the-apples scare when we had to forego homemade cookies, bags of popcorn, and anything that wasn’t in its original wrapper. Bad enough that we had to go out earlier and earlier in the evening, to the point that people were walking around as witches and vampires in the bright afternoon sun. Bad enough that people started buying their costumes at Kmart, based on television shows you had to have cable to watch. Bad enough that people started trick-or-treating at stores instead of houses because there was better loot. But this � to get rid of trick-or-treating all together, to replace it with a decorous one-block parade for the younger set and a little wine and crackers for adults � this has gone too far.
I think it is fair to say that a traditional Halloween symbolizes all that used to [be] fun about this country before consumerism became our one and only god and every stranger became a potential terrorist.(www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17076)
PARTY HARDY?
Maybe so, but in New York, it’s also about sexual politics. It’s a day for gender-bending — for men to become women and women men and for the newly named “metrosexuals” to come out of their closets. And yes, it’s escapist — but, hey, who doesn’t crave some escape from the assault of bad news that has enveloped us since that day of infamy, November 7, 2000, just to name one.
Moving on, the big news is economic, even as the networks have finally discovered the California fire story and flocked to it like moths. The Bush Administration is taking credit for the reported uptick in the economy.
Are happy days here again? Paul Krugman is not so sure as he continues to teach his economics course on the New York Times op-ed page.
KRUGMAN ON BUSHNOMICS
My purpose is not to denigrate the impressive estimated 7.2 percent growth rate for the third quarter of 2003. It is, rather, to stress the obvious: we’ve had our hopes dashed in the past, and it remains to be seen whether this is just another one-hit wonder.
….
This can’t go on — in the long run, consumer spending can’t outpace the growth in consumer income. Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley has suggested, plausibly, that much of last quarter’s consumer splurge was “borrowed” from the future: consumers took advantage of low-interest financing, cash from home refinancing and tax rebate checks to accelerate purchases they would otherwise have made later. If he’s right, we’ll see below-normal purchases and slower growth in the months ahead.The big question, of course, is jobs. Despite all that growth in the third quarter, the number of jobs actually fell. And new claims for unemployment insurance, a leading indicator for the job market, still show no sign of a hiring boom….
And unless we start to see serious job growth — by which I mean increases in payroll employment of more than 200,000 a month — consumer spending will eventually slide, and bring growth down with it.
….
To put it more bluntly: it would be quite a trick to run the biggest budget deficit in the history of the planet and still end a presidential term with fewer jobs than when you started. And despite yesterday’s good news, that’s a trick President Bush still seems likely to pull off.http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/31/opinion/31KRUG.html
BAKER ON KRUGMAN
It is amazing that Krugman’s learned and outspoken commentary is so prominent in a media system that seems increasingly allergic to his type of analysis. A long-time but former writer on the same op-ed page, the humorist Russell Baker, has some insights into Krugman’s work in what poses as a review of Krugman’s new book:
…. In The Great Unraveling he commits the ultimate rudeness: Bush, he says, is surreptitiously leading a radical right-wing political movement against American government as it has developed in the past century. The words “radical” and “right-wing” are bad words in the political lexicon of mainstream American journalism. Normally they are simply not used to describe presidents, except by the kind of people who write for funky little out-of-the-mainstream journals.
As a Times columnist, Krugman is as mainstream as it gets. His readiness to apply disapproved words to the President helps to explain why his column quickly became catnip to so many who had voted for Al Gore and were still angry about the bizarre manner of Bush’s elevation. For them, to have the Bush presidency so relentlessly and expertly savaged was a consolation of sorts.
THE QUESTION OF THE DAY AND EVERYDAY
Since my focus is on media, I was struck by a question Krugman raises in the New York Review of Books. In his review of two books blasting Bush, he asks,
�[W]hy is the public so easily manipulated? One answer is the supineness of much of the press, radio and television�. But that just pushes the question back a step. What is it about today’s right that lets it bully the press so easily, that creates such an effective machine of propaganda, intimidation, and base mobilization?
SHARON UNDER WARNING
The Mail and Guardian reports, “Israel’s army chief has exposed deep divisions between the military and Ariel Sharon by branding the government’s hardline treatment of Palestinian civilians counter-productive and saying that the policy intensifies hatred and strengthens the ‘terror organisations.’”
(www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?a=13&o=32356)
THOSE ATTACKS IN IRAQ
The media and the government can’t seem to make up their minds about who is behind the continuing attacks in Iraq, an average of 30 incidents daily. Are the Baathists loyal to Saddam or Al Qaeda? There seems to be “evidence” for both views. More important is the effect it is having. In the New Zealand News, the outspoken Robert Fisk assesses the impact so far of the Ramadan offensive:
It told Iraqis that the Americans cannot control Iraq; more importantly, it told Americans that they cannot control Iraq.
Even more important, it told Iraqis they shouldn’t work for the Americans. Who wants to be an Iraqi policeman this morning?
It also acknowledged America’s new rules of combat: kill the enemy leaders.
The United States killed Saddam’s two sons (and grandson).
It has boasted of killing al Qaeda members in Afghanistan and Yemen, just as Israel kills Palestinians in Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
So was it by chance that the Black Hawk helicopter shot down in Iraq was hit over Tikrit just after Paul Wolfowitz had passed through town?
And the assault on the al-Rashid Hotel - a far more efficient version of the rocket attack more than six weeks ago - almost killed Wolfowitz. He was “a room away” from one of the missile explosions.
The architect of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq was almost assassinated by America’s enemies. Did they know where he was sleeping in the hotel? Given the number of Iraqi staff in the al-Rashid, probably.
JOHN MCAIN’S VIETNAM NIGHTMARE
Newsweek is quoting Senator John McCain on the Vietnam parallel. I have never been fond of McCain, who was not just a POW victim in Vietnam but a man who bombed the city of Hanoi. Howard Fineman reports,
In a NEWSWEEK interview, McCain for the first time compared the situation in Iraq to Vietnam, where he survived six years of wartime imprisonment, and began openly distancing himself from Bush’s war strategy. McCain, aides say, was rankled by what he saw as a useless, Panglossian classified briefing, especially after reading Donald Rumsfeld’s now infamous internal memo. In it, the secretary of Defense said that Iraq would be a “long slog,” and admitted the government had no “metric” for knowing if it was making net progress in ridding the world of terrorists.
“This is the first time that I have seen a parallel to Vietnam,” McCain declared, “in terms of information that the administration is putting out versus the actual situation on the ground. I’m not saying the situation in Iraq now is as bad as Vietnam. But we have a problem in the Sunni Triangle and we should face up to it and tell the American people
about it.”
EVERYONE WANTS TO BE ON TV
Walter Pincus in the Washington Post reports on a new media personality in Iraq. It seems that Paul Bremer now has his own show:
The speeches, dubbed in Arabic, are much like President Bush’s weekly Saturday radio address, according to Gary Thatcher, the former CBS producer who is head of strategic communications for the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) in Iraq. “We are here to set an example of journalism in the Western tradition,” he said.
To many Iraqis, though, Bremer’s prime-time addresses are more reminiscent of the regular television appearances of former president Saddam Hussein….
(www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31353-2003Oct28.html)
And who’s behind this new media order there? Is it a trick or a treat?
The indispensable Center for Public Integrity has been burrowing around in the minutia of who is making money in Iraq. One company is San Diego-based Science Applications International Corp (SAIC), which had employed the weapons inspector David Kay.
The Center
One contract calls for SAIC to staff, train and equip a team to rebuild Iraq’s mass media system. The contract says the team “shall quickly establish a free and independent indigenous media network consisting of radio, television, and print media components.” The contract says the team “of approximately 40 people will include the SAIC program manager, Arabic linguists, public information specialists, Iraqi expatriate journalists, logisticians and operations personnel.” Specifically, the contract calls for SAIC to establish three major media bureaus in Baghdad, Basra and Arbil, including transmitters and satellite facilities. The bureaus “will ultimately have their own broadcast studios for TV and radio, run their own team of locally hired reporters, and contribute to the production of the national newspaper” to be published six days a week, with a circulation of approximately 300,000. The contract also calls for SAIC to provide on-the-job training for “indigenous journalists” and to “make maximum use of local labor to the extent feasible.” The contract mentions a “senior executive management consultant” to be paid $273 per hour, as well as several “executive management consultants” to be paid $200+ per hour.
http://www.publicintegrity.org/wow/report.aspx?aid=71
NOT INSPIRED
On our TV system back at home, the New York Times has a word for what is in store for us this fall — and that word is “UNDERWHELMING.” Writes media writer Bill Carter:
Surveying the wreckage from the first weeks of the season one senior network executive said …: “most of the new shows everybody has put on have by and large stunk.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/31/business/media/31adco.html?th
WHITHER THE 60-MINUTE MAN?
Among those who seem to be underwhelmed with his own network is Don Hewitt, the cranky but often brilliant producer of
Joe Hagan reports in the New York Observer:
�on Friday, Oct. 24, producers at 60 Minutes began mumbling about a letter the TV legend had allegedly typed up — and some said circulated — in which Mr. Hewitt criticized CBS News as a broken organization littered with failing news programs and proposed that CBS News reconsider his forced retirement in June 2004.
You can understand Hewitt’s view — if Rupert Murdoch doesn’t have to retire, why does he? At issue is how long
“�. in the vast gloppy landscape of TV, 60 Minutes has held onto its Rooster Cogburn-ish true grit, gristle and stuff. Its integrity and hormonal, jostling personality — pure extensions of Mr. Hewitt’s persona — have not diminished. And when Mr. Hewitt begins his executive departure next summer — and with him, perhaps one or all of the downshifting Big Three correspondents, Ed Bradley, Mike Wallace and Morley Safer — his absence will bring to bear an unavoidable question: Can 60 Minutes, a fundamental function and extension of Don Hewitt’s drive, remain the rough-and-tumble, sentimental, hard-nosed operation it has been?
HAITI RADIO UNDER ATTACK
The European Journalism Centre (EJC) reports,
A shooting attack on the Radio Cara�bes and threats have forced the independent provincial Haitian radio station off air. According to press rights group Reporters without Borders gunmen used automatic weapons to fire outside the Radio’s building in Port-au-Prince, causing considerable damage to its facade and to the car of the station’s sports reporter, Harold Domond. No one was hurt. � Journalists working for independent news media in Haiti are often threatened or physically attacked the group reported, and since 2000, two have been killed: Jean Dominique, the director of Radio Ha�ti Inter (on 3 April 2000) and Brignol Lindor of Radio Echo 2000 (on
3 December 2001).
YOUR LETTERS
David Cameron Staples sends along some more on the fallout in Australia after two members of Parliament dared heckle “He Who Would Save Them from Evil.” ABC Australia reports:
Prime Minister John Howard says he warned the United States President that he expected a “stunt” from the Greens during his visit last week.
There has been mixed reaction to Greens senators, Bob Brown and Kerry Nettle’s interjection during President George W Bush’s speech to Federal Parliament.
Mr Howard says he spoke to President Bush during the APEC meeting in Bangkok and informed him the Greens could be planning something.
He has told Southern Cross Radio President Bush was unfazed: “I think it was boorish behaviour and most Australians take that view,” he said.
It was opportunistic, it was all of those things but it was always going to happen
Adds Staples: “‘Mixed reaction’ is right, some people have said ‘good on them’ for standing up to entrenched power. Others (I kid you not) have compared Senators Brown and Nettle with Nazi’s for trying to ’shout down’ opposing voices.”
I usually don’t publish letters to other publications, but I have met and been impressed with the author Kristin Breitwiser — a “9/11 family member” who has led the fight for more government disclosure. It is in today’s Times.
Re “Bush Weighing Decision on Release of Classified Documents to Sept. 11 Panel” (news article, Oct. 28):
As a family member who fought very hard for the creation of the 9/11 independent commission, I find it upsetting to read the White House spokeswoman’s response to press inquiries that the White House believes that it is fully cooperating with the commission.
To me, it sounds awfully reminiscent of Condoleezza Rice’s similar and carefully worded statement made last year that “I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile.”
There is a big difference between thinking or believing and actually knowing, which is why this commission must get full, unfettered access to all of the summer 2001 Presidential Daily Briefings, the working notes behind those briefings and a list of all who got those briefings.
MORE ON JFK
Dan Cassidy reports that the upcoming ABC report purporting to solve the JFK assassination will not be the last word:
In 1993, thirty years from the shooting, Bob Callahan wrote a book called Who Shot JFK: A Guide to the Major Conspiracy Theories (Fireside/ Simon & Schuster: New York), wherein he examined the various theories about the shooting, as they have unfolded over the years. Certain critics — Anthony Summers, Entertainment Weekly Magazine — have hailed Callahan’s book as the most useful introduction to this murder case ever published.
Now, ten years later, on November 22, 2003, in Room 11A, 766 Valencia, at the New College of California in San Francisco, Bob Callahan will be on hand to discuss some of the more important revelations which have emerged, largely from previously secret or classified government files, over the past decade. Some of these revelations are as shocking as anything we have already learned, and should prove to be disturbing news to all who attend this talk. One thing alone seems profoundly true: this case is not closed, in spite of repeated assurances from Random House and the New York Times.
TRICK OR TREAT?
Finally, on this Halloween as we celebrate our children and wish them well, this statistic shows what a trick is embedded in the electronic treats they are daily treated to:
Even the very youngest children in America are growing up immersed in media, spending hours a day watching TV and videos, using computers and playing video games. . . . Children 6 and under spend an average of two hours a day using screen media (1:58), about the same amount of time they spend playing outside (2:00) and well over the amount of time they spend reading or being read to (39 minutes). ‘It’s not just teen-agers who are wired up and tuned in, it’s babies in diapers as well.’”
— Kaiser Family Foundation study, 10.28.03
My long-awaited treat arrived last night — an actual copy of the hardcover of my book Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception from Prometheus Books. We have an online version up on Mediachannel thanks to Tony Sutton at ColdType.net, but now the book is here. I am suffering from PAS (”proud author’s syndrome”) this morning, but will the book get out there when so many bigger names are satisfying the growing demand for criticism? I have already been told that I made a mistake by not putting the word “LIES” in the title. Trick or Treat? Happy Halloween!
Share your comments on the book if you have read it or the news if you can
