(Display Name not set)June 2004 Archives

Why does The Guardian in London have so much better daily coverage of books and authors than any American newspaper, bar none?

Have a look at The spice of life (about J. P.Donleavy, who put the ginger in "The Ginger Man") and Age of unreason (an extensive interview with J.G. Ballard, who may be the sanest man on the planet in his perception of terrorism, globalization, government and the media, and the Internet).

American magazines aren't a total loss, though. Score one for The Atlantic. If you haven't read Odd Couple, David Thomson on Craig Seligman's new book, "Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me," you might wanna. It's top of the line.

By the way: Everything I said earlier in FAT CATS about the astronomical ticket prices for "The Concert for John Kerry" is still true. The concert at Radio City Music Hall, postponed from June 10 because of the death of Saint Ronald, is scheduled for July 8. But prices remain the same. Cheapest seat in the house: $250, which sucks. No wonder some are still available.

Thank you for the thought: "They keep talking about drafting a Constitution for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it's worked for over 200 years, and heck, we're not using it any more."

Thank you for the references or, as we like to call them, reefers. This one: 24 mournful notes. ("The playing of taps to honor America's fallen soldiers is a familiar sound, but at thousands of military funerals these days, not all is as it seems.") And this one: "Please don't kill me!" ("With 152 executions under his belt as governor of Texas, should we really be surprised to learn that ... our president, then governor, mocked a woman after he condemned her to death? Puckering his lips, feminizing his eyes, and letting out in a desperate squeak, 'Please don't kill me!'")

We're still not back, but when temptation calls we can't resist.

This has been making the rounds on the Web for a long time. But it's a parting thought for our red-white-and-blue summer:

A car company can move its factories to Mexico and claim it's a free market.

A toy company can outsource to a Chinese subcontractor and claim it's a free market.

A major bank can incorporate in Bermuda to avoid taxes and claim it's a free market.

We can buy HP Printers made in Mexico. We can buy shirts made in Bangladesh.

We can purchase almost anything we want from many different countries.

BUT heaven help the elderly who dare to buy their prescription drugs from a Canadian (or Mexican) pharmacy. That's called un-American.

Gone fishing.

Went to the memorial service for Rosemary Breslin this afternoon. She was a terrific gal. Used to work with her at the Daily News. She died the other day at age 47 of a mysterious blood disease so rare that it still has no name. She called it "the headache that wouldn't go away." Something like that. And she wrote a lovely memoir, "Not Exactly What I Had in Mind." Here's her obit.

The service was at St. Francis of Assisi, just south of Manhattan's Herald Square. Church interior not what I expected. Not gloomy or dim or depressing at all. Bright in fact. Painted in shades of cream and ivory and light tan. Lighted chandeliers. Very attractive. The Franciscans must have a great interior decorator.

In tile of the arch above the alter: "QUEEN OF THE ORDER OF FRIARS MINOR PRAY FOR US." Had no idea what the "friars minor" refers to.

Dunno how many people were there. At a minimum 800, maybe 1000. Le tout New York, or at least the cream of the Irish. Every pew was filled. They had to bring out extra chairs and that was still not enough to accomodate the crowd. I walked in, by coincidence, with Pete Hamill and his attractive, hip-looking Japanese wife, the journalist Fukio Aoki. (I think she's his wife.)

A pianist was playing Broadway show tunes and standards on a Steinway grand before the service began. Tunes such as "Some Day Over the Rainbow" and "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and "Someone to Watch Over Me," and plenty more, many from the Gershwin songbook. Sounded like a great big cocktail party disguised in church decorum. Rosie, who designed the service, had a romantic streak -- and a great sense of humor.

I sat next to New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly. I'd left my seat before the service got started. The guy next to me said he'd save it for me, as I had saved his when he got up. Anyway, when I returned to my seat, there was Ray, clearly a friend of the guy who was saving my seat. Ray squeezed over to let me sit back down. It was obvious he'd been delegated to do the saving. Less roomy than before, but more interesting.

A white-robed Franciscan priest read a passage from the Prophet Isaiah, also from Psalm 23. Rosie's four brothers and a sister spoke. Then there was a trumpet solo of another show tune. Her nurse spoke and said Rosie had had 15 years of blood transfusions from strangers, making the point that Rosie had a big BIG b-i-g  B-I-G-G-E-R family, so to speak, than her immediate one, which is v. big.

Rosie's husband Tony Dunne and Tony's aunt, Joan Didion Dunne, spoke. Couldn't hear much of what Joan said. But Tony delivered the afternoon's best punchline. He recalled the advice he got from Rosie's father, Jimmy Breslin, on coping with Rosie's death: "SUFFER!!" Tony also recalled Rosie's advice. She told him, "I gave you 15 years of my life. Don't screw it up."

Then the trumpet player played "Amazing Grace" with piano accompaniment and led the family up the center aisle and out the door, followed by the crowd. There were people in tears. But this was not a funeral service in mourning. Rosemary Breslin wouldn't have allowed that.

Our search for a hideout continues. But we couldn't let this go: As tipped by Arts & Letters Daily, Ann Crittenden's essay "What Do Mothers Want?" asks the question: "Why has the U.S. never had a decent system of child care? One feminist answer, 'dumb men, stupid choices,' is long overdue."

Far be it from us to suggest another, less catchy if more accurate summary. But we feel obliged. Here tiz: "Mothers are struggling valiantly to find a framework or story line that coherently explains the causes of their discontent."  The truth is, we prefer ALD's summary. May we illustrate with a description of "The Next Survivor Series"? It came to us in email, like so:

Six married men
will be dropped
on an island with
one car
and
four kids each,
for six weeks.
Each kid plays two sports
and either takes
music or dance classes.
*****
There is no access to fast food.
*****
Each man must take care of his four kids,
keep his assigned house clean,
correct all homework,
complete science projects, cook, do laundry, etc.
*****
The men only have access to television
when the kids are asleep and
all chores are done.
There is only one TV between them
and there is
NO REMOTE.
*****
The men must shave their legs,
wear makeup daily,
which they must apply themselves,
either while driving or
while making four lunches.
*****
They must attend weekly PTA meetings;
clean up after their sick children at 3:00 a.m.;
make an Indian hut model
with six toothpicks,
a tortilla
and one marker;
and get a 4-year-old to eat a serving of peas.
*****
The kids vote them off the island, based on performance.
*****
The last man wins ...
only if ...
he has enough energy to be intimate
with his spouse at a moment's notice.
*****
If the last man does win, he can play the game
over and over again
for the next 18-25 years ...
eventually earning the right to be called
*****
"Mother."

And yes, we're aware "The Next Survivor Series" has been making its way around the Web for some time in different versions. We just thought it timely and apropos to mention now.

We interrupt our search for a hideout to bring you this: Belated advice from Christopher Hitchens, who has finally got around to acknowledging the obvious about Abu Ghraib:

We may have to start using blunt words like murder and rape to describe what we see. And one linguistic reform is in any case already much overdue. The silly word "abuse" will have to be dropped. No law or treaty forbids "abuse," but many conventions and statutes, including our own and the ones we have urged other nations to sign, do punish torture -- which is what we are talking about here at a bare minimum.

As the children say, "Duh ..." Or as the elderly among us might say, "Hitchens's chickens have come home to roost." Methinks he's looking for a way out of his bonehead prowar stance on Iraq. If not, he oughta.

A couple of people I know are heading to a rainforest in Central America, which  reminds me it's time to head somewhere. I haven't figured where just yet. But my staff of thousands is working on it. In the meantime, there's plenty in the archives to keep you amused or befuddled, impressed or depressed, until our rerun season ends. Back later.

Ray Charles, who died yesterday, was never president of the U.S. of A. No state funeral for him. He was a different kind of president -- "The Genius," as many called him. For me, he was the unforgettable President of Soul.

I still remember a show he did one snowy winter night in 1963 in a dingy old movie palace in downtown Syracuse, N.Y. The audience was sparse. Bitter cold had kept people away. But the great Ray Charles didn't seem to care. He sang his heart out. Turned that hall into the warmest place for miles around.

Nineteen years later, in the spring of 1982, I reviewed a show he did in Chicago at the posh Drury Lane Theater. The place was jammed. "Give me Ray Charles any time, even when he's 52 and going gray," I wrote. The show opened with a driving 17-piece band blasting out a medly of upbeat swing and bop. Tunes like "Road Rat" and "Woody And Boo." There were 13 horns. They hit some gorgeous Miles Davis notes on "Spain" and then left it to the man.

Ray Charles came out in a plaid tuxedo, black patent leather shoes and the black, wrap-around sunglasses he always wore, greeting the crowd with that million-watt, wrap-around smile. Then he was led to a white grand piano, its top off. He began with "Busted" and "Georgia on My Mind," "Be Mine" and "You Don't Know Me." It almost didn't matter what he sang. His direct emotional appeal was that overpowering.

You could hear the blues-shout style of the South, which was the deepest part of him. He knew city bebop as well, and country rhythms. He even put spice into a whitebread tune like "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning." He mixed the foot-stompers with the ballads: "Hit the Road Jack," "I Can't Stop Lovin' You," "Don't Change on Me." He even did a yodel or two.

Ray Charles sang 14 songs. He was gorgeous to watch. He never stopped enjoying himself. His feet never stopped moving. And his cracked voice stirred something beautiful in all of us that night. "Soul music," he once told Ralph Gleason, "is like a cross between church music and modern jazz with a flavor of rhythm 'n' blues mixed in. That's all." That was enough.

Listen to him. (Scroll to "Photos, Audio" and click.)

Isn't it romantic? "Let's take a look back at the lifelong love affair of Nancy and Ron," is how one MSNBC anchor put it yesterday morning, giving their relationship a first-name status usually reserved for the likes of Antony and Cleopatra or Scarlett and Rhett." How touching. And then a further reach too far: "When Tom Brokaw of NBC suggested to Bob Dole that Ronald Reagan had been an inspiring flag-bearer for the World War II generation, it was a bit too much for Mr. Dole, who was wounded in Italy. He replied dryly that Mr. Reagan, who spent the war making Army training films in Hollywood, had never heard a shot fired." Thank you, Alessandra.

Unlike the thousands of Americans who will line Constitution Avenue to see the horse-drawn caisson delivering Saint Ronald's coffin to the Capitol Rotunda, where his body will lie in state -- and unlike the media maestros who will sanctify the rites as whispering hosts of a civic religion -- Greg Palast has lost no love, admiration or respect for the 40th president of the United States.

A BBC investigative journalist, Palast writes: "In 1987 I found myself stuck in a crappy little town in Nicaragua named Chaguitillo. The people were kind enough, though hungry, except for one surly young man. His wife had just died of tuberculosis.

"People don't die of TB if they get some antibiotics. But Ronald Reagan, big hearted guy that he was, had put a lock-down embargo on medicine to Nicaragua because he didn't like the government that the people there had elected.

"Ronnie grinned and cracked jokes while the young woman's lungs filled up and she stopped breathing. Reagan flashed that B-movie grin while they buried the mother of three."

Palast, who is a native Californian, wrote the best-selling book, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." He invariably takes the powerful to task. As Noam Chomsky has said of him, he "upsets all the right people" -- and for all the right reasons. Although Palast often writes for the mainstream media -- The Guardian and The Observer in London, Harper's magazine, the Baltimore Sun, The New York Times, to name a few -- it, too, comes in for his withering critism.

Palast heaps scorn not only on Reagan but on the Times for embroidering the legend in a "canned obit." He blasts the paper for writing that "Reagan projected, 'faith in small town America' and 'old-time values.'"

"'Values' my ass," he fumes. "It was union busting and a declaration of war on the poor and anyone who couldn't buy designer dresses. It was the New Meanness, bringing starvation back to America so that every millionaire could get another million.

"'Small town' values? From the movie star of the Pacific Palisades, the Malibu mogul? I want to throw up."

Tom Carson feels the same nausea. At Reagan's funeral, Carson writes, "there will no doubt be buckets of false poetry, grievously misrepresenting the man -- yes, even if Peggy Noonan shows up, doing her best to be Walt Whitman to his Abe: 'When Star Wars Last in Gorbachev's Dooryard Bloom'd.'"

In "a sincere spirit of tribute to an enemy," Carson proposes that, as "a noted fantasist ... perhaps best remembered for the eight years he spent believing he ruled an entirely fictional United States ... a delusion shared by most of his compatriots," Reagan "deserves the honor of being the first person ever embalmed at Disneyland."

See it to believe it: "Attorney General John Ashcroft is refusing to release or discuss memos detailing U.S. torture policy. Lawmakers accused him of trying to hide how the Bush administration has justified the abuse of prisoners." (Click on the link above and then click on "Watch 256k stream" to play the video.)

Here's how silly Ashcroft is: The key secret Pentagon torture memorandum of March 6, 2003, obtained by Wall Street Journal reporter Jess Bravin, is already online. The Journal posted it in an area of its Web site that does not require a subscription. The administration and the Pentagon deny that the memorandum has been put into effect. But you have to take their word for it, and we know what their word is worth.

So you doubted the White House bonehead, Rummy boy, chief crony Cheney and the rest of the gang had dirty hands? You believed the use of torture on Iraqi prisoners was the low-level notion of "a few bad apples" and not the systematic plan of higher-ups? You didn't (or couldn't) believe the rule of law as we've known it is being corrupted by authoritarian zealots?

Well, The Wall Street Journal had a frontpage exclusive Monday that demolishes those pretty little myths. It began: "Bush administration lawyers contended last year that the president wasn't bound by laws prohibiting torture and that government agents who might torture prisoners at his direction couldn't be prosecuted by the Justice Department."

WSJ reporter Jess Bravin uncovered a classified report -- drafted just two weeks before the Iraq invasion commenced -- arguing that "the president, despite domestic and international laws constraining the use of torture, has the authority as commander in chief to approve almost any physical or psychological actions during interrogation, up to and including torture,"

It's too bad the WSJ is not available online except by subscription. In the second graf, the story revealed that "[t]he advice was part of a classified report on interrogation methods prepared for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after commanders at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, complained in late 2002 that with conventional methods they weren't getting enough information from prisoners."

The third graf continued:

The report outlined U.S. laws and international treaties forbidding torture, and why those restrictions might be overcome by national-security considerations or legal technicalities. In a March 6, 2003, draft of the report reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, passages were deleted as was an attachment listing specific interrogation techniques and whether Mr. Rumsfeld himself or other officials must grant permission before they could be used. The complete draft document was classified "secret" by Mr. Rumsfeld and scheduled for declassification in 2013.

I see this morning's Washington Post (burying its acknowledgment of the Journal) has a frontpage follow that advances the story. It reveals that an even earlier memo from the Justice Department "offered justification for [the] use of torture" and was the basis for the March 2003 report. The Post's story begins:

In August 2002, the Justice Department advised the White House that torturing al Qaeda terrorists in captivity abroad "may be justified," and that international laws against torture "may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations" conducted in President Bush's war on terrorism, according to a newly obtained memo.

This morning's New York Times also has a frontpage follow acknowledging the Journal. It begins:

A team of administration lawyers concluded in a March 2003 legal memorandum that President Bush was not bound by either an international treaty prohibiting torture or by a federal antitorture law because he had the authority as commander in chief to approve any technique needed to protect the nation's security.

The Post notes: "The documents, which address treatment of al Qaeda and Taliban detainees, were not written to apply to detainees held in Iraq." But read the reports and tell me if you still believe the pretty little myths.

What's next? Saint Ronald? Everybody, including Mikhail Gorbachev this morning, is recalling just how wonderful the 40th U.S. president was. "I think he understood that it is the peacemakers, above all, who earn a place in history," Gorbachev writes, in a bow not to the Great Communicator so much as the Friendly Persuader.

In the Sunday obituary-cum-eulogy announcing Reagan's death that began on the front page of The New York Times and covered two full pages inside, Marilyn Berger wrote: "He managed to project the optimism of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the faith in small-town America of Dwight D. Eisenhower and the vigor of John F. Kennedy."

As a small corrective, it's worth remembering during what appears to be Reagan's secular canonization that in his Red-baiting years in Hollywood as president of the Screen Actors Guild he cheerfully helped ruin many lives and that at the heart of the greatest achievement of his presidency lies a deeply sanctimonious hypocrisy.

Consider this small anecdote about Reagan, Gorbachev and the movie "Friendly Persuasion," which starred Gary Cooper as a pacifist during the Civil War and his moral quandary when confronted by violence. In 1957 the movie won the Palme d'Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival. As I wrote in "A Talent for Trouble," "at the request of the Soviet Union, and with the approval of the U.S. State Department," William Wyler, who directed the movie, "took it to Moscow in 1960, where he showed it as a symbolic antidote to the Cold War," which was then at its height. In the 1980s, with the beginning of glasnost,

President Ronald Reagan -- whose conservative politics Wyler loathed -- took a videocassette of "Friendly Persuasion" to Moscow. During a state dinner, he presented it as a personal gift to Soviet premier Gorbachev, devoting a large portion of his toast to the meaning of the film and why he had chosen it.

"The film has sweep and majesty and pathos," the president said. "It shows not just the tragedy of war, but the problems of pacifism, the nobility of patriotism, as well as the love of peace."

When The New York Times printed the text of Reagan's remarks, it occasioned a ripple of remembrance from Michael Wilson's supporters. [Wilson had done an early draft of the screen adaptation and was later blacklisted after taking the 5th in Congressional testimony as to whether he'd been a member of the Communist Party.] Letters to the Times pointed out the irony that a movie written by a so-called "Commie" was now embraced by a saber-rattling right-wing president who had made a career of demonizing people like Wilson.

In the thousands upon thousands of words of the Marilyn Berger obituary-cum-eulogy that appeared Sunday in the print edition of The New York Times, there is no mention -- not even a hint -- of that less-than-honorable part of Reagan's history. And you won't find it in the Times's Ronald W. Reagan: An Archive either. But for the fact that it does appear in the online version of Berger's obituary-cum-eulogy, it's as if the newspaper of record chose to airbrush that disturbing element of the Reagan image.

Here's the relevant passage of what Berger actually wrote, which was not included in print (until this morning in a different, shorter version of the Sunday obit):

When he was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 to testify about Communist influence in the movie industry, Mr. Reagan refused to name names before the committee. But the historian Garry Wills said the Federal Bureau of Investigation file on Mr. Reagan that was later released disclosed that he had named people in secret.

In those years Mr. Reagan was a Democrat and, as he later put it in his autobiography, "a near-hopeless hemophiliac liberal." In 1950 he actively supported Helen Gahagan Douglas, the liberal Democrat who was defeated by Richard M. Nixon in a California senatorial campaign that became a portent of an era of Red-baiting.

But behind the scenes, as president of the guild, he worked closely with the Motion Picture Industry Council to weed out Communist influence in Hollywood.

Duplicity, thy name is Saint Ronald.

Postscript: This morning's edition of Democracy Now! offers a different take on Reagan's presidency from most of the mainstream media's. (Click on the link above and then click on "Watch 256k stream" to watch or listen.)

Joining Amy Goodman, the host of the program, are the dissident author M.I.T professor Noam Chomsky and the anti-nuclear activist Dr. Helen Caldicott, president of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute and founder of Physicians For Social Responsibility. (She met with Reagan during the 1980s and called him "the pied piper of Armageddon," but nonetheless credits him for curbing the nuclear arms race.)

Goodman also speaks with Robert Parry, an investigative journalist whose reporting led to the exposure of what is now known as the "Iran-Contra" scandal. On his Consortium News Website, Parry has a written assessment, "Rating Reagan: A Bogus Legacy," which begins: "The U.S. news media's reaction to Ronald Reagan's death is putting on display what has happened to American public debate in the years since Reagan's political rise in the late 1970s: a near-total collapse of serious analytical thinking at the national level."

The trouble with the death of Ronald Reagan is that, whatever else it means, it will give our White House bonehead a ceremonial stage to play statesman in mourning for the rest of the week until Reagan's burial. Will that get the bonehead a bump in the polls? We think so. When he pays blustering lip service to the noble ideals that Reagan symbolizes for many (too many) Americans, the catch in his voice and the teary-eyed show of sentimental patriotism are liable to score him undeserved points. Watch the bonehead perform, in Shakespeare's words, "... like a strutting player, whose conceit / Lies in his hamstring and doth think it rich / To hear the wooden dialogue ..."

We all need something to get us out of bed. Here's what gets me up in the morning: Bill Moyers on truth and journalism. If you've got a few minutes -- OK, 30 minutes -- have a look at him speaking recently at the National Conference on Media Reform in Madison, Wisc. Moyer's keynote address is powerful and eloquent and delivers the sort of wisdom you may encounter in private but rarely in public discourse. (Click on the link above and then click on "Watch 256k stream.")

Moyers defines three forces that shape the information the public needs to know and how it is (or isn't) communicated: 1) the age-old "reluctance of government -- even democratically elected government -- to operate in the sunshine"; 2) the more recent "tendency of megamedia giants to exalt commercial values over democratic values"; and 3) the emergence of "a quasi-official partisan press ideologically linked to an authoritarian administration that in turn is the ally and agent of the most powerful interests in the world."

If you'd rather just read Moyers' remarks, here's the transcript. (Unfortunately it's riddled with typos and transcription errors, and it's missing many of his remarks.) But let me give you a taste of what he said:

In earlier times our governing bodies tried to squelch journalistic freedom with the blunt instruments of the law: padlocks for the presses and jail cells for outspoken editors and writers. Over time, with spectacular wartime exceptions, the courts and the Constitution struck those weapons out of their hands. But they've found new ones now, in the name of "national security." The classifier's Top Secret stamp, used indiscriminately, is as potent a silencer as a writ of arrest. And beyond what is officially labeled "secret" there hovers a culture of sealed official lips, opened only to favored media insiders: of government by leak and innuendo and spin, of misnamed "public information" offices that churn out blizzards of releases filled with self-justifying exaggerations and, occasionally, just plain damned lies. Censorship without officially appointed censors.

He points a damning finger at the thuggish gang in the White House, its corporate cronies and media goons:

Never has there been an administration so disciplined in secrecy, so precisely in lockstep in keeping information from the people at large and -- in defiance of the Constitution -- from their representatives in Congress. Never has so powerful a media oligopoly -- the word is Barry Diller's, not mine -- been so unabashed in reaching like Caesar for still more wealth and power. Never have hand and glove fitted together so comfortably to manipulate free political debate, sow contempt for the idea of government itself, and trivialize the people's need to know.

And Moyers names names:

I am talking now about that quasi-official partisan press ideologically linked to an authoritarian administration that in turn is the ally and agent of the most powerful interests in the world. This convergence dominates the marketplace of political ideas today in a phenomenon unique in our history. You need not harbor the notion of a vast, right-wing conspiracy to think this collusion more than pure coincidence. Conspiracy is unnecessary when ideology hungers for power and its many adherents swarm of their own accord to the same pot of honey. Stretching from the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal to the faux news of Rupert Murdoch's empire to the nattering nabobs of know-nothing radio to a legion of think tanks paid for and bought by conglomerates -- the religious, partisan and corporate right have raised a mighty megaphone for sectarian, economic, and political forces that aim to transform the egalitarian and democratic ideals embodied in our founding documents.

Without a "strong opposition party to challenge such triumphalist hegemony," Moyers tells us, "it is left to journalism to be democracy's best friend." Which is why the bid by Federal Communications Commission chief Michael Powell "to permit further concentration of media ownership" -- and which has been "blessed by the White House" -- is so dangerous. "If free and independent journalism committed to telling the truth without fear or favor is suffocated, the oxygen goes out of democracy. And there is no surer way to intimidate and then silence mainstream journalists than to be their boss." It's not just Murdoch or the Journal's editorial page and their ilk who are to blame. It's so-called liberals, too:

And then there's Leslie Moonves, the chairman of CBS. In the very week that the once-Tiffany Network was celebrating its 75th anniversary -- and taking kudos for its glory days when it was unafraid to broadcast "The Harvest of Shame" and "The Selling of the Pentagon" -- the network's famous eye blinked. Pressured by a vociferous and relentless right-wing campaign and bullied by the Republican National Committee -- and at a time when its parent company has billions resting on whether the White House, Congress, and the FCC will allow it to own even more stations than currently permissible -- CBS caved in and pulled the miniseries about Ronald Reagan that conservatives thought insufficiently worshipful. ... Granted, made-for-television movies about living figures are about as vital as the wax figures at Madame Tussaud's -- and even less authentic -- granted that the canonizers of Ronald Reagan hadn't even seen the film before they set to howling; granted, on the surface it's a silly tempest in a teapot; still, when a once-great network falls obsequiously to the ground at the feet of a partisan mob over a cheesy mini-series that practically no one would have taken seriously as history, you have to wonder if the slight tremor that just ran through the First Amendment could be the harbinger of greater earthquakes to come, when the stakes are really high. And you have to wonder what concessions the media tycoons-cum-supplicants are making when no one is looking.

Moyers's remarks touch on the dangers of a megamogul such as Italy's "richest citizen," who just happens to be its prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi; who just happens to control directly or indirectly Italy's "state television networks and radio stations, three of its four commercial television networks, two big publishing houses, two national newspapers, 50 magazines, the country's largest movie production-and-distribution company, and a chunk of its Internet services."

Citing Jane Kramer's New Yorker piece about the prime minister, Moyers notes that one critic says "half the reporters in Italy work for Berlusconi, and the other half think they might have to. Small wonder he has managed to put the Italian state to work to guarantee his fortune -- or that his name is commonly attached to such unpleasant things as contempt for the law, conflict of interest, bribery, and money laundering." Nonetheless, "his power over what other Italians see, read, buy, and, above all, think, is overwhelming." And who is "Berlusconi's close friend?" he asks. None other than Rupert Murdoch. Last July "programming on nearly all the satellite hookups in Italy was switched automatically to Murdoch's Sky Italia," according to Kramer. What a surprise.

Moyers offers anecdotal tales about the first American newspaper editor, Benjamin Harris, whose Boston paper, not incidentally, was shut down by the Massachusetts government in 1690, and the printer Peter Zenger printer who was jailed 40 years later in New York "for criticizing its royal governor," but who was found innocent by a jury. It was swayed in large measure by the defense lawyer's summation, which declared that Zenger's case was:

Not the cause of the poor Printer, nor of New York alone, [but] the cause of Liberty, and ... every Man who prefers Freedom to a Life of Slavery will bless and honour You, as Men who ... by an impartial and uncorrupt Verdict, [will] have laid a Noble Foundation for securing to ourselves, our Posterity and our Neighbors, That, to which Nature and the Laws of our Country have given us a Right, the Liberty -- both of exposing and opposing arbitrary Power -- by speaking and writing -- Truth.

Moyers, let's remember, is no wild radical. He's a mainstream liberal with long experience both in government and in journalism.

I am older than almost all of you and am not likely to be around for the duration; I have said for several years now that I will retire from active journalism when I turn 70 next year. But I take heart from the presence in this room, unseen, of Peter Zenger, Thomas Paine, the muckrakers, I.F. Stone and all those heroes and heroines, celebrated or forgotten, who faced odds no less than ours and did not flinch. I take heart in your presence here. It's your fight now. Look around. You are not alone.

Let's hope he's right and wasn't ending on a cheerful note just because he was addressing like-minded journalists. His keynote speech was, in fact, a severe storm warning. It's Moyers' warning more than the happy-face assurance of his concluding remarks that must be taken seriously.

We're familiar with all the objections to Ralph Nader's presidential candidacy. But we still believe he has every right to run. We also believe he's the most  passionate, intelligent, accomplished and honest of all the current candidates. If the American people want to elect the presumptive Democratic candidate John Kerry, they should vote for him --  as we will, despite our good opinion of Nader.

If the American people want to elect the nasty little shit now in the White House, they should remember they will be indicting themselves as co-conspirators in his administration's criminal misadventures. They will no longer have the excuse that he was an appointed president, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, and not an elected one.

So here's a message from the Nader folks: "Ralph Nader will speak before the National Press Club on "Breaking the two-party system." The speech, part of the Press Club's News Maker Series, will be covered by C-SPAN at 1 p.m. ET. C-SPAN plans to broadcast the speech live unless activity in the House and Senate prevents it. (If the network offers a Webcast, Straight Up will provide the link.)

The Press Club notes that Nader is expected to say "more voices and more choices are needed in the November election" and that his candidacy "is centered around a plan for responsible withdrawal from Iraq." It notes further:

On the domestic front Nader has described Washington, D.C. as "corporate-occupied territory" and is seeking to "break the hold corporate interests have over our government." Nader is putting cuts in the bloated and redundant military budget at the forefront of his candidacy. He urges putting "human needs first."

Human needs includes [sic] a single payer health care system, a living wage for all U.S. workers, a new energy paradigm that breaks the U.S. addiction to fossil and nuclear energy by developing sustainable, clean energy sources and repealing the notorious provisions of the Patriot Act.

"The political duopoly are proxies for corporate domination of our government and elections. They are opponents of legitimate electoral reform from ballot access to the presidential debates to the public financing of campaigns," Nader said.

"The prospect for the future is further decay, degeneration and decadence. The political duopoly is shortchanging the country and (is) unworthy of the American people and posterity. The public needs more voices and more choices in elections," said Ralph Nader.

Nader is currently focused on getting on the ballot. He submitted 80,044 signatures in Texas on May 24 (more than submitted in the 2000 campaign) and currently has petition drives going across the country. In 2000 Nader was on the ballot in 43 states and the District of Columbia, he expects to be on more ballots in 2004. Nader recently received the endorsement of the Reform Party.

A report this morning from the Associated Press: Enron traders gleeful at ripping off grandmas. "Enron traders openly discussed manipulating California's power market during profanity-laced telephone conversations in which they gloated about ripping off 'those poor grandmothers' during the state's energy crunch in 2000-01, according to transcripts of the calls."

An editorial this morning from The New York Times: Fiscal Shenanigans. "President Bush appears to be planning to run for re-election as a tax cutter without discussing what federal programs will be sacrificed to make up for the lost revenue. That can't be allowed to happen. Voters have the right to see the whole picture, including the downside. Chances are they won't like the view."

Can you stand more? Check this report in The Washington Post: Soldiers Facing Extended Tours / Critics of Army Policy Liken It to a Draft. "Army officials announced yesterday that thousands of active-duty and reserve soldiers who are nearing the end of their volunteer service commitments could be forced to serve an entire tour overseas if their units are chosen for deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan."

And this: Energy [Dept.] Finds No Misconduct at Hanford. "An investigation of contractors accused of altering medical records and covering up worker exposure to toxic vapors at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation has found no evidence of criminal misconduct, the Energy Department's inspector general said Wednesday." And by the way, "It will take three more decades to finish the cleanup there, at a cost of about $2 billion a year."

And this: Administration Freed Terror Suspect. "Nabil al-Marabh, once imprisoned as the No. 27 man on the FBI's list of must-capture terror suspects, is free again. He's free despite telling a Jordanian informant he planned to die a martyr by driving a gasoline truck into a New York City tunnel, turning it sideways, opening its fuel valves and having an al-Qaida operative shoot a flare to ignite a massive explosion." How come? "[I]n the name of protecting intelligence."

FROM A READER: "I was saddened by the prices you quoted for John Kerry's benefit concert at Radio City. It reminded me of the 2000 election. I can't remember if it was just a speech or during the debates, but at one point Al Gore was talking about trying to help out the "regular" people who only make $60,000 a year.

My parents, together, never made $60,000 a year in their entire lives. Me and my wife, together, are getting there. We'll probably be up to $60,000 between the two of us in about 5 years. I can't wait to become "regular," instead of sub-regular. :P

It is no wonder that Al Gore didn't even win his own freakin' state. I hope John Kerry doesn't have the same thing happen. He tries to be a good Democrat, but deep inside he's just a moderate Republican. He definitely wasn't in my top 3 choices of the candidates for Democrat this year. Too bad. He's still SIGNIFICANTLY the lesser of two evils!"

The full-page newspaper ad for THE CONCERT FOR JOHN KERRY at Radio City Music Hall had a star-spangled banner wrapped around an electric guitar. Black background. White type. It said: "A Change Is Going to Come." It said there will be performances by Jon Bon Jovi, Whoopi Goldberg, Wyclef Jean, John Mellencamp, Bette Midler, James Taylor and Robin Williams.

But here's where it gets interesting. According to the ad, tickets are on sale by phone only through Ticketmaster. The ad gave the number to call. It also gave a different phone number and organization for "VIP Orchestra tickets and Premium Seats." I wanted a regular ticket. The kind that ordinary people could buy. There were no prices listed in the ad, but I figured I'd go as high as $100 if I had to. (Frankly, I didn't really care about the show. I wanted to go strictly for research, to see whether it could serve as the model for a fictional event in a novel I'm writing.)

The Ticketmaster operator set me straight. The price of a "regular," non-VIP ticket for a seat in the orchestra is $1,000. "What's the cheapest seat in the house?" He told me: $250, in the balcony. No wonder there is no mention of ticket prices in the ad, or even on the Ticketmaster site for the concert. Why advertise bad news? They need to give you that in private. "Never mind," I said. "You're sure this is a Kerry fund-raiser, not a Bush fund-raiser?"

Will somebody please remind Kerry and the show's producers -- Jann S. Wenner, John Sykes and Harvey Weinstein -- that ordinary people don't have $1,000 to shell out so showbiz celebrities can raise funds for a multimillionaire candidate, even if he is a Democrat? Even if we need him to rid ourselves of the multimillionaire Republican in the White House?

The show is likely to be SRO, and if it isn't they'll paper the house. But one thing is certain. It will not be ordinary folks cheering the candidate on at Radio City Music Hall. It will be an audience of fat cats.

Footnote: The online reproduction of the full-page ad, THE CONCERT FOR JOHN KERRY, mentions price information (in very small type) that did not appear in the print version. 

Now that Daniel Okrent, the public editor of The New York Times, has given us his opinion about the Times' mea culpa, what's the verdict? Okrent writes, "I think they got it right. Mostly." He blames the paper in general for hyping its dead-wrong reports that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction during the run-up to the war and for not adequately correcting them, either by allowing the mistakes to stand or by failing to give equally conspicuous play to the corrections.

"The failure was not individual, but institutional," Okrent maintains. "When I say the editors got it 'mostly' right in their note this week, the qualifier arises from their inadequate explanation of the journalistic imperatives and practices that led The Times down this unfortunate path." He cites "The Hunger for Scoops," "Front-Page Syndrome" and "Hit-and-Run Journalism."

Los Angeles Times media columnist Tim Rutten writes of the NYT Editors' Note that "the Times' explanation looks like a leaky lifeboat launched in the teeth of a gathering storm."

The Straight Up verdict, courtesy of our friend William Osborne, offers another take. Osborne's analysis is so cogent and well expressed that it's better than anything we've read on the subject: "They were surely aware of the falseness, but they were just counting on a victor's justice and a victor's writing of history."

Osborne's comment in full:

The NYT's claim that they didn't see the hype during the build up to the war is so fatuous it boggles the mind. Every other country in the world saw the truth except, presumably, America. So we're supposed to think the newsroom of America's best paper is so completely unaware and incompetent? Isn't that a newsroom filled with people from the best universities? They were surely aware of the falseness, but they were just counting on a victor's justice and a victor's writing of history. Now that the thing has turned into a debacle they have to create a mea culpa in order to keep up the illusion of credibility. After all, the corporate interest must be maintained. This takes the sort of propagandistic juggling that indeed requires our very best journalists.

Cynical? Some may think so, but we don't. Skeptical? Absolutely.

Joseph Califano Jr. has written a new memoir, "Inside: A Public and Private Life," which makes some startling claims about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. A longtime political insider who started out as one of Robert McNamara's Pentagon "whiz kids," Califano was privvy to much that is still not completely understood about the Kennedy years. Califano was interviewed last Sunday by Brian Lamb on C-SPAN's Booknotes. Here's the relevant exchange about the assassination:

LAMB: I want to ask you if this has ever been printed before. "Years later when I was on the White House staff, Lyndon Johnson told me, quote, 'Kennedy tried to kill Castro but Castro got Kennedy first.'" Have you ever reported that before?
CALIFANO: I think this is the first reporting of that. I may -- I may have talked to people about that.
LAMB: You go on to say you agreed with Lyndon Johnson that Castro through Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy?
CALIFANO: I have come to believe that, Brian. Today I -- I -- when I was in the Pentagon, I was -- I served on a super secret committee on Cuba, set up, set up in January of 1973 [sic, he must have meant 1963], under President Kennedy. The objective was to overthrow Castro, to get rid of him. What's in the book about those events -- most of that has never been published before. I fought to get these documents declassified when I was doing the memoir.
It was wild. And we were going -- we were going to do all kinds of things. We were going to put -- we wanted sugar in their gasoline. We were going to tell the Cubans all to turn the water on at the same time to drain their water. At one point, we considered whether we should tie incendiary devices to the feet of bats, drop the bats over Cuba at night. They would fly into the attics of houses and buildings; the incendiary device would go off and the island would go up in flames. But there were clearly -- Robert Kennedy was determined to assassinate Castro. It was --- it was -- The Kennedys were obsessed with it, and ...
LAMB: What did you do when you were confronted with it yourself?
CALIFANO: Well, the first time -- it came up once at one of our committee meetings. The committee was the CIA, the Defense Department, the State Department and the Justice Department. And State was not only in charge but Robert Kennedy was in charge. And when -- when it was -- the only time it was discussed in a formal way in that committee, I opposed it, and Joe Dolan (ph), who was the Justice Department, a young Justice Department lawyer at the time, also opposed it.
The remarkable thing in retrospect is the CIA was completely silent during that whole discussion. But if you're Castro, just think now about November, the fall of 1963. There had been several attempts on your life. The mob, the poison pens, the crazy stuff. And in September, Castro told a reporter for Associated Press, you know, the American leaders ought to be careful because if they're going to try to kill me, they're not immune from -- from being killed.
November 1, Diem is killed, the head of the South Vietnam [government], is killed in a coup that we sponsored, that was approved by President Kennedy. So you're sitting there and you're Castro, and you've got to say, these guys are going to get me. November 22, President Kennedy is assassinated.
And I think the paroxysms of grief -- I mean -- unbelievable grief of Robert Kennedy -- this is a personal view, but I really do believe the unbelievable grief is -- was driven in good measure by the fact that he thought some of the things he was doing are what may have killed his brother. ...
And think about this. When you think about commissions and the commissions we have today, the Warren commission never talked to me or anybody else involved in the covert Cuban program in the course of their investigation about that.

The idea that Castro had a hand in Kennedy's assassination is not new. Given the mountain of JFK conspiracy theories, it's hard to conceive of any idea that would be new. But it's striking to hear one of the era's insiders say that Lyndon Johnson thought it was payback, that he suspects Robert Kennedy believed that, and that he believes it himself. Califano is not some kind of flake, after all. He was a top domestic adviser to LBJ, the attorney who represented The Washington Post and the Democratic Party during the Watergate years and Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare in the Carter administration.

As I've mentioned before, the most persuasive book I ever read about the Cuba connection to the sniper attack that killed JFK is Philip Kerr's "The Shot." It's fiction, a first-class thriller novel, but it shows how the killing in Dealey Plaza might have been prepared.

Brian Whitaker describes the problem of catching terrorists in Saudi Arabia -- or rather not catching them -- in a London Guardian report headlined "Paying the price for incompetence." Think of it as the Keystone Kops, Saudi-style. What "often happens in the kingdom," he writes, "[is] a case of the police stumbling on a plot by accident rather than through smart detective work." The interior ministry, which is responsible for catching terrorists and which is run on "supposedly Islamic principles," has been more occupied policing such offenses as "witchcraft, adultery, sodomy, highway robbery, sabotage, apostasy (renunciation of Islam) and 'corruption on earth.'"