The U.S. Senate confirmation hearing on the nomination of Alberto Gonzales for Attorney General begins this morning. Watch the Webcast on C-Span. It begins at 9:30 a.m. ET. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
VONNEGUT, TERKEL DO THE HONORS
Two essays — one by Kurt Vonnegut, the other by Studs Terkel — appeared on New Year’s day in The Guardian in London. They’re both about Nelson Algren, who was, it is no exaggeration to say, one of the great American authors of the 20th century, and among the most neglected. “Like James Joyce,” Vonnegut […]
A NEGATIVE TOO FAR
Secretary of State Colin Powell is everywhere these days. He ushered in the New Year from Times Square with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Today he’s off to survey the tsunami damage with Florida Governor Jeb Bush. On top of that, he’s leaving politics, but he’s not retiring. Powell says he expects to serve the […]
RUMMY’S WHISTLE-STOP TOUR
Rummy Boy in Iraq, speaking to the troops: “We’re on the side of freedom. You’re on the side of freedom. And that’s the side to be on.” Golly gee willikers. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
DEPARTING WORDS
I should have said, “Back in ’05, if not sooner.” Sooner because I wanted to link to the video of all 50-plus minutes of Bill Moyers’s keynote speech to the National Conference on Media Reform. It was posted on the Web this morning by Democracy Now!, the best daily TV-radio-Internet news broadcast we’ve got. A […]
BRRRR!
Gone ice-fishing. Best wishes for the New Year. Back in ’05. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
FINE TUNING
Reflecting on last week’s farewell to Bill Moyers, a reader let me know what he thought. Larry Lippman writes: Hey Jan, I can understand (sometimes) that in the battle of ideas, well-meaning and even bright people can have a different idea of what ought to be. But adulation for the sanctimonious, sans clerical collar Bill […]
THE HAUNTED HOTEL
Guess who’s joined the conservationists fighting to preserve the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, where Robert Kennedy was gunned down. According to Preservation Online, it’s none other than Sirhan Shirhan. In a lawsuit to keep the structure from being demolished to make way for a school, he claims that evidence lodged in the hotel walls shows […]
LOVING LITTLE BROTHER
Talking the other day about Orwell’s portrait of the future, I should have mentioned that it’s not only hatred and fear which serve as the twin engines of misrule. It’s also love and worship. As Orwell’s doomed hero Winston Smith learns to his everlasting degradation, it is so important in the scheme of things to […]
HANGING IN WITH GEORGE
By Jan Herman When 1984 came around smack in the middle of the rose-tinted Reagan era, many in the commentariat had a field day noting that George Orwell, for all his genius, had overstated his case. The future he’d warned of in “1984” simply hadn’t come to pass. Yeah, right. Thinking of Bill Moyers this morning, it occurred […]
SUMMARY JUDGMENT
Bob Herbert took the words right out of my mouth this morning. EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
MOYERS MOVES ON
By Jan Herman The departure of Bill Moyers from “Now” — tonight will be his last broadcast — is a huge loss for mainstream television journalism and the nation. His views on truth and journalism, as noted in June, are more striking than ever: In earlier times our governing bodies tried to squelch journalistic freedom with the blunt […]
OLD FOLKS GET IT
Surprise! Surprise! The latest news from the Center for Media Research: Biddys and Geezers Drive Internet Growth EmailFacebookTwitterReddit
BACKING OFF
Six weeks after The Wall Street Journal reported that Iranian Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi had sued the U.S. Treasury Department for denying her right to free speech by ruling that she could not publish her memoir in this country, the government has backed off. It has now dropped restrictions on writers from Cuba, Iran […]
L.A. TIMES SMEARS GARY WEBB
By JAN HERMAN If proof were needed that the Los Angeles Times is still covering its ass when it comes to Gary Webb, the investigative reporter who was found dead on Dec. 10 (an apparent suicide), the paper provided it Sunday with an obituary that is nothing less than character assassination. It’s a bloody hatchet […]
GARY WEBB, R.I.P.
“Just one more example,” a friend writes, “of why I have so little respect for American journalism. Much of the work done does not even deserve the name of journalism. But the real blame rests on the American public. It gets the government and journalism it deserves.” Here’s what he’s talking about: In 1996, journalist […]
RADIO BUZZ
Satellite radio has buzz, with Howard Stern, Eminem, Maxim magazine signed to host shows for big bucks, and now moviemeister Robert Evans signing up. But the great radio medium is already here. It’s on the Web, and it’s not part of any commercial hype. For instance,