Roundup: Media's Take

Jim Castagnera: Wondering Where My Next Neon Is Coming from

[Jim Castagnera of Havertown is the Associate Provost/Associate Counsel at Rider University and a 2007-08 Fellow of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.] One of the best songs, “Jungleland,” on Bruce Springsteen’s best album, “Born to Run,” features the lines, “Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of Dodge, drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain.” I always liked that lyric. Maybe that’s why I have a soft spot in my old heart for Chrysler products. My current car is

Carlin Romano: The chilling context for developments in the Russia of Vladimir Putin

[Carlin Romano, critic at large for The Chronicle and literary critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer, teaches philosophy and media theory at the University of Pennsylvania.] In 1922, a year of living dictatorishly, Lenin devoted astonishing time to handpicking intellectuals to be exiled from Russia. In missives to underlings, including a go-getter named Joseph Stalin, he railed against these "bourgeoisie and their accomplices, the intellectuals, the lackeys of capital, who think

Phyllis Chesler: The Legal Jihad Is Already Underway

[Dr. Phyllis Chesler is the well known author of classic works, including the bestseller Women and Madness (1972) and The New Anti-Semitism (2003). She has just published The Death of Feminism: What’s Next in the Struggle for Women’s Freedom (Palgrave Macmillan), as well as an updated and revised edition of Women and Madness. She is an Emerita Professor of psychology and women's studies, the co-founder of the Association for Women in Psychology (1969) and the National Women's Health Network (197

Joshua Green: Karl Rove ... A ‘Great Society’ Conservative

[Joshua Green is a senior editor for The Atlantic.] THERE is a paradox at the heart of Karl Rove’s tenure in the White House, and it is a key to understanding why he failed to remake American politics, despite ambitious plans to do so. In seeking to establish a lasting conservative majority, Mr. Rove violated one of the central tenets of modern conservative ideology: the idea that government cannot effectively refashion American society.... From the outset of the Bush a

Steve Hayes: Interviewed about his biography of Dick Cheney

Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Steve Hayes, a senior writer with the Weekly Standard and author of the New York Times bestseller, The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America. He is the author of the new book, Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President. In preparing this biography of Dick Cheney, he spent thirty hours in one-on-one interviews with the vice president and traveled with him through the Unite

Graham Stewart: A harsh fate awaits all collaborators

[Graham Stewart has written the Past Notes column for The Times since November 2005. He is the author of Burying Caesar: Churchill, Chamberlain and the Battle for the Tory Party and The History of The Times: The Murdoch Years.] Will the British Army’s Iraqi interpreters be left to swing when we withdraw from Basra? Those deemed to have collaborated with an occupying power are invariably at the mercy of summary justice when the occupiers leave. This was the case for Amer

Max Boot: We are all neocons now

Last Friday, RealClearPolitics ran in its lead feature spot an essay by Gregory Scoblete, a free-lance writer in New Jersey. The essay had the headline “The GOP, Ron Paul & Non-Interventionism,” and was subsequently commented upon by, among others, guest-blogger Stephen Bainbridge on Andrew Sullivan’s blog. Scoblete’s premise is that, just as Barry Goldwater’s failed campaign for president led the Republican party to embrace a limited-government philosophy, so too Ron Paul’s presid

Andrew Stephen: The US is no longer a land where people of humble origin become film stars and presidents

[Andrew Stephen was appointed US Editor of the New Statesman in 2001, having been its Washington correspondent and weekly columnist since 1998.] America, we're always being told on both sides of the Atlantic, is the ultimate classless society: "the richest, freest and happiest country in the world", in the words of that well-known American proletarian Rupert Murdoch. Yet, increasingly, reliable empirical studies - to say nothing of the evidence staring in the face of those

Joshua Green: The Rove Presidency

[Joshua Green is a senior editor of The Atlantic.] Karl Rove had the plan, the power, and the historic chance to remake American politics. What went wrong? --- With more than a year left in the fading Bush presidency, Karl Rove’s worst days in the White House may still lie ahead of him. I met Rove on one of his best days, a week after Bush’s reelection. The occasion was a reporters’ lunch hosted by The Christian Science Monitor at the St. Regis Hotel in Washingto

Ward Connerly: The "Fairness Doctrine" And Academia

[Ward Connerly is a former Regent of the University of California, Chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute, and 2005 recipient of the prestigious Bradley Prize for his defense of the American ideals of freedom and equality.] In 1949, the United States Federal Communications Commission adopted a general policy which sought to ensure that all coverage of controversial issues by a broadcast station be balanced and fair. This policy was based on the theory that station licensees

Norman Solomon: Let Us Now Praise an Infamous Woman -- and Our Own Possibilities

[Archival footage of Barbara Lee and Wayne Morse appears in the new documentary film “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death,” based on Norman Solomon’s book of the same title. The full-length movie, narrated by Sean Penn and produced by the Media Education Foundation, is available on DVD. http://www.WarMadeEasyTheMovie.org] The problem with letting history judge is that so many officials

Roger Pulvers: Tojo and Bush ... Trumpeting delusion on their way to defeat

Writing in the New York Times on July 17, the newspaper's well-known columnist David Brooks reported on a White House press conference he attended on July 13. "[Pres.] Bush was assertive and good-humored," Brooks noted. "It's more of a theological perspective," claimed the president for the basis of his belief in victory in Iraq. "I do believe there is an Almighty, and I believe a gift of that Almighty to all is freedom. And I will tell you that is a princip

Sidney Blumenthal: The three stooges ... Gonzales, Cheney, and Rove

Omertà (or a code of silence) has become the final bond holding the Bush administration together. Honesty is dishonorable; silence is manly; penitence is weakness. Loyalty trumps law. Protecting higher-ups is patriotism. Stonewalling is idealism. Telling the truth is informing. Cooperation with investigators is cowardice; breaking the code is betrayal. Once the code is shattered, however, no one can be trusted and the entire edifice crumbles. If Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wer

David Aaronovitch: The lessons of history? That’s a lot of bunk

[David Aaronovitch is a writer, broadcaster and commentator on international politics and the media.] ... Every now and again, since it became known that I was working on a television history of the Blair years, someone will tell me that Tony Blair had “no sense of history”, and that this accounted for his mistakes. One or two have advised me to look at the writings of David Marquand, who last year castigated the former Prime Minister and his “appallingly dangerous” ignorance of his

Frank Rich: Patriots Who Love the Troops to Death

GERALD FORD spoke the truth when he called Watergate “our long national nightmare,” but even a nightmare can have its interludes of rib-splitting farce. None were zanier than the antics of Baruch Korff, a small-town New England rabbi who became a full-time Richard Nixon sycophant as the walls closed in. Korff was ubiquitous in the press and on television, where he would lambaste Democrats and the media “lynch mob” for vilifying “the greatest president of the century.” Despite Nixon’

Jackson Diehl: Promoting Democracy Overseas Is No Longer a Priority As State Pursues Elusive Prizes in Middle East and Korea

In a speech to a meeting of democratic freedom fighters in Prague on June 5, President Bush announced a concrete mission for his State Department. "I have asked Secretary Rice," he said, "to send a directive to every U.S. ambassador in an unfree nation: Seek out and meet with activists for democracy. Seek out those who demand human rights." Nearly two months later, the cable had not been sent. (The State Department told me that it was dispatched late Friday -- th

Jonathan Cook: Israel's Jewish problem in Tehran

[Jonathan Cook, a journalist based in Nazareth, Israel, is the author of Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State (Pluto Press, 2006). His website is www.jkcook.net. ] Iran is the new Nazi Germany and its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the new Hitler. Or so Israeli officials have been declaring for months as they and their American allies try to persuade the doubters in Washington that an attack on Tehran is essential.

Peggy Noonan: Advice for the ladies who seek to become first lady

It's gotten catty out there. Jeri Thompson is a trophy wife, as is Cindy McCain. Michelle Obama is too offhand and irreverent when speaking of her husband, and Judith Giuliani is a puppy-stapling princess. Even Hillary Clinton was a focus, for wearing an outfit that suggested, however faintly, that underneath her clothing she may be naked, and have breasts.... The challenge for the spouses of modern candidates is that what is expected of women in general has changed. This is reflect

Norman Solomon: Media Blitz for War: The Big Guns of August

[The new documentary film “War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death” is based on Norman Solomon’s book of the same title. For information about the full-length movie, narrated by Sean Penn and produced by the Media Education Foundation, go to: http://www.WarMadeEasyTheMovie.org .] The U.S. media establishment is mainlining another fix for the Iraq war: It isn’t so bad after all, American military power could

Joseph Puder: Neglecting Holocaust Survivors in Israel

There are approximately 250,000 Holocaust survivors in Israel - 120,000 of whom are registered. Most of the survivors are elderly and successive Israeli governments, especially the current government of Ehud Olmert, have ignored their plight. The suffering of these elderly survivors of Hitler’s hell has finally come to the surface and has made the issue worthy of public debate. Many are living in abject poverty without proper medical and nutritional support. Now, as a result of shar