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Tim Slekar: Join and Listen to “Busted Pencils!”

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2024 //
3

Tim Slekar is an energetic, unstoppable fighter for public schools. In addition to serving as Dean at different colleges of education, he is a blogger and a broadcaster, always focused on defending the commons, the spaces that belong to all of us.

Tim wants you to join him on his show “BUSTED PENCILS.”

He wrote:

https://bustedpencils.blogspot.com/2024/03/bustedpencils-wants-you-to-give-it-all.html

BustEDpencils Wants YOU to Give it All!

It’s time to amplify our voices and take our fight for public education to the next level. We’re calling on all passionate advocates, educators, parents, grandparents, students, researchers, and anyone who believes in the power of public schools to join us on the airwaves of BustEDpencils Radio!

We’re on a mission to make BustEDpencils the go-to platform for unapologetic, no-holds-barred conversations about public education. But we can’t do it without YOU. We want to hear YOUR stories, YOUR struggles, and YOUR triumphs in the fight to protect and transform our public schools into true incubators of democracy and critical thought.

Teachers, we know you’re on the front lines, and your insights are invaluable. We want to hear your voices loud and clear, sharing the realities of the classroom, the challenges you face, and the victories you’ve won.

Parents and Grandparents, you’re the backbone of our school communities. Your perspective on what’s happening in our schools and how it’s affecting our kids is crucial. We want you to share your experiences and your unwavering support for public education.

Students, you’re the reason we’re all here. Your experiences, ideas, and dreams matter. We want to hear your voice, your perspective on education, and your vision for the future of our schools.

University and College Researchers, your expertise sheds light on the policies and practices shaping our schools. We need you to break down the research and help us understand what’s at stake and what we can do about it.

And here’s where it gets even more exciting – we’re also looking for volunteers to host BustEDpencils Listening Parties! Let’s boost our ratings, spread the word, and create a movement that the mainstream media can’t ignore. It’s time to make public education a national priority, and with your help, we can make it happen.

This is our moment, folks. It’s time to rally together, share our stories, and make our voices heard. If you’re ready to join the fight and be a part of something big, email me at timslekar@gmail.com to volunteer. Let’s take BustEDpencils mainstream and show the world that when it comes to public education, we mean business.

Together, we can save and transform our public schools. Let’s Give it All!

Categories Education Reform, Media, Resistance, Supporting public schools

“Cabrini”: A Wonderful Film

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2024 //
17

I recently went to see “Cabrini,” the story of America’s first saint. It’s a wonderful film, and I highly recommend it.

Mother Cabrini, as she was known, founded an order of sisters in Italy that created orphanages and homes for poor children. She longed to launch a mission to China but the Pope denied her request and told her to go to America instead, where there were large numbers of impoverished Italian immigrants.

She and several of her sisters traveled by ship to New York City in 1889 and immediately established residence in the Five Points, a congested and dirty neighborhood teeming with indigent Italian immigrants. The sisters opened a home and school for vagrant children living in squalid conditions.

Mother Cabrini was always in frail health but she had an iron will and surmounted every obstacle that blocked her desire to serve. She was a fearless feminist. The Archbishop of New York was not welcoming but she overcame his opposition. The Mayor of the city tried to close down her orphanage and frustrate her plans to grow, but she persisted.

She was ingenious. She sought out a reporter for The New York Times, brought him to see the living conditions of her district, and he wrote about her work. Children were “living worse than rats,” in sewers under the streets, he wrote. Anything to stay alive. Mother Cabrini ran a school where they learned English but sang songs in Italian. She wanted them to fit into their new homeland but not to lose touch with their ancestral home.

Let me emphasize that while the story centers on a nun with an iron will, there is no religious propagandizing. None. It’s a movie about courage, dedication, kindness, and a fierce desire to help the neediest. Mother Cabrini eventually established orphanages and hospitals around the world.

The lesson that I took away from the film was about the hard life of immigrants and the valor of those who reached out to help them survive. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, there were no government services. People came pouring in and had to make it in their own or die from hunger and disease.

Mother Cabrini’s love for the immigrants of her time stand in sharp contrast to the political rhetoric of today, when they are vilified as rapists, drug dealers, murderers, invaders. Even the children.

As I watched the film, I found myself wishing that Trump might see it. I know he never will. Its message is not religious. It’s about kindness, compassion, dedication, and selflessness. He would say that Mother Cabrini was a radical socialist, a Communist, a sucker, a fool, and not his type.

In addition to the story line, I loved the depiction of early New York City (even though the credits say the film was made in Buffalo).

Categories Character, Courage, Creativity, Ethics, History, Media, Religion

Ronna McDaniel Expects Big Payday after NBC Retracts Offer

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2024 //
18

Top brass at NBC thought it was a brilliant idea to hire Ronna McDaniel, former chair of the Republican National Committee, as a paid contributor. They did not check with their on-air commentators, who had taken the brunt of McDaniels’ criticism of the “fake news” on behalf of Trump. They knew she had fiercely defended his lies about election fraud. She has now retracted her lies, but that didn’t erase her history as a liar.

When the on-air commentators lambasted the hiring of McDaniel during their shows on Sunday and Monday, NBC leadership withdrew their offer.

But they had signed a contract to pay McDaniel $300,000 a year for two years, and she’s expecting to be paid in full.

Politico reports that she’s also considering a lawsuit for defamation and a hostile work environment.

If NBC wanted to add a Republican commentator who did not participate in the effort to overthrow the election and subvert the Constitution, they could have hired Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, or Mitt Romney (Ronna McDaniel’s uncle). She used to call herself Ronna Romney McDaniel but Trump insisted that she drop her middle name and she did.

Categories Accountability, Elections, Lies, Media, Republicans, Trump

NBC Cuts Ties with Ronna McDaniel After Revolt by On-Air Stars

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2024 //
23

NBC decided not to hire Ronna McDaniel, former chair, of the Republican National Committee, after an on-air revolt by its biggest stars.

Her loud defense of Trump’s lies about the 2020 election were unacceptable to the NBC and MSNBC commentators.

Amid a chorus of on-air protest from some of the network’s biggest stars, NBC announced on Tuesday night that former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel will no longer be joining the network as a paid contributor.


The announcement came in a memo from NBCUniversal News Group Chairman Cesar Conde, who said he had listened to “the legitimate concerns” of many network employees. “No organization, particularly a newsroom, can succeed unless it is cohesive and aligned,” he wrote. “Over the last few days, it has become clear that this appointment undermines that goal.”


Conde also apologized to employees “who felt we let them down” and took “full responsibility” for the hiring…

But the company’s on-air personalities — especially those on NBC’s liberal-leaning cable affiliate MSNBC — disagreed vehemently, saying that McDaniel’s promotion of Donald Trump’s media-bashing and false election-fraud claims disqualified her for a role in their news divisions.

And one by one, they took to the airwaves to deliver that message to their bosses in front of their live audiences Monday.


“Take a minute, acknowledge that maybe it wasn’t the right call,” MSNBC’s top-rated star Rachel Maddow said on her show that night. “It is a sign of strength, not weakness, to acknowledge when you are wrong.”

Categories Accountability, Elections, Media, Trump

Dan Rather: What Was NBC Thinking When It Hired Trump Apologist Ronna McDaniel?

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2024 //
21

The commentators at NBC and MSNBC are furious that NBC top brass hired Ronna Romney McDaniel as a paid commentator for the network. Presumably, the executives thought it would broaden their audience to bring on someone who had led the Republican National Committee for the past eight years.

They now face an internal rebellion. As Dan Rather explains on his blog Steady, prominent newscasters at NBC were apoplectic. The commentators at MSNBC—where Trump is despised—were assured that they did not have to invite her onto their programs.

Last night, I watched MSNBC, and every commentator lashed out against the hire. Joy Reid, Jen Psaki, Rachel Maddow, and Laurence O’Donnell expressed their outrage. They did not care that she was a Republican. They did not care that she was a conservative. They cared that she was an election denier and a liar. She did whatever Trump wanted, and he booted her anyway. She was actively involved in the fake electors scheme in Michigan. She even dropped her middle name (Romney) to please Trump. She lacks integrity. She insulted the media, as Trump did. As Jen Psaki said, she is not honest.

Dan Rather shared their views:

Journalism Lesson #1 for 2024:

The mainstream media should not normalize Donald Trump’s behavior, nor should they give a platform to his lies or those of his sycophants, who for years have spread disastrous untruths that may have irreparably damaged our nation.

But in one fell swoop, NBC News has managed to do both. By hiring former Republican National Committee chief Ronna McDaniel, NBC has given credence and legitimacy to a Republican who has been in lockstep with the lies, helping spread plenty of the former president’s falsehoods. Allowing McDaniel to be in the same area code as NBC News is a huge mistake and will only further shred the small amount of trust Americans still have in the mainstream media. I don’t blame journalists at NBC. They have long been some of the finest in the business. But one wonders what the hell executives at the network were thinking.

Before she sold her soul, Ronna McDaniel was considered Republican royalty. She’s the granddaughter of George Romney, former GOP governor of Michigan, and niece of Senator Mitt Romney, former Republican presidential nominee and former governor of Massachusetts. She has been the chair of the RNC since the day Donald Trump took office in 2017. And she has been loyal to him at all costs, especially the truth.

During her tenure, she was a prolific fundraiser yet oversaw the net losses of Republican governorships and congressional seats. But her biggest claim to fame during her seven years on the job is that she was a Trump supporter, loyalist, and apologist above all else.

One could argue that this is the role of the head of a political party: to support the highest-ranking member of said party. Yes, that is typically true. But McDaniel spent years repeating Trump’s disinformation, making cases for his lies and paying his legal bills. Here are just a few of her misdeeds:

  • Told CNN’s Chris Wallace of Joe Biden’s election win, “I don’t think he won it fair.”
  • Characterized the January 6 insurrection as “legitimate political discourse.”
  • Orchestrated the censure of Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, the two Republican January 6 Committee members.
  • Encouraged Michigan canvassers not to certify the 2020 election results, promising them lawyers.
  • Took part in Trump’s scheme to assemble fake electors.
  • Refused to condemn QAnon to George Stephanopoulos on ABC News.
  • Mocked Senator John Fetterman and President Biden for speech impediments.
  • Warned that those Republicans who didn’t embrace Trump’s policies “will be making a mistake.”

McDaniel made her NBC News debut on this Sunday’s “Meet the Press.” At the top of the broadcast, host Kristen Welker disclosed McDaniel’s new role. She said, “This interview was scheduled weeks before it was announced that McDaniel would become a paid NBC News contributor. This will be a news interview, and I was not involved in her hiring.”

During the interview, McDaniel defended her time as chair with what may be the quote of the year. “When you’re the RNC chair, you kind of take one for the whole team. Now I get to be a little bit more myself, right?”

No, Ms. McDaniel, you don’t get to have it both ways. The truth does not change depending on who signs your paycheck. Whom are we supposed to believe, your RNC or NBC self?

McDaniel walked back some of her more outrageous statements, sort of. As of yesterday, she now admits that Joe Biden won the election “fair and square.” However, she continued to insist there were issues with the election. When pushed, she mentioned the huge increase in mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania and suggested voter fraud. Reminder: No significant fraud of any kind was found in any state in the 2020 election.

In defending their hire, NBC News’s Carrie Budoff Brown, senior vice president of politics, said, “It couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team.”

Many on the NBC team vehemently disagreed. “We weren’t asked our opinion of the hiring, but, if we were, we would have strongly objected to it for several reasons,” Joe Scarborough, the “Morning Joe” co-host, said at the top of the broadcast Monday. Mika Brzezinski added, “We hope NBC will reconsider its decision. It goes without saying that she will not be a guest on ‘Morning Joe’ in her capacity as a paid contributor.”

Chuck Todd, NBC’s chief political analyst, could barely contain his anger and disbelief on “Meet the Press.”. “She [McDaniel] wants us to believe that she was speaking for the RNC when the RNC was paying for it. So she has — she has credibility issues that she still has to deal with. Is she speaking for herself or is she speaking on behalf of who’s paying her?”

He continued, “There’s a reason why there’s a lot of journalists at NBC News who are uncomfortable with this because many of our professional dealings with the RNC over the last six years have been met with gaslighting, have been met with character assassination.”

Now we come to the why. Why would NBC News hire someone as controversial as Ronna McDaniel? 

News gathering is a business, as unfortunate as that is. As a business, it needs to make money. In television news, more viewers equals more money. So news organizations feel they need to appeal to the broadest spectrum of viewers possible. We will exempt Fox, which calls itself a news organization but is more of a propaganda outfit for the GOP.  

The mainstream middle is a much more crowded field that is bombarded by accusations of bias and liberalism. So they feel the need to show their Republican bona fides by hiring conservative voices.

But that is the crux of the problem. Which Republicans? Trump loyalists who are election deniers and January 6 apologists? Never-Trumpers who are as likely to appeal to many Republican viewers as progressives? How do they represent the political right without alienating their loyal viewers and their correspondents? These are the new political realities ushered in by Donald Trump. And another reason independent journalism is essential right now, essential to provide unvarnished coverage in one of the most important elections in American history and to hold the mainstream media accountable.

Categories Accountability, Bias, Character, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Lies, Media, Republicans, Trump

John Thompson: How Should the Press Cover Extremism?

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2024 //
8

John Thompson, historian in Oklahoma, chronicles the always interesting events in the Sooner State. He asks in this post about the role of the media in covering extremism and gross stupidity.

Since I wrote about the “Strange Irresponsible Behavior” of Oklahoma’s Republican extremists, I’ve been conversing with neighbors, reporters, and politicians, wrestling with the ways the press should be handling this issue. Will we look back on such weird stories as just “wacky” distractions from the legislative issues that reporters should be covering in a conventional manner? Or will these seemingly nutty narratives come to dwarf in terms of historical significance the narratives that the press typically focuses on? When, for instance, Gov. Kevin Stitt speaks out of both sides of his mouth about “a potential ‘force-on-force’ conflict between the South and the Biden Administration,” and joining other governors to “send our National Guard to help and to support the efforts of Governor Abbott,” was he implicitly supporting those who are calling for a civil war? 

Shouldn’t the press follow the lead of The Independent and ask Stitt what he meant when he called “the clash between Texas authorities and the federal government a ‘powder keg of tension?’” So, should Stitt reveal what he meant when saying, “We certainly stand with Texas on the right to defend themselves.” And, surely the press should seek clarification as to what Stitt meant regarding the National Guard when saying, “I think they would be in a difficult situation: to protect their homeland or to follow what Biden’s saying,” and then promising that Oklahoma, along with other states, “would send our National Guard to help and to support the efforts of Governor Abbott.” 

Fortunately, the rally for supporting Abbott didn’t attract the 700,000 or more persons that were sought, and didn’t respond to the Texas Proud Boys’ call for followers to “grab your guns” to stop “brown immigrant invaders.” But, the Washington Post explains, “Whether the rallies erupt or fizzle, extremism researchers say, the consequences will outlast the weekend.” Shouldn’t Stitt be pressured to comment on that appraisal? I certainly believe reporters need to explicitly ask whether saving our democracy must be our top priority. 

Who knows? Had those questions been asked, maybe the press could have followed up by asking Stitt which side he would support if Vladimir Putin accepts Trump’s invitation to attack NATO?

A first step toward that goal would be to read Jill Lepore’s The Deadline, and wrestle with what would have happened if Dorothy Thompson hadn’t started the originally atypical coverage of Adolf Hitler, or if Edward R. Murrow hadn’t challenged Joe McCarthy. Lepore, the historian who writes for the New Yorker, further cited the “Golden Age” of the press in the 1960s and 70s which was started when David Halberstam ignored charges of liberal bias and reached “the high mark” of journalism when “interpretation replaced transmission, and adversarialism replaced deference,” even though it meant a writer could no longer “shake hands the next day with the man whom he had just written about.” 

Led by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and a few other institutions, the national press now focuses more on the interpretation of MAGA antics. It would be more risky for local journalists to place  irrational assertions and legislative actions into a broader context, but since our democracy is in jeopardy, its time to move beyond coverage of routine bills as they move out of committee.  

After a conversation on that subject, I got into my car and listened to NPR’s coverage of the Taylor Swift Super Bowl stories – which seemed to be the model for how reporters should cover rightwing absurdities.  It began, “Swift’s popularity is being twisted into a threat by a contingent of far-right, Donald Trump-supporting conservatives who have started circulating conspiracy theories about the singer, the Super Bowl, and the 2024 election.” Supposedly, “the NFL had ‘RIGGED’ a Chiefs victory” so “Swift comes out at the halftime show and ‘endorses’ Joe Biden with Kelce at midfield.”

NPR then placed this obviously false narrative in the context of Fox news, and “Jack Posobiec, who pushed the baseless Pizzagate conspiracy theory.” It further explained how such memes can endanger women’s health. 

On the other hand, who knows? Maybe Swift would have led a halftime coup for Biden if the press hadn’t blown the whistle?

Seriously, why can’t all types of news outlets routinely interrogate legislative sponsors about such lies, pushing them to go on record or publicly refuse to answer questions about where did they learn about furries and the reason for wanting to use animal control to keep them out of school. Or, why the “Common Sense Freedom of Press Control Act” should “require criminal background checks of every member of the news media;” the “licensing of journalists through the Oklahoma Corporation Commission;” the completion of a “propaganda free” training course by PragerU; and a $1 million liability insurance policy; and quarterly drug tests.

When legislators defend corporal punishment of disabled students because it’s the will of God, and requiring the teaching of creationism in classes where evolution is taught, they should have to explain the sources of their legislation, and why they think they are constitutional. Similarly, why would a legislator seek to ban “no-fault divorce,” even though the vast majority of the state’s divorces are based on that law. If every such bill would receive such scrutiny, wouldn’t the public become better prepared to vote for or against political leaders who won’t take a stand opposing the MAGA-driven divisiveness?

Or, conversely, if these bills are dismissed as merely “wacky” and allowed to spread, what will happen to the trust required for a democracy to function?    

Categories Democracy, Elections, Extremism, History, Media, Oklahoma, Stupid

Robert B. Hubbell: Why Democrats Should Stick with Joe Biden

By dianeravitch
February 26, 2024 //
30

Robert B. Hubbell writes a sensible blog about politics today. In this post, he eviscerates the proposal by Ezra Klein of The New York Times that Biden should step down before the Democratic National Convention and let the delegates choose a replacement.

Why should he step down? Because of his age.

Why should he stay in the race? Because he has been an excellent President, and he is the Democratic Party’s best candidate to beat Trump. Because Biden is wise and thoughtful, and Trump is neither. Because Biden respects the Constitution and Trump does not. Because Biden wants to defend democracy, and Trump does not. Because Biden understands the value of international alliances, and Trump wants to destroy them.

Hubbell writes:

Republicans and Russian trolls and bot farms will continue to spread disinformation about President Joe Biden to an eager American press and the surprisingly insecure American public. The report of special counsel Robert Hur has caused otherwise sober Democratic supporters and observers to consider a terrible proposal by Ezra Klein that Joe Biden drop out at the Democratic convention and anoint a different Democratic candidate who will begin campaigning for the presidency with three months to go and a ten-point deficit (at least). For my views on Klein’s proposal, read on!

Ezra Klein creates a small panic in the Democratic Party.

I received a steady stream of emails over the weekend asking me to comment on Klein’s proposal—something I did at length in Friday’s newsletter. (Always a puzzler when that happens; I try not to take offense.) Most of the emails commented favorably on Ezra Klein’s proposal. Others who support Biden and recognize that it would be terribly risky to switch from Biden at the last moment want to have a “respectful conversation” about the idea of Biden dropping out.

Expletive deleted! (Rhymes with “bulls-eye” and “base-hit.”)

At root, Klein’s idea credits the falsehood being promoted by Robert Hur, Trump, Fox News, and Putin’s army of bots that Joe Biden is incompetent to hold the presidency. We cannot fall for the false narrative that Joe Biden is unfit merely because he is 80 and is not the same person he was at 70 or 60 or 40 or 30.

Worse, having a ‘respectful public conversation’ about the proposal allows Republicans to change the narrative from the fascist rhetoric that Trump is spewing each day to a made-up controversy that is the functional equivalent of the “But her emails . . . ” fake controversy that the press swallowed hook, line, and sinker in 2016.

Every second people spend talking about Ezra Klein’s ridiculous idea is a second that we are not discussing Trump’s threat to abandon NATO, round up millions of immigrants, turn the FBI into a political hit squad, jail Joe Biden’s family, banrefugees from Gaza, begin “strong ideological screening of all immigrants, reboot his ban on travelers from Muslim-majority nations, and start his presidency as a “dictator for a day” (which, by the way, is the same thing as “a dictator,” because once you overthrow the Constitution to become a dictator, you cannot repair that wound.)

For example, at a rally over the weekend, Trump said the following:

I’m also going to indemnify all police officers and law enforcement officials throughout the US to protect them from being destroyed by the radical left . . . Once [criminals] see things happening that they never thought would happen to them, it’ll all stop overnight.

Let’s unpack Trump’s statement. He promises that he will protect and hold harmless (i.e., indemnify) police officers who “do things” to criminals “they never thought would happen to them,” a clear reference to police brutality. Trump is proposing a jack-booted police force that uses violence “with impunity” against “criminals” who have yet to be convicted of any crimes!

Every American citizen, media outlet, and political writer—including Ezra Klein—should spend every waking minute from now until November 5, 2024 telling anyone who will listen that Trump has proposed the creation of the equivalent of the Nazi Brown Shirts—a thuggish paramilitary that used violence and intimidation to fuel Hitler’s rise to power.

Trump’s threat to “indemnify” law enforcement for doing “things criminals never thought would happen to them” is not in the same universe of concern about the fake controversy over Joe Biden’s age. Every minute wasted on Joe Biden’s age is a minute not talking about Trump’s promise to unleash a violent police force on presumed-to-be-innocent-until-proven-guilty American citizens.

Many observers will say, “But Trump doesn’t really mean it. He can’t indemnify police officers from brutality.” Okay, I accept the argument: Trump is, therefore, spewing despotic fantasies that have no grounding in reality—a profound form of mental illness incompatible with being president of the U.S. And yet, sober Democrats who support Joe Biden want to waste our time asking to consider having a “respectful” conversation about Joe Biden’s age.

Those “sober Democrats” are doing Trump’s (and Putin’s) work, even if their intentions are pure and patriotic.

The flaws in the plan are too numerous to catalog, but here are a few:

Every replacement candidate (except one) starts with a 10 to 12 percentage point deficit to Trump, whereas Joe Biden is polling (at least) even with Trump. As Simon Rosenberg wrote on Sunday,

This week’s independent general election polling of registered voters finds a close, competitive race (Biden-Trump): Emerson 44-45 Economist/YouGov 44-44 Morning Consult 42-43 And a reminder that Biden led 47-45 (2 pts) in last NYTimes poll.

But in polling done in February, Gavin Newsom trails Trump by 10 points and Gretchen Whitmer trails by 12 points. (So far as I can tell, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro isn’t being polled nationally, only in Pennsylvania.)

But guess who is within striking distance of Trump (3 points)? Vice President Kamala Harris—who is never mentioned by readers who suggest that it is a good idea for Biden to step aside.

Why pass over the candidate in the strongest position (according to polls) to succeed Joe Biden in favor of candidates who sit at the bottom of a deep gravity well? I will let the readers suggesting the “Biden steps aside strategy” answer that question, but Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo describes what would happen if Biden steps aside and Kamala Harris is passed over:

I think if Biden stepped aside and then Harris was passed over, that would be like lighting a stick of dynamite at the center of the Democratic coalition. 

There are no easy or obvious answers, but plenty of bad ones. Ezra Klein’s proposal pretends that none of the bad answers exist.

Finally, there are no “party bosses” to manage the Democratic Party’s selection process if Biden were to step aside. With no primary election results to guide the process, the 72-hour race on the convention floor for the nomination would be “nasty, brutish, and short.”

So, please, can we stop talking about the Ezra Klein strategy? It is a horrible idea because Joe Biden is a strong candidate who is an incumbent president with a phenomenal track record of success. He has the wisdom and experience to guide the nation through a difficult time. And he beat Donald Trump in 2020. He can do so in 2024.

The last point (even though I said “finally” above), is that it is incredibly disrespectful to the hundreds of thousands of Americans working their tails off to elect Joe Biden to suggest that their work is part of a big game of, “Just kidding, made you look!” They believe in Joe Biden and are willing to work hard for him because they believe in him. Let’s not abuse their well-placed trust in and admiration for Joe Biden.

Categories Accountability, Biden, Elections, Fake News, Fraud, Media, Propaganda, Republicans, Trump

Irish Times: Why Does the Media Normalize a Wannabe Dictator? $$$

By dianeravitch
February 15, 2024 //
62

A friend sent me this editorial from The Irish Times to show how our Presidential campaign is viewed in a normal country.

The Irish Times titled it:

Trump’s flaming chainsaw circus act is back. And so is the media gravy train

The candidate with openly violent dictatorship ambitions is being allowed to campaign as a normal politician

The point: the media is treating Trump with kid gloves because he’s good for their bottom line. Biden is boring.

Way back in 2016 TV network chiefs knew the destruction they were wreaking with their 24/7 razzle-dazzle Trump coverage. “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” said the network’s chairman Les Moonves. “The money’s rolling in and this is fun . . .Bring it on, Donald.”

Now we know that Trump was gifted around $2 billion in free media plus substantially more coverage than his opponents.

Fast forward to 2021, a few months after president Joe Biden was sworn in. US journalist and author Julie Ioffe asked some reporters how life had been since the Trump circus left town.

“Trump has been good for many journalists professionally, myself included,” said one.

“I mean, it wasn’t just the fact that Trump was a gravy train,” said another. “It’s also juxtaposed (against) the most boring administration in modern history. You go from a circus with flaming chainsaws to… what? An old man watching his dog?”

That “old man” was just a year older than Trump is now.

Since then the old man’s economy has added a record number of jobs and sees stocks – a Trump fixation during his presidency – at a record high.

Trump, meanwhile, is facing 91 criminal indictments, some relating to attempts to overthrow the government. In October alone he said that shoplifters should be shot and suggested an army general should be executed for treason. He promises a mass deportation programme with internment camps near the border, and plans to use the military to crush street protests via the Insurrection Act, while being a dictator on day one. At a global level he is happy to throw small sovereign countries like Estonia under Putin’s tanks.

Yet this man, with all the mental acuity of a howling dog, is ahead in the polls. The flaming chainsaw circus act is back with a vengeance, and for some in the media so is that sweet gravy train.

Might the two be linked?

The ceaseless drumbeat about Biden’s age and decline – reminiscent of the saturation 2016 coverage of Hillary Clinton’s emails – is once again enabling the candidate with openly violent dictatorship ambitions to campaign as a normal politician, as if this was the Kentucky Derby.

In a speech to the National Rifle Association last Friday, Trump lied dozens of times, slurred his words and confused basic facts, according to a furious Biden campaign adviser. “But you won’t hear about any of it if you watch cable news, read this weekend’s papers, or watch the Sunday shows,” raged TJ Ducklo, accusing beltway reporters of being numb to Trump’s horrifying candidacy. Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?

Yet in the weekend’s New York Times Biden’s age and memory were addressed negatively by no fewer than three prominent columnists plus the paper’s editorial board, along with multiple news stories. On a Sunday current affairs show a CNN chyron asked, “Is Biden’s age now a bigger problem than Trump’s indictments?” It was the classic circular question which could have begun with the media itself asking about its own role in the growing “problem”.

An outlier was a Washington Post feature describing Biden’s work schedule around the special counsel interviews he sat down for on the two days following the appalling October 7th Hamas atrocity. He was brain-shifting between calls with world leaders about a threatened Middle East conflagration and 2½-hour sessions of questions about decades-old events.

Given that Biden was exonerated on several counts while others were deemed no longer sensitive or not provable, the special counsel’s scathing commentary on his memory was remarkable in terms of timing.

Trump was back again in a federal courthouse in a criminal case involving classified documents and obstruction of FBI efforts. “I’m in court. Again!” boasted his campaign message.

Still, the growing consensus is that Biden is the one with the problem and must bow out.

There are reasons why this is barely feasible, a big one being that the deadline for candidates’ primary ballot submissions, involving a hefty fee and many thousands of voter signatures, has already passed in most states. If, having won enough delegates to be unsurpassable, Biden then withdraws, the nomination could be decided on the floor of the Democratic National Convention in August, where delegates could choose a saviour candidate instead. Not many ambitious big names, timing their run, want to pit themselves against a sitting president. Plus Biden has the funds and has already proven himself against Trump.

So the more pressing question is how a responsible media weighs up the declining memory of a mostly successful pro-democracy incumbent versus the threat of a vile, vengeful, authoritarian alternative.

Most people have no idea how dangerously deranged an unfiltered Trump looks on his own platform. So there is a balance to be struck: how to cover Trump as a candidate while printing the unvarnished truth of what he actually says. What most people see instead is the text-heavy, sanitised, balanced – as opposed to objective – headlines of the mainstream media and/or the polarised call-and-response of a social media that rewards hate and ignorance.

Maybe the mainstream solution involves in-your-face tactics such as replacing the big front page images several times a day with unfiltered Trump social statements in a size and font readable at 50m….

Imagine bold-faced headlines in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, USA Today, the Miami Herald, etc., stating “TRUMP LIES AGAIN ABOUT…..”

That would mean reporting facts, not “what he said.”

Categories Biden, Democracy, Elections, Media, Trump

John Sweeney: When Tucker Carlson Met Putin

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2024 //
26

I have not seen Tucker Carlson’s interview of Vladimir Putin but I’ve heard plenty about it. On Chris Wallace’s show, Bret Stephens of the New York Times called Tucker the “Tokyo Rose” of our time. Hillary Clinton, interviewed on MSNBC by Alex Wagner, said he was “a useful idiot,” a term first used by Lenin to describe the dupes who parroted Soviet propaganda.

British investigative journalist John Sweeney reviewed Tucker’s interview and was even more scathing in his reaction. John Sweeney blogs at JohnSweeneyRoars. There is more to read so open the link.

He wrote:

Two narcissists but only one looking-glass: what was so bleakly and blackly comical about the Russian strong man Vladimir Putin granting an audience to the far-right showman, Tucker Carlson, was that even the American stooge could not hide his irritation at how boring the little man in the Kremlin was. Putin sensed that annoyance and gave Carlson bitch-slap after bitch-slap.

It would have been more amusing if Carlson had tottered out but the gravity of their shared neo-fascist agenda kept the two planet-sized egos in orbit, just. However, the big reveal of the-useful-idiot-meets-serial-killer show was that the two beauties really didn’t get on. Down the track, I look forward to a leak of what Carlson really felt about Putin. Lines like: “ungrateful dwarf sonofabitch” come to the novelist in me.

Sweeney the journalist notes the glorious moment when Putin upends the conventions and attacks the supplicant for a previous job application. Putin, puffy cheeked on steroids as ever, is waxing long about the 2014 Maidan revolution when the unarmed Ukrainian opposition took to the streets to bring down Kremlin puppet President Viktor Yanukovych:
Putin: “The armed opposition committed a coup in Kiev. What is that supposed to mean? Who do you think you are? I wanted to ask the then US leadership.

Tucker: With the backing of whom?

Vladimir Putin: With the backing of CIA, of course, the organization you wanted to join back in the day, as I understand. We should thank God, they didn’t let you in.

Carlson looks so mortified that I wondered whether his carefully coiffed hairdo might levitate in horror, as well it might. Who would have known that this career anti-elite hobgoblin had once tried to join the Company? Well, the former head of the Russian intelligence service, for one.

I feel I am entitled to be critical of Tucker Carlson because, firstly, he is a traitor to the human soul, and, secondly, I have interviewed Putin myself. Back in 2014, after the shooting down of MH17 by a Russian BUK missile, my colleagues at BBC Panorama and I worked out that the little man in the Kremlin was going to open some museum of mammothology in Yakutsk in the far east of Siberia. I rocked up, popped my question, Putin was caught in the bright lights of the Kremlin’s patsy media cameras – they thought my popping up had official permission – and Peskov, his PR man, was embarrassed. A few hours a goon came and punched me in the stomach. The Kremlin didn’t like my question. Still, I got off lightly.

Carlson’s interview set out several things about Putin to his core audience of ignorant white Americans who don’t like the twenty-first century (although they have been pretty clear to some of us for two decades, more): that Putin is boring, very; that he is nasty, very; that he is used to getting his own way to a pathological extent; that he is a liar; that he is incapable of explaining why he has invaded Ukraine in simple terms that make sense because he can’t.

Carlson wanted so little from the Russian dictator but the pleonexic couldn’t bring himself to be the least bit generous. Pleonexia is a term first applied to Putin by the great Kremlin-watcher Masha Gessen, meaning: having an irresistible urge to take things that rightfully belong to another. I wrote a whole chapter of my book, Killer In The Kremlin, on Putin’s craving to take from others: objects, countries, yes and yes, but also the time of others too. Putin turned up late for our departed Queen, late for the King of Spain, late for the Pope and four and a half hours late, of course, for then German Chancellor, Angela Merkel. So Carlson should not have been the least bit surprised that Putin stole his time, wasting the precious first half hour of the interview by setting out a dark fairy story that history showed that Russia has a right to repress Ukraine.

How can I best summarise Putin’s case? He was talking bollocks, total bollocks. The evolution of Ukraine and then Russia – Kyiv was a well-organised citadel in the tenth century when Moscow was still a few sticks in a bog – is messy and complicated. But the modern world started in 1945 and rule number one, in Europe at least, was that no country should invade another. Nothing whatsoever from the past trumps that. Full stop.

One other Putin comment which will drive up the Polish defence budget by another five percentage points was that the Poles somehow brought on 1939 themselves, that they should have negotiated with Hitler. What? Hello?

Carlson is a great showman, his glands unctuous, his tongue fluent but he is also a profoundly stupid man who even failed to get a degree from the rich kid’s diploma factory his family money sent him to.  I didn’t expect him to challenge Putin on the Russian’s fairytale history lesson but there is one simple thing that even a very thick CIA reject should have cottoned on to. One of Putin’s beefs about Ukraine is that their leaders are Nazi. President Zelenskiy is Jewish. Hello?

OK, let me break this down in a simple way by telling a true story of just how un-Nazi Ukraine is, from my own personal experience. At the height of the Battle of Kyiv, when the Russian army was twelve miles away from the city centre, I got a call from the Jewish Chronicle in London, inviting me to be their stringer. I explained that I wasn’t Jewish. They replied that they knew but there was no-one else. I said yes because it struck me as funny to work for a Jewish paper in a country the Kremlin said was Nazi. I got to hang out with the Chief Rabbi of Ukraine, to see Jewish aid relief to the front lines of Ukraine, to talk to soldiers who were Jewish – and also Muslim and Christian and those with no faith. The one thing I have not seen is strong evidence of Ukraine being Nazi. Because it isn’t.

All Carlson had to do was say: “but Mr Putin, how could Ukraine be Nazi if the President is Jewish?”

He did nothing of the kind. Carlson’s commitment to the cause, some kind of lower case Fascist International, was greater than his nous. But we knew that, didn’t we?
The worry remains that Carlson’s core audience will, once again, place their prejudices above their ability to weigh evidence. That is what the political religion they call MAGA does. What we all saw is a thoroughly horrible human being with a closed mind meeting the President of Russia. The latter, it turns out, is also a thoroughly horrible human being with a very closed mind and a bore – a crushing one at that.

Open the link and read on.

Categories Bias, Extremism, History, International, Media

CNN: “Moms for Liberty” Is Encountering Stiff Resistance

By dianeravitch
February 7, 2024 //
69

When an education story is featured by a major media outlet like CNN, you can bet it’s captured mainstream attention.

Many educators have worried about the pernicious agenda of “Moms for Liberty,” which arrived on the scene in 2021 with a sizable war chest.

What is that agenda? Defaming public schools and their teachers. Accusing them of being “woke “ and indoctrinating students to accept left wing ideas about race and gender. Banning books they don’t like. Talking about “parental rights,” but only for straight white parents who share their values.

M4L got started in Florida, as do many wacky and bigoted rightwing campaigns, but it has been shamed recently by the sex scandal involving one of its co-founders, Brigitte Ziegler. The two other co-founders dropped her name from their website, but the stain persists.

CNN reports that this rightwing group is encountering stiff opposition from parents who don’t share their agenda and who don’t approve of book banning.

The story begins:

Viera, FloridaCNN —

In Florida, where the right-wing Moms for Liberty group was born in response to Covid-19 school closures and mask mandates, the first Brevard County School Board meeting of the new year considered whether two bestselling novels – “The Kite Runner” and “Slaughterhouse-Five” – should be banned from schools.

A lone Moms for Liberty supporter sat by herself at the January 23 meeting, where opponents of the book ban outnumbered her.

Nearly 20 speakers voiced opposition to removing the novels from school libraries. One compared the book-banning effort to Nazi Germany. Another accused Moms for Liberty of waging war on teachers. No one spoke in favor of the ban. About three hours into the meeting, the board voted quickly to keep the two books on the shelves of high schools.

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“Why are we banning books?” asked Mindy McKenzie, a mom and nurse who is a member of Stop Moms for Liberty, which was formed to counter what it calls a far-right extremist group “pushing for book banning and destroying public education.”

“Why are we letting Moms for Liberty infiltrate our school system?”

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Corruption, Curriculum, Democracy, DeSantis, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Read, Gender, Hypocrisy, Injustice, Libraries, Literacy, Literature, Media, Parent Groups, Privatization, Racism
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