Eric Alterman | The Nation

Michael Hastings. (AP Images)

My new "Think Again" column is America Is Much Less Conservative than the Mainstream Media Believe.

My new Nation column is about how little anyone seems to care about the pro-genocide policies in Guatemala pursued by Reagan Administration officials, most particularly Ronald Regan himself, but also especially Elliot Abrams. It’s called “The Upside of Genocide.”

Regarding two deaths this week
I did not know Michael Hastings, but I was on the National Magazine Award jury for which he was nominated but did not win. I did however, write the short description that was read aloud at the ceremony. It read: “Michael Hastings' "The Runaway General” has every element of great magazine reporting in abundance. Hastings’ dogged and diligent interviewing yielded quotes from General Stanley McChrystal and his aides that were so different from the official story that had been published previously that they forced the President of the United States to fire a top commander in wartime. But more than that, Hastings’ used the portrait he painted of McChrystal to open a window on America’s war in Afghanistan. And finally he did so with a prose style so engaging the article had the rare quality of feeling too short… at nearly 8000 words.”

Neither did I know James Gandolfini, but: Once, when I was taking my daughter to trapeze class (or something) at the Chelsea Piers, James and his wife brought his kid. We hung around and listened to our Ipods. Adults could join in but it was (I thought) pretty expensive. Anyway, right before it was over, James ponied up and did the trapeze thing once. It was something to see.

Like a few other Jewish journalists, I was once asked to try out for a role on “The Sopranos.” The call came from Georgina Walken on April Fools day, 2003, but it was not a joke. The day of my tryout was the same day the Iraq war began. I was on a panel at the Cooper Union about the war with a bunch of neocons, but I was not terribly good because I was practicing my lines, which were difficult because the role was to be a mafia pundit, and so a lot of Italian names needed to be pronounced properly. I had not acted in anything since camp in seventh grade when we did a (disastrous) performance of Eugene O’Neil’s “In the Zone.” There were 17 people in the room, including David Chase. I thought I was ok, but they decided to “go in another direction,” which in this case, meant using one of their own writers. They did, however, give a small role to another aspirant, Leon Wieseltier, who managed only one line—“Those motherfuckers”  and blew it, in my opinion.

Meanwhile, many folks, beginning with David Remnick have been proclaiming “The Sopranos” to be the best show of all time as if it were a given. I beg to differ. Here’s this week’s list, in order:

The Wire
Mad Men
The Sopranos
The Odd Couple
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Star Trek
The Simpsons
The Honeymooners
The Larry Sanders Show
Tie between
MASH and The Bob Newhart Show

Alter-reviews:
ZZ Top: The Complete Studio Albums, 1970-1990
The complete Many Loves of Dobie Gillis
GarciaLive Vol. 1: Capitol Theatre and GarciaLive: August 5th 1990 Greek Theater (plus Dave's Picks Volume 6)
Woody Guthrie at 100: Live at the Kennedy Center

I come quite late to the ZZ Top phenomenon. I saw Billy Gibbons play with the Allman Brothers two summers ago and I watched the bearded band close one of Eric Clapton’s guitar fests and I thought he was incredible. Other guitarists say he is best of them all, including the two fellers in band he joined and the guy whose guitar fest he closed. I am not one to judge. But the music on these cds is charming and the guitar work both over-the-top and often awe-inspiring. I also like that they have a consistent sense of humor; something of which neither EC nor the fellows in the ABB could be accused.

They began back in 1969 and are now in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame with more than ten million records sold. This is pretty decently priced at about sixty bucks list and each cd comes in a wallet sleeve that faithfully reproduces the original artwork, including the gatefold designs used for Tres Hombres and Tejas. The set presents, for the first time on CD, the original mixes for ZZ Tops’ First Album, Rio Grande Mud and Tejas. See for yourselves.

The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis predated my years wasted watching television. I learned about Bob Denver’s myriad talents from “Gilligan.” But “Dobie” holds up infinitely better. Created and written by Max Shulman and adapted from Shulman’s short stories, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis premiered on CBS in 1959 and was beloved in an ironic way by cool people long before everything was. It starred all-American guy, Dwayne Hickman, plus Denver as Dobie’s beatnik friend Maynard G. Krebs, Frank Faylen, Florida Friebus, a wonderful Tuesday Weld, believe it or not, Warren Beatty and Sheila James. Guest stars included Rose Marie, Bill Bixby, Yvonne Craig, Richard Deacon, Norman Fell, Ronny Howard, Sherry Jackson, Sally Kellerman, Michael J. Pollard, Michele Lee, Steve Franken, Jo Anne Worley. (Remember her?) Shout! Factory, in collaboration with The Max Shulman Trust is releasing the entire series in a 21 dvd box set with all 147 episodes from 1959-1963, plus special bonus features including original rare pilot footage, bonus episodes from Love That Bob! (The Bob Cummings Show) and The Stu Erwin Show. Have a ball …

GarciaLive Vol. 1: Capitol Theatre and Garcialive 2: August 5th 1990 Greek Theater

The first of these sets is a three CD collection culled from a two shows at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey on March 1, 1980 recorded by a multi-tracked on a 24-track mobile rig for WNEW's broadcast of the early show. WNEW, for those who don’t know, was the greatest radio station of all time onceuponatime. This makes for a much higher sound quality than many of the previously released JGB shows, though the song selection and musicianship is typically first rate. I particularly love his “Tangled Up in Blue.” (The Robert Hunter vocals, though, I dunno.) The second release is two CDs, a much later iteration of the band and includes Bela Fleck on "Midnight Moonlight.” The packaging is just fine. (The same company, ATO, has also released The Music Is You: A Tribute to John Denver, but I found this disappointing. Perhaps you will not.)

While we’re here, I should also say that if you enjoyed the PBS broadcast of the Kennedy Center centennial tribute to Woody Guthrie, (or especially if you missed it, or could not stand the pledge breaks and did watch it on dvr as would have been wise,) you might want the CD/DVD package recently released by my friends at Legacy. It’s not as great as “A Vision Shared” but few things in life are. It does have performances by Rosanne Cash, Tom Morello, Lucinda Williams and a wonderful "You Know The Night" by Jackson Browne, which he wrote from one of Woody’s letters to his wife. It’s called “Woody Guthrie at 100: Live at the Kennedy Center.”

Also, I almost forgot to mention Dave's Picks Volume 6, the newest in the limited edition of Dead shows that sells out almost entirely by subscription, so if you want one of these or any in the future, you better register at http://www.dead.net/, This one is 2 complete shows with never-before-heard material from 2/2/70 Fox Theater, St. Louis, MO and 12/20/69 Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco. Lotta Pigpen, if that’s your thing, it certainly isn’t mine. (Jesus, it’s a 35 minute “Lovelight.”)  Good mix though; great “Dark Star.” See you at the movies. 

Now here, (finally) is Reed:

“Equal” does not Equal “Fair”
by Reed Richardson
Recently, opponents of same-sex marriage have been complaining that every major news organization in the country is essentially ignoring them. Now that just 4 in 10 of Americans oppose legalizing same-sex marriage, anti-SSM groups have developed a sudden appreciation for the tyranny of the majority, arguing that their point of view is in no way getting the corresponding level of media exposure. And guess what? Just this week, the Pew Research Center released a two-month news analysis confirming a heavy tilt toward pro-gay marriage sources throughout the mainstream media (even on Fox News!). So, case closed, the “liberal media” strikes again, right?

Wrong.

All too often, a logical fallacy plagues the thinking about modern journalism—it’s this idea that fair coverage necessarily means striving for equal coverage. Admittedly, in an era where harried journalists now routinely do more with less and a million online press critics have bloomed, it can be hard to resist the temptation of the easy “he said, she said, leave it there” story formulation. But simply doling out representative portions of opposing ideas or arguments and trusting the public to figure it all out is a crude, self-defeating strategy. It reinforces the notion that professional journalism is a commodity and that its practitioners shouldn’t be in the business of making value judgments or adding context to the news they report.

The intrinsic value of a free and independent press in our democracy, however, isn’t about transmitting information the public. Instead, it’s about guiding the public toward deeper truths and wiser decisions. And to live up this greater responsibility, the profession of journalism long ago made a philosophical choice, and a liberal one at that. It adopted the intellectual ideals of the Enlightenment as its structural framework. As a result, our press’ ethos rests on pillars like documentary evidence, source attribution, open dialogue, and an egalitarian bent toward the powerless over the powerful. These analytical tools are best used to uncover fresh perspective on the world around us. If the press is to really do its job, it can’t merely function like a giant mirror, always offering up an unthinking reflection of society at large. It must also enjoy the freedom to explore more broadly and deeply, to find the microscopic or mountaintop view.

For instance, in a 2012 Gallup poll, 46% of Americans expressly rejected evolution, instead professing to believe God created the earth in its present form at one moment within the last 10,000 years. While this figure may alarm you (it certainly does me), it is unquestionably a fact worth reporting. And yet this does not mean our professional press is also duty bound to reflect this widespread skepticism of evolution in its science reporting. To maintain a cohesive narrative, the media has struck a bargain with itself—and by extension, the public—that it is willing accept some fundamentally proven realities as givens. So, if an overwhelming amount of scientific evidence says the world is closer to 4.5-billion years old or that climate change is real and man-made, the press should not feel it necessary to inject doubt into its science reporting to appease the half of the country that might disagree because of spiritual reasons.

Likewise, as scientific consensus evolves, so too do societal norms. And just as the press can be seen as being on the leading edge of accepting the former, it often absorbs the latter more quickly than the general public as well. A good example of this would be the civil rights movement. In the summer before the signing of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, public opinion stood at remarkably similar levels to where approval of same-sex marriage is today, with a bare majority supporting it. While I couldn’t find any contemporaneous analyses similar to Pew’s on the prevalence of pro and anti-civil rights sources in news articles, there is anecdotal evidence that the major news organizations had assumed a central role in pushing the movement’s momentum. Former Los Angeles Times correspondent Jack Nelson recalled his own history reporting on the movement as well as the press’s ownership of the issue in a 2001 essay in Human Rights magazine: 

"Before the civil rights movement, the way blacks were treated by the law—and the way most newspapers and other news organizations dealt with that treatment—made a mockery of almost every principle lawyers and journalists professed to believe in. Then, as a changing news media began to show the whole country how the law was applied—or misapplied—in the South, public opinion cried out for change.”

But what the critics of the press’s coverage civil rights or climate change or gay marriage never acknowledge is the longstanding role the media had played in bolstering the status quo. Indeed, it’s a bit rich for people like Brian Brown, head of the anti-SSM group National Organization for Marriage, to proclaim his outrage about a lack of media coverage during the past few months when his viewpoint enjoyed complete and utter dominance in the press since, well, forever. The downfall of the same-sex marriage opponents’ esteem in the eyes of the public and the press shouldn’t have come as a shock, however. Once public sentiment on the issue reached near parity—thanks in large part to a generational shift in opinion—anti-SSM forces tried to litigate their morality back into the government. That was their biggest mistake.

In California’s landmark Prop 8 case (which will hopefully be decided by the Supreme Court next week), the plaintiff’s attorney David Boies stripped away the pseudo-intellectual window-dressing and scare tactics of the anti-SSM argument.

"Remember, unlike abortion, the court is not creating a new legal right," [Boies] said. "This is a right that has been well recognized for 100 years in terms of the right of individuals to marry. And all that's at issue here is, can the State of California take away that right depending on the sex of your intended partner?…Is there a rational base for that distinction? Can you prove that it harms heterosexual marriage? Children? Can you prove it harms anybody? Why do you make these people suffer if it doesn't help anybody?"

In the end, the presiding judge laid one evidentiary hammer blow after another upon the sham evidence and fake outrage opposing same-sex marriage in his exhaustive, 136-page decision. Afterward, even an objective press could see the tide had turned. Anti-SSM leaders like Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins were left spouting flimsy talking points about defending the culture of traditional marriage and grasping at straw man threats like no-fault divorce, both of which, as Boies pointed out, have little or nothing at all to do with the gender of one’s spouse.

No doubt, opponents of same-sex marriage should enjoy their Constitutional right to believe whatever they wish and practice the marriage rituals of their respective religions free from government interference. Nevertheless, when their legal, societal, and physiological reasons to oppose same-sex marriage all fall apart, then the slippery definition of morality becomes their last and only redoubt of defense (and even that appears to be falling apart). At this point, for the press to keep giving anti-SSM groups equal coverage in the press amounts to tainting a well-researched article on the dangers of global warming with a raft of creationism myths

Groups of NOM's ilk will likely cry that this squelches debate, but giving less time to specious arguments based on phony claims and ad hominem attacks actually frees up media oxygen for more productive viewpoints and insightful discussions. Indeed, this kind of unapologetic intellectual gatekeeping, coupled with more intrepid reporting, would make for a much fairer press and a healthier democracy. In the specific case of the same-sex marriage, fairness will finally be achieved when gay and lesbian Americans are granted equal treatment under the law. But when it comes to news coverage, reflexively treating all sides equally in this or any other debate is often the furthest thing from fair. Indeed, it can be its own form of tyranny.

Contact me directly at reedfrichardson (at) gmail dot com. Also, I’m on Twitter here—(at)reedfrich.

The Mail:
Charles Kaiser
Manhattan
Dear Reed,

"But if the insidious influence of cash on our Congress is the real culprit, an alarmingly incurious Beltway journalism should be considered an un-indicted co-conspirator."

This attack on Bob's incuriosity is, I think, rather unfair, given the title (and subject) of his immediately previous book:

So Much Damn Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government.

Have you read it?

All Best, Charles Kaiser

Reed replies:
Charles,

The quote from my review you cite does not specifically call out Robert for incuriosity—but instead identifies a broader community for criticism—for a reason. Of course, not every single member of the DC media suffers from this myopia about money's influence on Congress. And because I immediately followed the sentence in question with a long block quote from the book that, I felt, was making very much the same point (although perhaps not as bluntly), I thought it clear I was agreeing with the author about his critique, not accusing him of the very same failure. If that wasn't how it came across, then I guess that's on me for not making my point effectively.

Regarding So Damn Much Money, yes, I'm familiar with it. And in retrospect, readers interested in this topic would have been better served if I had mentioned Robert's earlier book when establishing his background/bonafides. But my mission here was to review Robert's latest book. And to my mind, the analytical expectations I had for Act of Congress—based on its subtitle—were never fully realized. In fact, I was tempted to argue that his latest book could have been improved by including more context from his previous one, but I've never been a big fan of using an author's own work against them. So, I didn't.

Geoffrey Zoref
Washington DC
You think "Let Em In" is a terrible song? I quite like it. The lyrics are rubbish, as are many Wings' lyrics, but I quite enjoy the beat. It's certainly not worse than Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey, that's for sure.

Mike Dickenson
Bluff City, TN
Doc,

The reason Drudge is rated so high is because people don't know what real jornalism is. They are used to Fox News and other things. There aren't many investigative reporters left. Even 60 Minutes just does either profiles or they become a shill for a new book release. Also once something is wrong, I hear he takes it down.

I've tried discussing things on Facebook with people who read Drudge and watch Fox news and you can't. 95% of the time I just ignore them now.

Mike Pinder is the reason the 1970 Moody Blues is better. He wasn't their best song writer but the music was never as good when he left the band.

Also The Benefit of Mr Kite was largely a John song. I don't think there are many other John songs that Paul does. He should though, his name is on the song writing credits too. I know that Paul plays his songs note for note....but that is what the audience wants.

Eric replies:

Ever see the Lampoon lyrics to Sgt. Pepper?  I remember this one.

“For the benefit of Mr. Kike

There will be a missile strike

On Lebanon….”

Editor's note: To contact Eric Alterman, use this form.

My new “Think Again” column is called “Remembering the ‘Feminine Mystique’” and it’s here.

My new Nation column is called “Ron Fournier, Doomsayer,”  but it could have been called “High Fournierism” or perhaps “Fornierification,” but anyway it’s here.

The Cause is out in paperback and it strikes me as not as long (or thick) as I expected it to be. Here are some of the blurbs we decided to use:

"Alterman’s magnum opus . . . All aspects of liberalism are surveyed .  . . the definitive work on its subject.” — San Francisco Chronicle

“What a relief it is…to read Eric Alterman’s superb new book, THE CAUSE. [I]f your goal is to learn about, and understand, one of this country’s most potent political forces, this book belongs in your hands.”— Boston Globe

“The most thoughtful critique of contemporary liberalism written from within that worldview.." —The Weekly Standard

“…an intellectual (and actual) history of liberalism that even [Lionel] Trilling would approve of… excellent….” — Daily Beast

“…an illuminating history of postwar politics, international relations, culture, and philosophy—all in one scrupulously researched volume.” — Publishers Weekly

Alter-reviews: Big week for live-music
A Tribute to Bobby Short at the Allen Room
Chick Corea with the Jazz@Lincoln Center Orchestra at Rose Hall
Friends of Chick Corea: Musicans of the Future at the Allen Room
Tom Jones at the Bowery Ballroom
Jane Monheit at Birdland
Last Thursday night I took in the tribute to Bobby Short at the Allen Room at Jazz at Lincoln Center. MC’ed by Michael Feinstein, it featured Barbara Carroll, whose voice remains full and fingers nimble at 88 and who worked with Short for decades at the Café Carlyle and they were close friends (but I’m not even sure she was the oldest of the performers that night). Paula West sang some bluesy Cole Porter lyrics that he probably didn’t write and T. Oliver Reid came across as a genuine torch-bearer. Marti Stevens made a rare appearance making this group even older collectively, than the Rolling Stones. But they were also pretty great. The band was Tedd Firth, Andy Farber Ed Howard and Mark McLean.

The evening certainly gave the impression that Short was just as jovial and entertaining in “real life” as on stage. I did manage to scrounge one performance of his out of the people at the Carlyle, luckily, but in my youth, I was not confident I would be able to. The prices, however, were so high as to be prohibitive and so I figured it was not to be.

One day, in mid afternoon, crossing Park Avenue not far from the Carlyle, I was noticed Bobby Short waiting next to me for the light to change. I introduced myself and said that while I was a great admirer of his work, I could not afford the prices at the Carlyle. He said that was too bad, and wished luck before going on his way. About a half a block later, however, he turned around with an idea: “You know,” Short advised me, “you could always marry a rich a girl…”

Friday night, I went back to Jazz at Lincoln Center for two shows on the same night: Chick Corea with the (complete) Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and then Beka Gochiashvili and Gadi Lehavi at the Allen Room, playing the music of Corea, with Ravi Coltrane and Wallace Rooney joining in.

Did I mention that Gochiashvili (a Georgian)  Lehavi (an Israeli) were only 17? They played piano together. I only caught their final songs--a thoughtful meditation on Corea’s “Matrix,” but the poise and patience each one demonstrated was impressive, especially given the big guns with whom they were performing.

I was forced to miss most of their performance because of the generosity of program being played at Rose Hall by Corea, Wynton Marsalis and the complete orchestra--with new arrangements, per usual, by members of the band. Chick Corea may be the most versatile composer alive in any musical form. I have been buying his albums since I was a teenager and I still can’t keep up. It would be impossible to do more than scratch the proverbial surface and that’s just what he and the band did though what a pleasure it was to hear them filled out by this incredible big band. Despite the formality of the hall, and everybody but Chick sartorially sporting Brooks Brothers suits, the evening had a relaxed, rather laid-back atmosphere, with Corea and Marsalis trading the mc role and the members of the band taking turns on a striking set of solos. (Mrs. Corea, Gayle Moran, stopped in the middle of her song to congratulate her husband for being able to surprise her on the keyboards after forty years of accompaniment. She, also, could not possibly have been wearing Brooks Brothers, to put it gently.) The selections moved back and forth over the past fifty years--including a striking recent piece commissioned for the the 50th anniversary of the MIT jazz program. Thankfully, there was none of the awful L. Rod Hubbard stuff, but even that is forgiveable, given everything the man has given us over the past half-century.

Saturday night I saw an amazing show by the sexiest seventy-two year old man on the planet, no contest. Tom Jones sounds as good or better than ever, and like so many of us, is much more handsome than he was before with his gray goatee. Seriously, Tom Jones has a voice that needs to be heard live to be believed and his choice of material in his newest incarnation makes him one of the most compelling and exciting performers I’ve seen in years.

With a tight-knit four-piece band, Jones did a 95-minute set that included songs drawn primarily from 2010’s gospel album Praise & Blame and this year’s terrific “Spirit in the Room.”

Drinking what he explained was “Gray Goose water,” he opened with “Tower of Song,” and ran through “Dimming of the Day,” “Just Dropped In,” Bad as Me,” “Sould of a Man” and some John Lee Hooker.

The only throwbacks to Jones’ past was a lovely encore of "Green, Green Grass of Home,"and in, in tribute to George Jones, "He Stopped Loving Her Today."  Now behold the man’s awesomeness in this video: Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young and Tom Jones in 1969.

Finally, Wednesday night, I caught a  shockingly crowded show at Birdland where one of my favorite singers, Jane Monheit, was celebrating the release of her new cd, “The Heart Of The Matter” her eleventh.  Highlights include:

“Golden Slumbers/The Long And Winding Road” by The Beatles to Buffy St. Marie’s “Until It’s Time For You To Go” to “Depende de Nos” by Ivan Lins, Randy Newman’s “When She Loved Me,” and Hoagy Carmichael’s “I Get Along Without You Very Well” along with first song recorded by Monheit on which she has written both the words and the music, “Night Night Stars.”   Believe it or not, she actually turns that horrible “Sing, Sing a song” song into something moving and almost beautiful—though few things are as beautiful as her live version—one of eight arrangements—of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Not even loud German tourists who don’t know you’re not supposed to talk during the performance at Birdland could ruin that.

The new album was produced and arranged by Gil Goldstein, with Michael Kanan on piano, Gil Goldstein on electric piano and accordion, Romero Lubambo on acoustic guitar, Neal on bass, Rick Montalbano on drums, Rogerio Boccato on percussion, David Eggar and Richard Locker on cello, Barry Crawford and Kathleen Nester on alto flute and Sheryl Henze on bass flute and c flute.

Now here’s Reed:

How the Media Enabled U.S. Drone Policy
by Reed Richardson

For a nation that, by 2009, had grown both physically and politically weary from two interminable wars against ghost-like foes, it’s not surprising that the incoming Obama administration latched onto drone strikes as its favorite counterterrorism weapon. After all, in theory, drones have much to commend them. They’re relatively cheap, more readily deployable, don’t risk the lives of American service members, and, best of all, they dangle the enticing prospect of raining pinpoint, Zeus-like vengeance down upon the heads of specified enemy terrorists. Money saved, world safer, bad guys dead, good guys home for dinner. What could possibly be wrong with that?

Well, as is always true in the fog of battle, a lot, actually. In fact, the remote unbridling of lethal force against hard-to-identify individuals based on sometimes muddy, often chaotic intelligence has proven to be a sure-fire recipe to kill dozens of innocent people for every target hit. What’s more, it’s increasingly apparent the drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere have ensnared us in a kind of moral and ethical tar pit—the more we exercise this weapon to fight terrorism, the more we subvert the principles of justice and due process we’re supposedly fighting to uphold.

Thus, the president’s announcement that he’ll be curtailing the use of drone strikes and re-establishing military control over the program is long overdue good news. Following on the heels of Attorney General Eric Holder’s formal acknowledgment this week that the U.S. government killed four of its citizens overseas, three of them accidentally, the administration seems to have finally arrived at some kind of turning point on drones. However, it’s important to note that the new Presidential Policy Guidance on drones Obama signed on Wednesday is classified. Moreover, the administration, as was obvious by the unbowed tone of Holder’s letter to Congress, has by no means abandoned its troubling legal justifications for drone strikes overseas. It has merely deemed the strikes themselves less necessary. This leaves the door open for it, or a subsequent White House administration, to ramp it all back up again. That’s why a heaping helping of skepticism is in order.

Sadly, we’ve gotten anything but skepticism from the press since the drone program’s inception. Instead, the establishment media’s coverage has mostly been of the dutifully credulous variety, when not outright cheerleading. For instance, news organizations have routinely lauded the latest drone “success” or terrorist killed, by citing only “U.S. officials” or their proxies as sources. Little more than government propaganda, this kind of reporting uniformly ignores collateral damage and civilian casualties, and sometimes proves to be grossly inaccurate. (See this erroneous 2009 Fox News report that repeats a U.S. official’s claim about the killing of U.S. citizen Anwar Awlawki, who actually survived the attack in question unharmed.)

In addition to this steady drip of positive news briefs, the press has also served up several larger, gushing portraits of the drone program. For example, there was this cinematic, behind-the-scenes dive into the CIA’s role as well as this flattering, White House-insider account. When not chock full of macho posturing— “we are killing these son of bitches faster than they can grow them”—this reporting spins scenes of a steely but sober commander-in-chief—“The president is not a robotic killing machine. The choices he faces are brutally difficult.” Rarely encountered in the establishment media, though, was any discussion of the growing toll of innocent lives lost or the broadening legal quagmire that accompanied the rapid expansion of drone strikes during Obama’s first term.

Even when the mainstream media’s coverage of the drone program doesn’t resort to supple obeisance, there’s still a festering unwillingness to connect all the dots. For instance, New York Times reporters Mark Mazzetti and Charlie Savage have been rare bright spots on drone coverage. But I scratch my head in wonder at why Mazzetti and the Times don’t pounce on one of the administration’s key drone strike justifications—that it’s not feasible to capture any of these suspected terrorists on the ground. This is particularly true in light of a Times article co-authored by Mazzetti from this past February, which profiled an elite Yemeni counterterrorism unit trained by U.S. forces for just such a task, but who are stuck doing traffic duty instead.

Indeed, head down to the story’s kicker quote, which raises serious questions about the proffered reasoning for drone strikes in Yemen: “‘For sure, we could be going after some of these guys,’” the [Yemeni] officer said. ‘That’s what we’re trained to do, and the Americans trained us. It doesn’t make sense.’” Ah, but perhaps it does, since any suspected Al Qaeda member captured in Pakistan or Yemen— even if they’re a U.S. citizen as Awlawki was—could end up at the prison in Guantanamo, a civil liberties nightmare that Obama has been unable to close down. Again, this is a critical discussion point that, up until Obama’s announcement today, has been missing from the traditional press’s coverage—until Guantanamo is closed down, it’s almost guaranteed that the drone program won’t be.  

But while it’s one thing for the press to fall victim to source bias or a hedging its bets about challenging the government directly, it’s quite another for it to perpetuate a self-fulfilling prophecy among the public—that drone strikes are overwhelmingly popular. Now, it is true that during the Obama’s administration’s first term, the few polls conducted on the topic—including 2011 and 2012 surveys from Pew and one from ABC News/Washington Post—seemed to indicate broad, bipartisan majorities supported the drone program. And as these numbers dovetailed nicely with the Beltway conventional wisdom, the DC press corps gladly ate this narrative up, splashing headlines like “The American public loves drones.” Of course, these same news outlets consistently overlooked the fact that they were busy feeding the public a steady diet of upbeat drone stories in the first place. Round and round we go.

Still, the press’s negligence on the drone program’s popularity extends beyond a mere lack of self–awareness. Its failure involves digging deeper into the polling toplines on drones. If it did, it would have found alarming inconsistencies in the questions and presumptions baked into the drone terminology. For example, the 2011 Pew study’s question was incredibly vague, asking about “the use of unmanned ‘drone’ aircraft for aerial attacks in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.” Conflating a close air support mission in support of U.S. troops against Taliban in Afghanistan with a CIA-approved strike of a possible Al Qaeda member “elsewhere” in Waziristan makes the data gleaned here almost worthless. Similarly, Pew’s 2012 poll posed a question that said drones “target extremists” in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Notably, Pew’s wording allows for no hint of doubt about the guilt or innocence of these extremists, which is akin to gauging the popularity of sentencing already convicted criminals to jail. Indeed, it’s amazing that only 62 percent of Americans supported drones in this context.

Lately, pollsters seemed to have awakened to this stilted language, and most now identify drone targets as “suspected terrorists.” But even this formulation can present problems because just using the word “terrorist” can trigger a strong psychological response that blots out a single qualifier. (How many parents would say they’re OK with a “suspected child molester” living next door?) What’s more, pollsters never ask follow-up questions about the consequences of these suspicions being wrong or point out how often these drones miss their targets, to see if the potential for killing innocent men, women, and children might cool the zeal for drone strikes. Such nuance can make a huge difference, however. Sadly, it took a grandstanding stunt in the shape of a Senate filibuster by drone-supporting Senator Rand Paul for pollsters and the press to figure this out.

Just days before Paul’s filibuster this past March, Fox News, no slouch when it comes to tapping into the latest oncoming right-wing outrage, added more questions to its own drone policy poll, mirroring the objections of Paul. Lo and behold, it found that as you fleshed out drone use scenarios, like the targeting of suspected terrorists who were also U.S. citizens or who were located on U.S. soil, support for drone strikes fell below majority support. Weeks later, a Gallup Poll using a similar array of questions, found broad disapproval< of drone use in all but the most basic (read: least detailed) case.

Does Paul deserve credit for changing the minds of Americans? I highly doubt it. A more likely explanation is that a latent unease for the use of drone strikes already resided among the public or has been slowly growing for years. But the Beltway press was either uninterested or unwilling to ask the right questions to ferret it out. Paul’s most important contribution was not to eloquently argue the moral and legal case against drones—his superciliousness I already linked to previously. It was to provide the “objective” news outlets a convenient Republican stand-in, so they could finally justify covering the drone issue now that it fell within the confines of a partisan debate. It’s telling that the Obama administration’s reset of drone policy took until now to occur, after all the newly critical press coverage and Congressional hearings took place. Or, as Long War Journal editor Bill Roggio—who has covered this issue tirelessly for years—noted about all the newfound sunshine on drones: “I get the sense that the microscope on the program is leading to greater selectivity in ordering strikes.” 

That’s perhaps the most important lesson we should learn about the press’s complicit behavior on drones during the past few years. Public scrutiny can eventually translate into political action. But by going along to get along, the media for far too long provided the Obama administration the cover it needed to freely conduct a counterproductive drone policy that will reverberate for years to come. And the press’s passivity, to this day, enables the president to excuse his actions through a poisoned calculus, one that weighs the largely forgotten civilian casualties from U.S. drone strikes against the innocents killed from terrorist attacks by other Muslims. That kind of ugly moral relativity should remind the media that there is still a toll being paid, and a steep one at that, for having failed to hold this president accountable on his drone policy. 

Contact me directly at reedfrichardson (at) gmail dot com. Also, I’m on Twitter here—(at)reedfrich.

The mail:
Sanford Sklansky, Racine

Regarding Watergate, one of the things the precipitated Watergate was that Nixon wanted files that would show at worst that he had committed treason by trying to stall peace talks while Johnson was still president.  Johnson had Walt Rostow take those files before Johnson left the White House.  The files later went to the Johnson library in 1974 and where not to be opened for 50 years.  They were later opened in 1994.  While not specifying exactly the Nixon tapes do indicate that this is what they were looking for.  Robert Parry does a lot better job of explaining than I can.



Secondly this has not gotten much reporting in the main stream media.  Here is Greenwald explaining it all.

He wrote a column about this the other day as well.

Frank Moraes
Santa Rosa
Hi-

Your article "Worse Than Watergate?" was great. But the PPP results included some related results. One was that fewer (70% vs. 74%) thought that Benghazi was worse than Iran Contra. I tend to think this indicates that a few more people actually remember Iran Contra. Similarly, the same number (74%) thought that Benghazi was worse than Teapot Dome! (I had a lot of fun with this fact at my website, if you are interested.) There is no question that almost no one in the poll even knew what Teapot Dome was. And that makes me think that no one remembers what Watergate was either.

Regardless, all the poll really tells us is that Republicans don't like Obama and that the conservative media outlets have been pushing the Benghazi scandal. You are right to be concerned that people don't remember Watergate. But that can't be a surprise when they don't know where Benghazi is. On the other hand, I hope they end the embargo so I can visit Benghazi, Cuba before I die!

-Frank


PS: Have you seen the brilliant "The Mitchell and Web Look" bit about Watergate-gate? It would go well with your article.

Editor's note: To contact Eric Alterman, use this form.

My new “Think Again” column on Niall Ferguson’s ridiculous apology and the issues it raises is here.

My new Nation column advises that regarding the Tribune papers, we worry about Murdoch, not Koch, here.

Alter-Reviews (These are pretty long, but take heart, Reed is below):

Crosby, Stills & Nash with Jazz@Lincoln Center Orchestra.

Steve Tyrell singing Sammy Cahn at the Café Carlyle.

The final weekend of Jazzfest.

I must have done something nice for someone at some point in my life because fate rewarded me with a last minute ticket to the annual benefit show presented at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center featuring the complete orchestra together with Crosby, Stills and Nash.

The old guys were thrilled by the experience, which David Crosby likened to “getting to play with the bigger kids.”  They even dressed up in Brooks Brothers suits, like the rest of the band and wore shoes with laces. The show consisted of CSN songs re-imagined with jazz arrangements by members of the orchestra. It was rarely a complete success, but always an audacious and welcome experiment. I say “audacious” because unlike previous participants in these benefit/collaborations, Eric Clapton and Paul Simon or even Willie Nelson, one cannot easily the jazz, or even blues elements of the CSN catalogue.

I particularly liked the latin vibe attached to “Long Time Coming,” the big-band swing of “Military Madness” and back and forth dueling in “Marrakesh Express.” The deserved crowd-pleasers were a wonderful “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” with an impressive Steve Stills solo that mimicked “Within You Without You” and a lovely Crosby/Nash duet on “Guinnevere,” with Wynton Marsalis perched between them playing a quiet trumpet accompaniment.

As it ended, and Nash announced that “I think we have time for one more song before Brooks Brothers takes the suits back,” they ended as do all CSN shows: with a sing-along “Teach Your Children.” But this time the crowd wouldn’t leave and so they formed a second line and danced and chanted around the stage for another ten minutes, with everybody (I imagine) thinking how lucky they were to be there. J@LC has a Chick Corea and a Bobby Short tribute coming up next week so you should be able to find me there too. More here.

I also caught a wonderfully up-tempo show by the great Steve Tyrell who has developed into a kind of latter-day Tony Bennett but with a touch of Tom Waits in his voice. He’s doing a run at the Café Carlyle through May 18 in celebration of his brand new 10th album, It’s Magic: The Songs of Sammy Cahn. It is also Cahn’s centennial year. I had a wonderful time, as Tyrell is a charming storyteller and an almost irresistible interpreter of the classics to which he devotes himself, pretty much exclusively. (I did get him to give the crowd about a half of “Spinning Wheel” in honor of his B,S& T days and the fact that its original trumpeter Lew Soloff is in the band.)

 Anyway, the album was a marvelous idea. Cahn’s songs are quite well known, but their composer is not. Tyrell told the crowd that he was drawn to the material because of the moment in American popular culture when, just before the Beatles, “the old-world thinking ran into the sexual revolution. That’s around 1958. Before that, everybody was ‘goody two-shoes,’ sleeping in twin beds on TV. Then all of sudden, there was the Rat Pack, Las Vegas, James Bond, and Playboy magazine. Things started getting sexy,” Tyrell explains.  This is the period most revered by this current generation as witnessed by the success of Mad Men, the remakes of Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve and Thirteen, and this year’s salute to James Bond at the 2013 Oscars.  And then there’s Diddy with his Rat Pack Vodka commercials.” (Actually Mad Men’s a little later, but still…) The songs--“Ain’t That a Kick in the Head”--“Come Fly with Me-- “All the Way,”  etc, are often associated with Sinatra. Nobody can compete with that and Tyrell doesn’t try. He’s not new arrangements and a different approach.“

You can’t have a bad time at a Steve Tyrell show, but you can spend a great deal of money. The cover at the Carlyle  runs between $60 and $160.  My intrepid reporting discovered that a Gray Goose martini will set you back $22.00 plus tax and tip.  That’s what I call a kick in the head….

More than 425,000 fans attended the 2013 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage

Festival. Here’s a report on the final weekend by one of them:

New Orleans Jazz Festival

by Katelyn Belyus

SATURDAY

The rain was gone, and with the sun came droves of people, which is to be expected for the last Saturday of Jazz Fest. After marveling at my stuffed artichoke (and the idea that each year, there must be thousands of artichokes plucked, trimmed, cleaned, and stuffed for the masses), I checked out Robert Mirabal. He's pretty much a jack-of-all-trades from Taos, where he lives a traditional Pueblo lifestyle. In addition to writing poetry and making music (for which he's won two Grammys), he paints, acts, farms, and is known for his work on the Native American flute. From far away, his sputtering movements reminded me of Iggy Pop, and his flute-playing floated through the crowd. “It's the music where the ceremony begins... it's the dance where the ceremony begins... it's the blood where the ceremony begins... demand that! Demand that! Demand that!” He commanded the crowd, and they answered by dipping their hands in some sort of ceremonial bowl that was passed around the first few rows of people. “Your prayers will go to my river,” he promised.

I needed a break from the seriousness, and Chubby Carrier and the Bayou Swamp Band (also a Grammy winner) was just that. “I wanna thank my granddaddy for introducing me to Zydeco music,” Carrier said before going into the jumpy, accordion-driven “Jalapena Lena.” A blend of Cajun, blues, and rhythm and blues music, Zydeco is a uniquely American, and many a Fest-er celebrated by cheering on the guy playing his washboard and by dancing in the mud, clad in white shrimping boots, their bellies proudly exposed.

Next up: The Little Willies, also known as “Norah Jones' country band.” Of course, they're much more than Jones on the piano and vocals, but it's worth noting that her voice is so well-suited for country, and especially for their vocal harmonies. Their music is a little country, a little bluegrass, marked by the molasses in Jones' voice. It wasn't immediate get-up-and-dance music, but by the time they launched into their cover of Johnny Cash's “Tennessee Stud,” people were moving. Word on the street was they did a stand-out cover of Dolly Parton's heartbreaking “Jolene,” perhaps the finest example of a successful pop song written in a minor key.

I was torn between the two major acts of the night--Fleetwood Mac and Frank Ocean--and I decided on Fleetwood first and Ocean to follow. Of course, FM came out to “The Chain,” and then rolled right into “Dreams,” which, though predictable, did not make it any less awesome. I'm a huge FM fan, but have never seen them live, and I was struck by how effortlessly they come together, even after all these years (or perhaps because of all these years?). And yet they still know how to write solid songs, especially crowd-pleasers, as they revealed with “Sad Angel,” an upbeat song recently released in April that literally asks the crowd to “call out for more.” I danced as best I could, which was no minor feat considering I was up to my ankles in mud, with my boat shoes struggling to stay on my feet. They went into “Rhiannon” and everyone around me-- college guys, hippie gals, parents, kids-- sung along with Stevie, wearing her signature long black sleeves on the hottest day of the weekend. Before going into a few songs off “Tusk,” including the title track and “Sara,” Lindsay Buckingham noted how the album was famously not wanted by record execs but seemed vindicated in its popular appeal that has grown over time. “Time has revealed the reason that was done,” he said about the album before launching into “Not That Funny” and practically shouting at the record label. As they began “Looking Out for Love,” (Buckingham pointed out that he was “defending [love]”), I trudged over to Frank Ocean's stage, my current love whose music I would defend with my life.

I joined the crowd towards the end of “Super Rich Kids,” a cutting critique of said subject matter, with lines like “Super rich kids with nothing but loose ends/ super rich kids with nothing but fake friends.” For those of you unfamiliar with Frank Ocean, I implore you to check him out. A native of New Orleans, he's young, vibrant, and black, and his music is lyrically eloquent and technically lush. He's a cross between hip-hop and R&B, but with intensely personal lyrics. He gained press last summer with the arrival of his Channel: Orange album that coincided with his coming out-- how far out, people tend to disagree-- but he has spoken and written openly about loving another man, and it's both amazing and incredibly sad that it's become such a topic of conversation-- the “out” black R&B kid. Not surprisingly, other artists seem split on the idea-- some embrace him, some question its validity, and some hate him for it, as Chris Brown (who nauseates me to begin with) demonstrated after a very public physical altercation (or were there two?). Ocean, for what it's worth, maintains a very strong sense of privacy, but still remains very public-- he's a perfect example of personal curation in the Twitter age.

I'd heard mixed reviews about his live performances and the sound quality, but when I arrived, his voice was crystal clear, his falsetto mesmerizing, and he was smiling. My heart leapt. The crowd was mixed and knew most of his lyrics, and it was nice to be nestled among so many young people, gay and straight, of all racial backgrounds, who could throw up their hands to “Thinkin Bout You” (featuring an electric cello and Ocean's crisp vocals) and not care who the song was about. There's something about Ocean that crosses racial and gender boundaries and touches people at their core, because of the honest mix of pleasure and pain in his lyrics. I first heard “Bad Religion” last year on an alt-rock station in Philly, and I stopped everything and sat down slowly. I had never heard anything like it-- a love song for a man by a man, as told in this century's confessional: inside a cab, with a non-English-speaking driver who can't judge, with incredible lines about what it is to live disguised, “Taxi driver, I swear I got three lives/balanced on my head like steak knives.” The first time I heard it, I had chills. Hearing it again live was perfect-- aside from his having to stop and re-start because he hadn't been counted in correctly-- and human, and I became untethered as I watched the crowd's wants and needs collide.

SUNDAY

I woke up exhausted from a night of dancing to Sunpie & the Louisiana Sunspots, a happy, upbeat mix of blues, Caribbean, funk and Zydeco fronted by Sunpie Barnes on the accordion and vocals. I’d missed him at the fest, so I caught him at Dos Jefes Cigar Bar on the West Riverside. As I walked in, Sunpie was in the middle of an original that sounded like a funky accordion take on “You Sexy Thing,” and he was surrounded by Fest-ers, their shoes caked with mud a telltale giveaway.

Sunday at the Jazz Fest was glorious—less heat, no mud, and a smaller crowd. I’d come to specifically to see the Black Keys, but had a few stops beforehand.

First up were the New Orleans Nightcrawlers, another brass band with some heavy, sophisticated trumpet work and typically energetic call and response from the crowd. They hit the classic “I’ll Fly Away,” eliciting the most cheers so far from a local band, and the musicians were joined on stage by a pair of kids, one wearing a fake mustache, presumably related to a band member.

I promised my brother I’d check out the Pine Leaf Boys, a Cajun band from South Louisiana he fell in love with around the same time he took an interest in grilling and noodling, a form of bare-fisted catfishing (it’s as painful as it sounds). “Prepare for your mind to be blown,” he texted me. The Pine Leaf Boys were a great, even mix of fiddles, guitars, drums, and accordions. They’ve been nominated for four Grammys but are still waiting for a win. Their energy was contagious, and they played through a whirlwind of Cajun and Creole dancehall hits.

Finally, it was time for the Black Keys, a bluesy indie rock band formed back in the early ‘00s but whose popularity has grown exponentially in recent years (they landed a coveted music spot on SNL in 2011). They started as a garage rock duo—yes, like the White Stripes, Local H, and the Kills—with Dan Auerbach on guitar and vocals and Patrick Carney on drums. For the past few years, they’ve been touring with a full band, which sort of cheapened the duo aesthetic for me, but I was open to hear them. Caveat: I was open to rock out with them. Remember “Heavy Soul?” I firmly believe that song was made for shaking. Even the more recent—and more pop—“Lonely Boy” crushes as a rock song. I last rocked out to it in a room full of 30-somethings at a wedding in upstate New York, and I figured Jazz Fest would be similar. I was wrong.

It’s not that they didn’t play a solid set—they had a diverse mix of old and new tunes, and they kicked off the rest of the band and did the duo thing for a while, too. On “Little Black Submarines” (one of the best songs of 2011, if you want my truth), Auerbach rocked a steel guitar that glinted gold in the sunlight. But the wind was a little too strong, the music was a little too soft, and the crowd just a little too young. The sound was muddied. But really, the crowd was the worst part—they just weren’t into it. Sure, they sang along with the more recent “Gold on the Ceiling,” and a bunch of tracks off of Brothers, including their openers “Howlin’ for You” and “Next Girl,” but the crowd never really got lifted. I was all rubber legs and hair in my face, but next to me was a gym rat tossing beers on the ground, and a couple of pre-teens with their parents. It was crowded, but not too crowded not to dance, and I was mystified. The guys started late, ended early, and did a two-song encore (“Lonely Boy” and “I Got Mine”). It was a good set; it just felt wan.

Luckily, I recovered by hitting the Blues Tent for Taj Mahal, who earned his Grammys that day. He’s about seventy and hails from Harlem; and he does some wickedly good work on harmonica and guitar, among other instruments. The tent was jam-packed, and he opened with “Going Up to the Country, Paint My Mailbox Blue,” a harmonica-fronted ode to an exodus from the city life. He switched to guitar and was joined by The Real Thing Tuba Band. The man is a true blues musician, mouthing along with his guitar as he played, as if his lips were doing the work, not his fingers. His voice is muscle and sinew. His hands play with purpose. He said, “It’s Sunday, so you know you gotta do a piece of church music,” and went into “You’re Gonna Need Somebody on Your Bond,” the old Blind Willie Johnson tune. I left right after he finished “Chevrolet” searching for one final act.

The Fais Do Do stage was where the believers were. Del McCoury’s band was playing with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Apologies: Del McCoury’s band was battling the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. It was a full-on bluegrass country folk outlet battling one of the most famous brass bands in New Orleans. Del McCoury is seventy-four and looks about that. He hails from Pennsylvania and has been playing bluegrass guitar and banjo since the ‘60s. He even started an annual bluegrass festival called DelFest. His band members are seasoned professionals, and they went head to head with members of the Preservation Hall Band. The crowd was wild and exuberant; it was the perfect merging of bluegrass and jazz, with a fiddler battling a trumpeter (I called a draw). It was the perfect finale. Indeed, this pairing was exactly what I’d come for, without having known it, and both bands were triumphant.

A final note: That night I caught the Brass-A-Holics on Frenchman, and they were awesome—a different kind of brass band, doing pop covers and their own songs, with a nice blend of kitsch and funk. They mashed up Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” with Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back,” hit a high note with the “Rocky” theme, and even went Jersey Strong with Bon Jovi’s “Livin on a Prayer.” What was most interesting is that they feature female keyboardist and electric guitarist, doing massive licks atop a speaker, and they were racially mixed. Definitely worth checking out.

– First and foremost are the legendary contortions Heritage has engaged in regarding the individual mandate for healthcare, which it helped pioneer nearly twenty-five years ago. The same mandate it raged against last year as “unprecedented” and “unconstitutional” now that the provision had become a key part of Obama’s Affordable Care Act.

 

– Earlier this year, Heritage went and hired chief Cheney lieutenant David Addington to take over its legal division and, ironically, be a watchdog against "executive overreach" by Obama. The same Addington who argued the vice president wasn’t part of the executive branch and who participated in discussions about destroying CIA videotapes of torture.

 

– In 2012, one Heritage scholar, so incensed that people might disagree with his organization’s austerity agenda, decided to go from think tank to fight club on a protestor in Seattle.

 

– What about that time in 2011 when Heritage was caught red-handed arbitrarily swapping out unemployment figures to make its analysis of the House GOP budget appear more plausible?

 

– Then there was the 2010 fiasco where Heritage flagrantly cut ten pages from a British environmental analysis in a shameless attempt to introduce doubt about climate change, conflicting the actual report’s conclusion.

 

– Let’s not forget the Heritage blog post from 2008 that subtly warned a United Nations Green Economy Initiative was merely a first step on the road to Nazi/Soviet collectivism and oppression of freedom.

 

– And then there’s my personal favorite, this 2012 Election Day video-cum-summer-blockbuster-trailer from Heritage Action, the foundation’s political campaign advocacy arm. In it, the group’s leader dramatically declares that his group is fighting nothing less than “a war to save this nation” from Obama’s policies.

Editor's note: To contact Eric Alterman, use this form.

My new Nation column is called “The Reluctant Fundamentalist (and the Journalist Spy)” and it’s about the conflicts raised by Mira Nair’s challenging new film.

And here’s a second column I did for the Nation website on Maureen Dowd’s various crimes against common sense and gun control.

Oh, and I gave a talk at to Cornell’s Mario Enaudi Center for International Studies on the topic of “On the Search for a Liberal Foreign Policy” on Monday afternoon. It’s written up here and you can watch it on video, here.

Bad Judgment Awards:

Two of the worst decisions in all human history occurred recently. The first was to award the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for commentary to Bret Stephens. The second, even worse if anything was even remotely imaginable, was to award the 2013 Sidney Hillman Award for commentary to Andrew Sullivan. I had a few other things to say this week, but nothing so important that it should draw attention away from the above atrocities. Seriously, when I first read about this award, my first thought was “We liberals deserve to lose,” and I should have gone to work for Goldman Sachs when I had the chance.

I did a little investigation, and it turns out there is apparently no truth to the rumor that the Hillman Foundation plans to rename itself the “Fifth Columnists’ Foundation” for the occasion. Ditto the “Charles Murray Cheerleader Society.” As to whether it plans rename itself the “Kick Liberals in the Teeth, Slander Them, Lie About Them and Brag About It and then Be Given an Award By Those Very Same Liberals” Foundation, I could not get anyone to confirm or deny. Here is the foundation’s excuse for its betrayal of the great union leader Sidney Hillman’s life. Here is my (true) assessment of Mr. Sullivan contributions to craft...

Today’s List: Worst Ten Decisions of the Past Hundred Years:

1) 1922, Stalin, rather than Trotsky, becomes dictator of the Soviet Union

2) 1941, Germany invades Russia

3) 1941, Germany declares war on the United States

4) 2000 Supreme Court gives Bush election

5) 2003, Bush invades Iraq

6) 1964 LBJ orders retaliation for imaginary Gulf of Tonkin attacks

7) 1948 Palestinians turn down UN partition offer 

8) 2013 Hillman Award for Commentary to Andrew Sullivan

9) 2013 Pulitzer  for Commentary to Bret Stephens

10) 1974 New Republic is sold to Marty Peretz

Alter-reviews:

I wanted to like “Smash” but it’s so horrible that I had to stop watching it. Who cares if that fellow is an imperfect director or those two kids get their play done? Not me. I watch too much TV anyway. (I also deleted “Nashville” and “Revenge” from the DVR so all I’m really watching is HBO and FX, with a little PBS and a lot of TCM.) Anyway, I did rather admire Megan Hilty and so I was pleased for the opportunity to check out her, um, pipes at Joe’s Pub last week. The show was strangely short, forty minutes tops including the encore (which was a double bummer since, owing to the sequestration, my flight from Ithaca had been cancelled and I had taken a six hour bus ride to be there).  She did a powerful version of one my favorite songs, “Heart of the Matter,” and I did not recognize the rest, which are apparently on her new CD. Hard to judge, hearing them for the first time, but I’d be surprised if she doesn’t grow and grow as an artist. I wondered if people felt this way about Streisand, in the beginning....

The Iridium is hosting “Four Generations of Miles this weekend” and it features Jimmy Cobb (who played drums on Kind of Blue), Sonny Fortune, Buster Williams and Mike Stern. I caught the first of these shows on Thursday night, as things were just jelling. I was familiar with, I guess, three generations of Miles. Pretty much everyone knows that Mr. Cobb played on Kind of Blue and he still plays with plenty of energy. And Buster Williams and Sonny Fortune, well, what is there to say. They were and are pros, and their solos were thoughtful and intelligent. But the revelation, at least for this blogger, was Mike Stern. He took the lion’s share of the solos—including especially on “My Funny Valentine,”—and it was hard to imagine where all that imagination began. What was great about the show was the fact of having no trumpeter—so the other instruments, particularly Stern and Fortune—got to redefine the songs and allow one to hear them anew.

Also, it’s Ellington Week at Jazz@Lincoln Center with Wynton Marsalis leading the band in Rose Hall and other shows in the Allen Room. Duke is a surefire way to improve your mood, if anything is. Check out the website for details. (And while you’re there, look into Catherine Russell at Dizzy’s. I’ve plugged her repeatedly in the past; she’s a throwback in the best sense.)

Now here’s Reed:

Lest We Forget: Why is the Press So Willing to Rehabilitate George Bush’s Legacy?

by Reed Richardson

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Milan Kundera wrote these words in his powerful 1979 novel, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting. Set against the backdrop of totalitarian Czechoslovakia, Kundera’s book opens with a chilling example of the poisonous example of rewriting history to serve political needs.

On a cold, wintry day in February 1948, two Communist leaders, Klement Gottwald and Vladimir Clementis, stood side-by-side on a balcony in Prague’s main square to rally hundreds of thousands of citizens to their cause. It was a “fateful moment,” Kundera writes, one captured in an iconic photo of the two men that would soon be ubiquitous throughout the new country. Only four years later, however, Clementis would fall out of favor with the party, be charged with treason and hanged. Desperate to rid themselves of any trace of his now tainted legacy, the Czech censors set about dutifully scrubbing any documentary record of Clementis’s role, including that photo that every schoolchild in Czechoslovakia knew by heart. Right before the original picture had been taken, though, in gesture of solidarity, Clementis had removed his fur cap and placed it onto Gottwald’s head. In the new, doctored photo, the censors had predictably removed the image of Clementis, but not all evidence of his presence that day. For, still sitting atop Gottwald’s head, was that same fur cap. Truth is stubborn and isn’t so easily erased, in other words, as long as one knows where to look and is willing to remember it.

During this past week, what we as a nation choose to remember or forget has proved to be especially salient. Barely four years removed from his last day in the White House, the reclusive ex-President Bush has enjoyed an outpouring of media attention in anticipation of the opening of his new presidential library in Dallas. Of course, this is to be expected and naturally leads itself to some reflection of Bush’s tenure. But what was startling to see this past week was the degree to which the press willingly obliged a phalanx of Bush apologists intent on airbrushing out the many inconvenient and dreadful aspects of our 43rd president’s legacy.

This revisionism took many forms. Befitting a Washington press corps obsessed with horserace numbers, there was plenty of poll cherry-picking. Thus, much was made of an ABC News survey that found Bush’s overall approval rating had rebounded to 47 percent, up from the woeful 33 percent mark it stood at just days before he left office. Andrew Malcolm of Investor’s Business Daily squeezed a whole, sneering column out of this stone, mocking the similarly middling approval numbers of President Obama, who, he claims, has blamed Bush for just about everything that’s gone wrong, “except his miserable NCAA tournament brackets.” (Uh, Andrew, Obama’s 1-for-5 in picking March Madness winners, where’s your sheets?) Notably less popular among pundits like Malcolm, naturally, was a recent NBC News poll that showed Bush’s favorability still mired in the mid-30s.

The National Journal’s Ron Fournier chose to remind us that our presidents are “human” and that we could go ahead and admit “George W. Bush is a Good Man.” As proof of this revelation, Fournier cites a personal thank-you note he received from President Bush on May 24, 2002 during an overseas trip, bestowed upon him for his willingness to stand when Bush arrived at a press conference. (Fournier’s German counterparts in the press remained seated.) What Fournier leaves out of this story, though, is that, just the day before, this “good man” stood before the German Bundestag and said:

"I have no war plans on my desk." But, [Bush] added, "It's dangerous to think of a scenario where a country like Iraq would link up with the al-Qaida organisation...It's a threat to civilisation."

This passage contains one outright lie and one egregiously misleading statement. In fact, by late 2001, Bush had already begun extensive war planning with the military for the invasion of Iraq. And the 9/11 Commission and a Pentagon report both subsequently affirmed that at no point was there ever any credible evidence suggesting a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda’s 2001 attacks.

Though Fournier generously concedes that these critical parts of Bush’s record are “worth exploring skeptically,” he nonetheless spends far more time touting how Bush was always on time for presidential meetings, required a formal dress code in the Oval Office, and had a knack for remembering the names of staffers’ spouses and children. But to imply Bush ably demonstrated “respect for the office of the presidency” simply through punctuality, politeness and political instincts is the very definition of, to borrow a tired phrase, “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” Bush’s legacy of shamefully disrespecting the nation’s highest elected office with his outrageous prevarications on Iraq can’t be overlooked simply because he’s a “good man.”

Over at RealClearPolitics, former Bush aide Keith Hennessey was given free rein to serve up another juicy red herring: "George W. Bush is Smarter Than You." Hennessey, a lecturer at Stanford, recounted a recent classroom discussion about the 2008 financial crisis where one of his students asked: “How involved was Bush with what was going on?” To which Hennessey, in a classic debate gambit, reinterpreted the question to suit his own agenda: “What you really mean is, ‘Was President Bush smart enough to understand what was going on,’ right?” Perhaps caught off-guard, the student and the class remained silent in response, Hennessey recalls, which he took as proof of a grand liberal condescension of Bush’s intelligence.

This know-nothing “caricature” of the 43rd President, Hennessey complains, was sketched out by a meretricious press and filled in by mean late-night talk-show hosts. In contrast, he regales us with stories of a George W. Bush who was “extremely smart” and “highly analytical” and routinely outthinking his very smart advisors. What Hennessey noticeably fails to address is the critique behind the student’s actual and very legitimate question, however. For, at numerous points throughout his presidency, Bush, brilliant or not, was known for mentally checking out and displaying abjectly poor judgment.

During the height of that very 2008 fiscal crisis, for example, Bush inexplicably thanked Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson for "working over the weekend," as if rescuing the world’s economy was a task that might keep till Monday morning. In Bush’s first term, another former Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neill, described a similarly frightening detachment on the part of Bush in economic briefings, “a blind man in a roomful of deaf people,” as he colorfully put it. Then, of course, there was this photo, taken 30,000 feet above Katrina-ravaged New Orleans. And let’s not forget that a mere six months after 9/11, Bush’s stance on Osama bin Laden, the man who had masterminded the murder of thousands of Americans on his presidential watch, was one of dismissive nonchalance: “I really don’t spend that much time on him.”

More guest-columnist misdirection took place when the folks at USA Today conveniently turned over space on their op-ed page to Bush’s 2004 campaign manager, Ken Mehlman. His message, couched as advice for the future of the Republican Party, was little more than a rosy recounting of the many supposed ways his former boss practiced “inclusiveness” in his policies and politics. Here again, a more careful look can see right through the legacy whitewashing. Bush’s message of tolerance toward Muslims after 9/11 was far from effective, despite Mehlman’s suggestions to the contrary. The climate of fear, ably stoked by the White House, notably led to a 1,600 percent rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2001.

But this isn’t even the most outrageous bit of revisionism in Mehlman’s column on Bush “inclusiveness.” That would be total absence of the issue of gay marriage. Indeed, one could argue no politician in US history demagogued anti-gay fears as successfully as Bush did during his 2004 re-election campaign, when his campaign architect, Karl Rove, helped orchestrate a nationwide effort of anti-gay marriage referenda to boost evangelical Christian turnout. (While their impact in most states seems to have been negligible, this University of Florida study found evidence that the anti-gay marriage ballot measure did prime Bush turnout in Ohio, the state that ultimately decided the 2004 election.) Ironically, in 2010, Mehlman himself came out as gay, yet he still seems to harbor enough loyalty for Bush to paper over one of the most shameful political moments from the president’s legacy.

Over at The Washington Post, Bush enjoyed an embarrassment of image-rehabilitation riches. The least worst of them probably belonging to Dan Balz and his long article about Bush “back in the spotlight.” Herein follows the sources, in order, quoted by Balz for the first three-quarters of the story: Tony Blair; Karen Hughes; Karl Rove; Hughes (again), Rove (again), Mark Langdale, president of the George W. Bush Foundation; and Joshua Bolten, former Bush White House chief of staff. Notice a theme, there? Only in the final three paragraphs of the thirty-two-paragraph article, when Balz quotes three successive academics who study presidential history, do we hear from any uniformly critical voices of Bush’s presidency.

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Speaking of academics, the Post also let Stephen Knott, a professor at the US Naval War College, fire a barrage of broadsides at his profession in an op-ed entitled "George W. Bush is a Victim of a Rush to Judgment." (And looky here, Professor Knott also has a book by the same name you might want to buy.) In a way, though, Knott does his readers a service by listing a number of historians whose critiques place Bush among the worst presidents in our nation’s history. Not surprisingly, Knott makes little attempt at refuting their actual arguments, instead he just lumps them all into a bag labeled "too-soon-to-tell" and calls them partisan, liberal fear-mongers. At what point academic and historical studies on the Bush administration will be far enough removed in time to be valid in his eyes, well, he doesn’t say.

All of these are but prologue to the ne plus ultra of Bush revisionism, however. Boldly declarative, "Bush is Back" reads the Post headline over Jennifer Rubin’s latest attempt at hagiography. Even for Rubin, who has a well-documented history of intellectual contortionism, this post is blatantly, flagrantly dishonest. And at the nucleus of her breathtaking swing at writing Bush’s next memoir stands this paragraph:

Why the shift? Aside from the 'memories fade' point, many of his supposed failures are mild compared to the current president (e.g. spending, debt). Unlike Obama’s tenure, there was no successful attack on the homeland after 9/11. People do remember the big stuff—rallying the country after the Twin Towers attack, seven-and-a-half years of job growth and prosperity, millions of people saved from AIDS in Africa, a good faith try for immigration reform, education reform and a clear moral compass.

Where to begin? “People” may remember the big stuff, but not Rubin, apparently. Besides giving Bush what Charles Pierce rightly calls "The Great Mulligan" for 9/11, she’s also cast down the memory hole the post-2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people and the 2002 terrorist attack on the El Al airline counter at the LA Airport that killed three. As for seven-and-a-half years of job growth, it’s actually more like four. And what to say about a pundit who unironically ascribes to Bush a “clear moral compass” after the recent release of a bipartisan report that clearly documented his administration’s willful embrace of torture?

But wait, there’s more! Rubin is careful to ladle in heaping helpings of clichés to make the indoctrination go down smoother. Thus, we get “a robotic, cold president like Obama” contrasted with Bush’s “tender, tearful love of country.” Our enemies, naturally, must instead contend with Bush’s “steely anger.” What’s more, she recalls a “warm,” “productive” relationship between the US and Israel during Bush’s tenure, while overlooking his administration’s spectacular failure, where it inadvertently assisted the militant organization Hamas in gaining operational control of the Gaza Strip. And when she concludes with an assault on financial reality that judges Bush’s trillion-dollar debacle in Iraq, profligate government security costs and ridiculous tax cuts for the rich as merely “some excess in domestic spending,” compared to Obama’s “non-existent” courage in tackling our fiscal woes, I honestly wondered if she wasn’t a plant installed by the Post merely to keep its fact-checkers employed.

After such a climactic rewriting of history, delving into the mindset of native conservative media presents something of a denouement. Still grappling with how to treat a toxically unpopular president the Republican Party has been shunning since 2009, former Bush aide Ed Gillespie gives it a go over at National Review Online. His essay, "Cataloguing the Bush Years," proclaims in its subhed: “The opening of President George W. Bush’s library is a chance to look at the facts of his legacy.” As one might expect, the right has had to get creative to deal with the “facts” of Bush’s financial legacy. Fortunately, they’ve hit upon a fantastic arithmetic device called “averaging.”

[Bush] presided over an average unemployment rate of 5.3 percent (the second strongest of the past seven presidencies) and saw jobs grow steadily for four years from 2003 through 2007. In fact, the highest unemployment rate of any one year in Mr. Bush’s two terms (6.3 percent) is more than a full point below the lowest annual rate of Mr. Obama’s.

This is such a fun game, let’s play along with Ed, shall we? Let's see, the Titanic averaged 21 knots for the first 90% of its voyage (and 0 knots for the remaining 10%), which means the ship would have averaged a speed of a little less than 19 knots when its overall speeds were averaged across the entire trip. Not too shabby of a crossing time to New York harbor, amirite?

Okay, perhaps that’s not a fair mathematical comparison. Symbolically, however, one struggles to find a better analogy for the Bush administration’s combination of hubris, excess, recklessness, incompetence and calamitous conclusion than the disastrous voyage of the Titanic. And just as the iceberg that laid the ship low was never seen by those in charge on its bridge, it’s striking that in former party leader Gillespie’s “catalog” of the Bush years, one never encounters the word “Iraq.” But unlike with the Titanic, this is no accident.

If Kundera, who is still alive, chose to write a sequel to The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, he could do a lot worse than set it in the US during the first decade of the 21st century. If so, he might well begin the story about that period with a short passage based on another iconic photo, one where a stubbornly inconvenient “Mission Accomplished” banner sits in place of Clementis’s fur cap. No doubt, the powerful here in our country are now eager for us to forget that day and a lot of what we know about George W. Bush. But now, as then, it falls to the rest of us to remember—history and truth depend upon it. 

Programming note: I’ll be discussing my recent cover story for The Nation, “The GOP-Fox Circus Act,” on Mark Thompson’s radio show, Make It Plain, tonight (Friday, 4/26). You can listen in on SiriusXM Left channel 127; his show begins at 6:00pm, but I'm told I'll be on sometime in the 7 o'clock hour.

Contact me directly at reedfrichardson (at) gmail dot com. 

Also, I’m on Twitter here—(at)reedfrich.

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