Why Liberal Sellouts Attack Prophets Like Cornel West

[seemslikeadream]

Bill Moyers: ‘We’re Almost Out of Time’

Peter Scheer: This is Truthdig Radio. I’m Peter Scheer with Robert Scheer, and we are speaking with the legendary Bill Moyers, whose newest book is “Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues.” Thanks so much for making the time.

Bill Moyers: I’m glad to be with you.

Robert Scheer: You know, let me begin—this is Robert—ah, with a sort of longer-run question. I know things are pretty bad now in terms of deception, and so forth, but hasn’t it ever been so? And particularly in the area of foreign policy, I was thinking of the warning of George Washington and his farewell address, where he said “beware of the impostures of pretended patriotism.” And coming down through the years, we generally have been lied to about foreign policy, national security matters. Is it really much worse?

Bill Moyers: I don’t think so, except it’s just—there’s just more of it. We have, now, not only the government lying, but we have 24-hour media; you’ve got Fox News, you’ve got Rush Limbaugh, all dealing in misinformation—disinformation. And there’s just an incredible fog—a smog, you might say—surrounding us now.

Robert Scheer: Yeah, but you know, we on the Internet—and this is what Truthdig is all about—we’ve had about 60 million people come to our site, and we’re by no means one of the larger ones. But we think there’s a redeeming quality to this new, new form, that people can weigh in—professors, experts, whistleblowers. Do you see a positive side to it?

Bill Moyers: Oh, yes. I think it’s our last, our last hope, actually, is a free Internet with democratic, small “d” democratic access. I think that our administration—the Johnson administration, in which I served for the first 2 ½ years—would not have gotten away with a one-sided explanation of Vietnam if we’d had the Internet at that time. There were, as you know, brave reporters out in Vietnam trying to get back to the public with news, but they had to work through their organizations; it took a while; and too many of their bosses in Washington were comfortable with the administration’s propaganda line. So yes, I think the Internet is the best hope we have, if we can keep it. And of course, as you know, as we speak, the Internet … net neutrality is under siege from powerful corporate forces.

Robert Scheer: You know, let me ask you about those corporate forces. One of the great promises of the Johnson administration was the War on Poverty, and the hopes of redressing some of the class imbalances in this society. They’ve gotten much more intense. And we now have a situation where, according to [Joseph] Stiglitz, the top one percent of the wealthy control 40 percent of the wealth in this country. What do you think Lyndon Johnson would make of this current situation?

Bill Moyers: Well, of course, that’s impossible to say. But at heart he was a populist. When he started out as the son of a man who’d been laid low by the Great Depression of ’29, Lyndon Johnson—and populism had been held hostage by corporate power, and railroads [affecting] the farmers, as we know, at that period—he, his heart was populist. He was elected in a field of 11 candidates for Congress by saying, I’m the only one of the 11 who will be 100 percent for Franklin Roosevelt. So he was a New Dealer, a populist at heart. Of course, as he rose in power, representative of the Senate—which … of a state that’s very conservative, as opposed to his populist district in central Texas—he became friendlier with the interests of oil, the interests of construction, the predecessor to Halliburton, Brown & Root. But at heart remained with … you know, with the folks he had taught when he was a schoolteacher for one year in a town, at a high school of Mexican students in Cotulla, Texas. I think he’d be astonished and saddened by the fact that the difference today between the top and the bottom in America is greater—in income and wealth—is greater than it’s been since the Depression. I think he’d be—I think he’d be indignant about that.

Peter Scheer: Do you see a parallel there with Barack Obama, who started also as a populist working in communities with working people, who now seems to be more interested in corporate power, influence?

Bill Moyers: Well, I’ve seen this with most Democrats since Johnson’s time, who have bought into the system as it is…and I think that’s Barack Obama’s greatest problem, is that he’s bought into America as it is, and therefore he can’t lead us out of the crisis the way most people thought he could. Yes, he’s a good servant of corporate interest, despite some of his rhetoric. He accepts the system now as it is. He’ll take secret money next year if he has to; he refused to participate in public funding for the election in ’08. And he understands where the deck is stacked, and where the money comes from. No question about it.

Robert Scheer: So where did we liberals go wrong? You know, it’s sort of an irony. You mentioned conservative Texas, but you know, I kind of like the fact that Ron Paul from Texas is at least … [Laughter] raising some questions, you know. And what happened to the sort of liberal outrage, and liberal populism …?

Bill Moyers: I think we thought that we could negotiate, and civilize the corporate power. … We thought that they would respond responsibly to the pleas for equality, justice, or at least fairness. We thought we could … you know, and then Johnson’s great quote from the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible: “Come now, and let us reason together.” And I think liberals thought that you could regulate these predatory powers so that they would foam less at the mouth, consume less at the meal, and sleep a little easier at night. But they’re restless; you know, money is restless for more. And we have discovered, too late, that they refuse to be reasoned with.

Robert Scheer: Not just reasoned with, but they don’t seem to have any sense of being accountable to future generations. At least with the old moneyed elite, the Rockefellers and so forth, there was some sense of leaving something, of worrying about how you’d be perceived 50 or 100 years up the road. This new crowd just seems to be, you know, get in and get out, and grab what you can.

Bill Moyers: It’s more “now,” and therefore there is no governance; there is no balance wheel. I’ve been doing deep research, forensic research, into the period between 1860 and 1912, the period that followed the Civil War, saw the populist movement in an effort to tame the growing powers of great wealth—the railroads, the trusts, the monopolies. And we’re seeing the same thing now that we saw then, only more so. There was a period of time when the populace and the progressives—William Jennings Bryan…people like that, frontier champions of the people—thought that they could regulate these powerful economic interests, and discovered that they couldn’t. Liberals came along after the New Deal, thought we could regulate capitalism, and it turned out capitalism was regulating … capitalism captured the regulatory state. I think we have to go back to what Jim Hightower, the great populist from Texas, present populist from Texas, says about the populists: that they didn’t want to criticize the government, they wanted to own the government. And I think that’s exactly what’s—I mean, democracy is in trouble. We’re almost out of time. It’s always a series of narrow escapes, representative government, and we just—we may be running out of luck right now.

Peter Scheer: Do you think we have a bias of the present? I mean, you’re talking about this broad swath of history, and you were in the White House during the civil rights movement, the great achievements of that era. And now we live in a situation where, you know, we often say well, things have been much worse; and yet at the same time we have more people in prison now in the United States than any other country in the world, and many of them people of color. Are we better off, are we worse off? And do you think we’re in—we’re always moving from crisis to crisis, whether it’s nuclear weapons or global warming, or—are things really moving in the wrong direction, the right direction, are we somewhere in between?

Bill Moyers: Well, in some respect, there are great advances. I mean, with gay people and women and African-Americans. Even in this regard: Look at what’s happened here in New York with the alleged, with the arrest of the head of the IMF, a rich powerful white man who allegedly tried to take advantage of a poor working immigrant from Africa who was coming in to clean his room. If there’s ever a metaphor for how the rich and upper class regard their servants, you’ve got it right there. But now, she can file a suit, has filed a suit; and he’s been arrested, he’s being held. Once upon a time, where I grew up in the South—once upon a time anywhere in this country—a servant, household help would, if they made a charge against a rich powerful white man like this, it would, nothing would happen. So in that metaphorical sense, and in a real sense, there have been some changes. But in terms of the distribution of wealth, in terms of equality of opportunity, in terms of a decent wage, living wage, in many respects we are losing ground rapidly. I just saw a piece about some new jobs being created out in the Midwest with the return of some manufacturing functions, but they’re jobs paying a third of what the old jobs that were shipped abroad are paying. So, you know, I think comparisons are somewhat misplaced. Going back to Robert’s original point, from the very beginning this has been a tempestuous journey. As I say in the opening of the foreword to my new book, when de Tocqueville got off of the boat coming for his celebrated visit in New York in the 1830s, he was greeted by what he called a “mighty tumult.” And that’s what democracy is. But there have been periods in our history when organized people—that is, operating through their government—have been able to check and balance the power of organized money. At the moment, organized money is winning. And with serious consequences for working men and women and for the poor.

Peter Scheer: This is Truthdig Radio and we’re speaking with Bill Moyers.

Robert Scheer: Let me ask you a question—you know, you came from the South and I came from the Bronx [Laughs], and we had the conceit that we needed national politics to straighten you people out, you know; civil rights, and so forth. And I increasingly feel that this preoccupation with the federal government has been a mistake, that maybe there’s something to states’ rights. We’re broadcasting from California, where actually we ran against the national trend in our election; where there seems to have been a rejection of kind of the tea party populism; there’s a recognition that government is needed. And increasingly, I wonder whether the federal government is really the indispensable agent of liberal change.

Bill Moyers: It certainly isn’t right now; it could be, and its tax policies and … look, what’s the one thing the federal government has done well in the last 15 years? Get bin Laden. But it took 10 years, $2 trillion, two wars, and a lot of lives before we did. That’s about the only thing you can claim that the federal government has got right in the last 12 or 15 years. It has fallen into a relationship with corporate money that has rendered it largely inoperative when it comes to the real lives of ordinary people. But you know, Robert, there was no states’ rights before the Civil War; there were no states before the Civil War, as such. It was only when Lincoln organized the federal government to defend the Union that we got a federal government that was actually doing things for people, like … homeland, railroads, all of that. The federal government’s not working right now. And out of 2008 came an actually interesting contradiction of forces. A lot of people emerged from that saying, the market has failed us; and then with the bailouts and all of that, a lot of other people emerged and said, we ought to go back to the traditional state. So if you don’t want the markets to govern your lives, and you don’t believe that the traditional state can, you’ve got to go local. And to me, that is where there is hope right now for some change. I mean, you’ve got some conservative change; look at South Carolina, look at Mississippi, look at places like that; you’re going to get some progressive change elsewhere.

Robert Scheer: You know, it’s a point of focus, I think. Because I covered—I was working for the Los Angeles Times as a reporter—and I covered the deregulation under Bill Clinton. And it just was so obvious to me that there was no consumer presence, no popular voice; that the banks were going to rewrite these laws and reverse the New Deal, in just the way they wanted, and get what they wanted. And so—and in the process, we took away the power from the states to regulate usury, to protect consumers, to govern the banks. There had been, I think, 23 states that had, in their constitution, restrictions on interest rates and, you know, serious rules about the banks. And I wonder whether as a sort of liberal standard now we should be saying, hey, the federal government—we can agree with the right wing, some of the principal libertarians—the federal government is out of control. We really can’t control it; the powerful interests do. And that’s the sense in which I bring up states’ rights; that maybe the battlefield is to—as some of these state attorney generals, now the attorney general of New York, who is going after Wall Street—maybe these are the people who … this is the battlefield.

Bill Moyers: Well, many of the states’ attorneys general are one hope. They—27, 30 of them have organized on various issues to protect the consumer, consumer rights. It all depends on what—anywhere you have representative government, the powers-that-be are going to try to take over, buy out, buy off that government. If you go to Texas, my home state, of course it’s the business interests that run the state of Texas now, with [Rick] Perry, who was George Bush’s successor. You really can’t get anything done if you’re a consumer advocate, an advocate of the poor in Texas, because it’s run by the landed and vested interests in that state. So without a populist, progressive citizens’ muscle of some form or another, if you go to only the states’ rights, you’re going to get a lot of oppressive reaction in the government.

Peter Scheer: You’ve been an ardent defender of the press, or of good press, for many, many years. And making that connection with the decline of our—of how desperate our situation is with respect to our democracy, we’re in the middle of a fund drive here at KPFK, and I wonder … you know, I find that as an editor at Truthdig, whenever we post stories about the decline of the media, it’s like—people just don’t care. They never click on them, they sort of ignore them. And there’s a small sort of intellectual group that has active discussions about it, but by and large, it’s just frustrating to … I guess I’m asking, can you make the case for people, why they should care about the decline of media, and make that connection with our situation.

Bill Moyers: Well, I think it’s one of the oldest arguments in our democracy. That, you know, for all of his flaws, I think Thomas Jefferson was right when he said that an informed public is to be preferred to an uninformed public. And I think that is generally the case now. There’s an interesting study out from the University of Michigan about how people don’t want to listen to the facts. Even if they know a fact is authentic, if they know it’s true, but if it offends their—or insults or undermines their belief system, they don’t want to, they don’t accept it; they reject it. That’s one reason, the explanation for the solid support the right-wing and conservative media have. Unless there’s an alternative to Fox News, to Rush Limbaugh—unless there are guys like you, Thom Hartmann and Amy Goodman out there, continuing to press the evidence to the contrary, continuing to do forensic journalism, deeply researched journalism—really we’re going to live in that smog of propaganda, sentimentality and frankly, pornography, which has—political pornography has transformed our discourse into an ugly and grotesque version of what should be a good conversation of democracy. So the artists may be small, the artists may be underfunded; without these alternative voices, we are left to the mercy of the state and to the big, powerful corporations that control much of the media now. I mean, if you’re listening to this broadcast or going to Truthdig, imagine what happens if this channel goes silent and Truthdig disappears. What is your life like? Where do you go to compare what you’re hearing here, and reading on Truthdig, to what you’re getting from talk radio—85% of whose hosts are right wing—or from Fox News, where large numbers of people get their news? So without these independent voices, without the Tom Paines, without the William Allen Whites, without the Iconoclast—which was an independent newspaper in Texas many years ago—without these, we’re beholden to the propagandists.

Robert Scheer: You know, I’d like to—this is Bob Scheer—I’d like to end on a more positive note [Laughs] than my son Peter seemed to be going. You know, we’ve been doing this a long time; you’ve been doing it a lot more effectively than I have. But still, you know, it’s great—it’s great to rebel; it’s great to challenge. It’s great to seek the truth. And as I look around, I think we have—there’s one saving grace to this society, which has sort of manifested in the Internet. You know, yeah, there’s a lot of noise; there are special interests. But the basic values of the country remain surprisingly noble. And I think people really want to do the right thing at the end of the day. And I think that’s why we keep doing what we’re doing. We do find an audience. You have found an incredible audience. You, through public radio and everything else you’ve done, you’ve been able to reach tens of millions of Americans. And we see it now with someone like Chris Hedges that we publish on Truthdig, who brings up sort of a prophetic voice—there is an audience, and it does cut through the clutter. So do you have a …

Bill Moyers: Well, I have to say that—you’re kind in those remarks, but I have to say that people like me depend on people like you. I’m serious, Bob. Your columns cut through the fog, as I call it; they are courageous; they’re bold; they’re grounded in evidence. And I live off of them, and so do a lot of other people I know. When you recently published that—after the killing of bin Laden, you published that quick piece by Chris Hedges, it went viral. I know; I was getting it sent, hundreds of people were sending it to me. I’m just supporting what you say by saying it’s not one, it’s not two; it’s all of us trying to create a domino effect of alternative journalism. And I wouldn’t trade my life for anything. People used to say, why don’t you go into politics; and I’d say, are you kidding? The life of the journalist, for all of its frustrations, is a deeply rewarding one. And I think if we can figure out how to make a living at it, what you’re doing is the future for the next generation coming along. Young journalists come to me and say, what should I do? Should I go into television, should I go into newspapers? Television seems so trivial; newspapers seem so endangered. And I say, look, if you’ve got a fire in your belly, you’ll find a place; you’ll find a venue. And go to the Internet and look at the places like Truthdig and Amy Goodman and Josh Marshall, at TalkingPointsMemo.com. There are a lot of places where you can still signify as a journalist today, and we need every one of them and more.

[23]

P.S.

Re. the OP's subject line, Cornel West is no prophet.

He is just someone who exercised poor judgement by supporting Obama at the outset, and then realized that his trust was misplaced.

That's not the stuff of prophets.

[8bitagent]

P.S.

Re. the OP's subject line, Cornel West is no prophet.

He is just someone who exercised poor judgement by supporting Obama at the outset, and then realized that his trust was misplaced.

That's not the stuff of prophets.

I remember in 2008 I started a sarcastic thread about how "I want to believe", using the X-files mantra in regards to Obama. I remember people really thought Hillary was going to win, or that Republicans would steal the election. But even as of 2006, the entire process seemed engineered to ensure Obama "Won". And I say "won" in quotations, because it was essentially a contest in the same way a 7 foot wrestler on tv taking on a no name jobber is a contest. Even before the donor list was revealed, it was clear he was bought and paid for with Wallstreet. It was clear he intended to dramatically escalate the war and covert war agenda. But I do not blame anyone for wanting to believe. Given the not so distant history of the black experience in America, it indeed felt like a surreal dream. Especially since there's a sizeable portion of the country that'd love to string him up simply for being 'funny lookin'.

Yet, many were signaling that he was definitely not the bastion of change or progress he was being heralded as. I thought he did not light a candle to MLK, Mcgovern, or even circa 1968 RFK.
Still, there's that little part of me that felt...

[23]

Are you saying that wanting to believe... and seeing want you want to see, instead what is actually there... has some merit?

Some people would classify that as an element of self-delusion.

[8bitagent]

Are you saying that wanting to believe... and seeing want you want to see, instead what is actually there... has some merit?

Some people would classify that as an element of self-delusion.

Oh, just saying I can understand it...

Cypher: You know, I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize?
[Takes a bite of steak]
Cypher: Ignorance is bliss.

[23]

And while Chris Hedges gets it wrong with his characterization of Cornell West as a prophet, he does get it right here:

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/ral ... _20100301/
Ralph Nader Was Right About Barack Obama

We owe Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney an apology. They were right about Barack Obama. They were right about the corporate state. They had the courage of their convictions and they stood fast despite wholesale defections and ridicule by liberals and progressives.

Obama lies as cravenly, if not as crudely, as George W. Bush. He promised us that the transfer of $12.8 trillion in taxpayer money to Wall Street would open up credit and lending to the average consumer. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), however, admitted last week that banks have reduced lending at the sharpest pace since 1942. As a senator, Obama promised he would filibuster amendments to the FISA Reform Act that retroactively made legal the wiretapping and monitoring of millions of American citizens without warrant; instead he supported passage of the loathsome legislation. He told us he would withdraw American troops from Iraq, close the detention facility at Guantánamo, end torture, restore civil liberties such as habeas corpus and create new jobs. None of this has happened.

He is shoving a health care bill down our throats that would give hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to the private health insurance industry in the form of subsidies, and force millions of uninsured Americans to buy insurers’ defective products. These policies would come with ever-rising co-pays, deductibles and premiums and see most of the seriously ill left bankrupt and unable to afford medical care. Obama did nothing to halt the collapse of the Copenhagen climate conference, after promising meaningful environmental reform, and has left us at the mercy of corporations such as ExxonMobil. He empowers Israel’s brutal apartheid state. He has expanded the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where hundreds of civilians, including entire families, have been slaughtered by sophisticated weapons systems such as the Hellfire missile, which sucks the air out of victims’ lungs. And he is delivering war and death to Yemen, Somalia and perhaps Iran.

The illegal wars and occupations, the largest transference of wealth upward in American history and the egregious assault on civil liberties, all begun under George W. Bush, raise only a flicker of tepid protest from liberals when propagated by the Democrats. Liberals, unlike the right wing, are emotionally disabled. They appear not to feel. The tea-party protesters, the myopic supporters of Sarah Palin, the veterans signing up for Oath Keepers and the myriad of armed patriot groups have swept into their ranks legions of disenfranchised workers, angry libertarians, John Birchers and many who, until now, were never politically active. They articulate a legitimate rage. Yet liberals continue to speak in the bloodless language of issues and policies, and leave emotion and anger to the protofascists. Take a look at the 3,000-word suicide note left by Joe Stack, who flew his Piper Cherokee last month into an IRS office in Austin, Texas, murdering an IRS worker and injuring dozens. He was not alone in his rage.

“Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours?” Stack wrote. “Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies. Yet, the political ‘representatives’ (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the ‘terrible health care problem’. It’s clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don’t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in.”

The timidity of the left exposes its cowardice, lack of a moral compass and mounting political impotence. The left stands for nothing. The damage Obama and the Democrats have done is immense. But the damage liberals do the longer they beg Obama and the Democrats for a few scraps is worse. It is time to walk out on the Democrats. It is time to back alternative third-party candidates and grass-roots movements, no matter how marginal such support may be. If we do not take a stand soon we must prepare for the rise of a frightening protofascist movement, one that is already gaining huge ground among the permanently unemployed, a frightened middle class and frustrated low-wage workers. We are, even more than Glenn Beck or tea-party protesters, responsible for the gusts fanning the flames of right-wing revolt because we have failed to articulate a credible alternative.

A shift to the Green Party, McKinney and Nader, along with genuine grass-roots movements, will not be a quick fix. It will require years in the wilderness. We will again be told by the Democrats that the least-worse candidate they select for office is better than the Republican troll trotted out as an alternative. We will be bombarded with slick commercials about hope and change and spoken to in a cloying feel-your-pain language. We will be made afraid. But if we again acquiesce we will be reduced to sad and pathetic footnotes in our accelerating transformation from a democracy to a totalitarian corporate state. Isolation and ridicule—ask Nader or McKinney—is the cost of defying power, speaking truth and building movements. Anger at injustice, as Martin Luther King wrote, is the political expression of love. And it is vital that this anger become our own. We have historical precedents to fall back upon.

“Here in the United States, at the beginning of the twentieth century, before there was a Soviet Union to spoil it, you see, socialism had a good name,” the late historian and activist Howard Zinn said in a lecture a year ago at Binghamton University. “Millions of people in the United States read socialist newspapers. They elected socialist members of Congress and socialist members of state legislatures. You know, there were like fourteen socialist chapters in Oklahoma. Really. I mean, you know, socialism—who stood for socialism? Eugene Debs, Helen Keller, Emma Goldman, Clarence Darrow, Jack London, Upton Sinclair. Yeah, socialism had a good name. It needs to be restored.”

Social change does not come through voting. It is delivered through activism, organizing and mobilization that empower groups to confront the hegemony of the corporate state and the power elite. The longer socialism is identified with the corporatist policies of the Democratic Party, the longer we allow the right wing to tag Obama as a socialist, the more absurd and ineffectual we become. The right-wing mantra of “Obama the socialist,” repeated a few days ago to a room full of Georgia Republicans, by Newt Gingrich, the former U.S. speaker of the House, is discrediting socialism itself. Gingrich, who looks set to run for president, called Obama the “most radical president” the country had seen in decades. “By any standard of government control of the economy, he is a socialist,” Gingrich said. If only the critique were true.

The hypocrisy and ineptitude of the Democrats become, in the eyes of the wider public, the hypocrisy and ineptitude of the liberal class. We can continue to tie our own hands and bind our own feet or we can break free, endure the inevitable opprobrium, and fight back. This means refusing to support the Democrats. It means undertaking the laborious work of building a viable socialist movement. It is the only alternative left to save our embattled open society. We can begin by sending a message to the Green Party, McKinney and Nader. Let them know they are no longer alone.

[Peachtree Pam]

The Intolerable Smugness of Bill Moyers
He just can't help himself.


By Jack ShaferUpdated Monday, Feb. 23, 2009, at 6:05 PM ET

Bill Moyers took it in the shins this week after the Washington Post's Joe Stephens, drawing on FBI files liberated by a FOIA request, reported the liberal lion's role in hunting suspected homosexuals inside the Lyndon Johnson White House.

The Post story's primary focus is on the FBI investigation of presidential aide Jack Valenti's sexual orientation, an investigation OK'd by President Johnson. It also reports that Moyers, then a special assistant to the president, asked the FBI to investigate two additional administration figures thought to have homosexual tendencies.

These weren't the only Moyers White House homo-hunts. On Commentary's blog, Jason Maoz quotes former U.S. Deputy Attorney General Laurence Silberman, who wrote in the Wall Street Journal in 2005 that weeks before the 1964 Johnson-Goldwater election, Moyers "was tasked to direct [FBI Director J. Edgar] Hoover to do an investigation of Goldwater's staff to find similar evidence of homosexual activity. Mr. Moyers' memo to the FBI was in one of the files."

The Wizbang blog continues the Moyers bashing by quoting from CBS News correspondent Morley Safer's 1990 autobiography, Flashbacks: On Returning to Vietnam. Safer writes:

[Moyers'] part in Lyndon Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover's bugging of Martin Luther King's private life, the leaks to the press and diplomatic corps, the surveillance of civil rights groups at the 1964 Democratic Convention, and his request for damaging information from Hoover on members of the Goldwater campaign suggest he was not only a good soldier but a gleeful retainer feeding the appetites of Lyndon Johnson.

Rounding out the week's pillory is my old boss, Miami Herald TV critic Glenn Garvin, who finds the Post discovery consistent with the thuggery that marked Moyers' political career. As long as Moyers is taking such a well-deserved beating, allow me a couple of licks.

When Moyers was Johnson's press secretary, he believed that journalists existed to serve the president. James Deakin writes in Straight Stuff: The Reporters, the White House and the Truth that Johnson's assistant press secretary Joe Laitin told Moyers that it was OK to plant a question with reporters every once in a while at presidential news conferences. A bogus idea, for sure, but Laitin thought the technique was useful in getting important information out. "When [the president] volunteers something, everybody immediately is on guard: what's he trying to sell?" Laitin told Deakin.

Moyers pitched the idea of planting questions to Johnson, who embraced it, giving Moyers a couple of questions for Laitin to distribute, which he did.

Johnson so loved this innovation that he was determined to plant every question at his next news conference. About 15 minutes before the session started, Moyers brought Laitin about 10 questions from the president. When Laitin protested that this was too much—"Bill, this isn't the way it's done"—Moyers said, "Do it!"

A rebuked Laitin approached John Pomfret of the New York Times first, primarily because the two were close. Deakin quotes Laitin:

I said, "John, would you mind asking the president this question?" There was no time for amenities; I had to be blunt because they were waiting and it was now eight minutes away from call time. He looked at me and said, "How dare you try to plant a question on the New York Times? I'm offended by this, and it's highly unethical."

Laitin did succeed in planting one or two questions, but, as Deakin writes, "the Grand Plan had failed."

Nancy Dickerson confirms the Moyers methodology in her 1976 memoir, Among Those Present: A Reporter's View of Twenty-Five Years in Washington. She writes:

The tactic [of planting questions] has been tried before, notably in Ike's day, with little fuss, but it hurt Johnson immeasurably. …

One day when I phoned Bill Moyers he asked if I was going to go to the news conference later that day. When I said that I was, he suggested, "You'd be the perfect one to ask LBJ how he feels; after all, it's his birthday.

Dickerson agreed to the request, but another reporter beat her to the question at the news conference. She continues:

I don't know how many other plants there were that day, but in retrospect I know that I was wrong in agreeing to ask one, even if it was a valid news question. Bill Moyers was out of line in suggesting it, and I was at fault in agreeing to it. Years later Bill told me that [Eisenhower press secretary] Jim Hagerty and [Kennedy press secretary] Pierre Salinger had done the same thing with great skill, and that it was necessary to compensate for the inadequacies of a press corps that often fails to ask the key question. I disagree. If a President has some information he feels the American people should know, he has only to make an announcement before the reporters' questions start.

Now compare Moyers' willingness to script Johnson news conferences with the sanctimonious interview he gave to Buzzflash in October 2003. He observes that modern journalists "who don't serve a partisan purpose and who try to be disinterested observers find themselves whipsawed between these corporate and ideological forces" and goes on to complain about the White House press corps, saying:

I think these forces have unbalanced the relationship between this White House and the press. Frankly, even if we had tried it in LBJ's time, we wouldn't have gotten away with the kind of press conference President Bush conducted on the eve of the invasion of Iraq—the one that even the President admitted was wholly scripted, with reporters raising their hands and posing so as to appear spontaneous.

Where does the guy who planted questions at LBJ news conferences, who told Nancy Dickerson that previous press secretaries had done it, and who told her that planting questions was necessary, get the moxie to accuse the Bush press corps of participating in a scripted news conference?

The scripted news conference he's harping about is the one from March 6, 2003, in which Bush snubbed a reporter who was trying to get his attention by saying:

We'll be there in a minute. King,
John King. This is a scripted—(laughter.)

Does this mean the Bush news conference was "scripted"? Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer claimed absolutely not in a March 7, 2003, briefing. Fleischer said that Bush had called upon questioners from a "suggestion" list he had prepared. The president preferred this method because it results in a "more orderly news conference," added Fleischer. The scripted comment was just another Bush joke gone flat. (If you have a Nexis account, see the nicely done March 8, 2003, Newsday news story "Not Scripted, but Listed: Checklist of reporters helps Bush work news conference" by Ken Fireman.)

Bush isn't the only president to have relied on the list approach. Barack Obama favors it, too, something that Chicago Sun-Times columnist Carol Marin was complaining about in early January, before the Obama inauguration and well before his first news conference (Feb. 9). As you may recall, Obama made no effort to conceal his reliance on a list as he called on reporters.

I await Moyers' "expose" of the Obama administration's blatantly scripted news conferences.

January 21, 2008

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/200 ... is_ml.html


Bill Moyers whitewashes his MLK dirty deeds
Thomas Lifson
The oleaginous Bill Moyers takes to taxpayer-funded airways and cyberspace to celebrate Martin Luther King Day by celebrating his boss President Lyndon Johnson, and Johnson's role in getting the 1965 Civil Rights Bill passed and signed.

The following words from his video essay just stick in my craw:

"Johnson kept his pledge and did the right thing."

What Moyers neglects to mention is that he and LBJ had MLK bugged, to try to get leverage on the Civil Rights Crusader. Fortunately, in a comment, journalist Thomas Lipscomb adds the history Moyers whitewashes (there is no better word for it) in the comments section of Moyers' website.

One expects Bill Moyers constant rewrites of history, but it is a bit much when he decides to whitewash his own and LBJ's dirty tricks at the expense of Martin Luther King on the occasion of Martin Luther King Day.

Respected "60 Minutes" reporter Morley Safer remembers things rather differently than Moyers. Compare the two accounts yourself.

Here is Lipscomb's comment:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/ ... ment-41477

One expects Bill Moyers constant rewrites of history, but it is a bit much when he decides to whitewash his own and LBJ's dirty tricks at the expense of Martin Luther King on the occasion of Martin Luther King Day.

Respected "60 Minutes" reporter Morley Safer remembers things rather differently than Moyers. Compare the two accounts yourself.

In Safer's book FLASHBACKS (St. Martins Press, 1990) pp 148 ff.

"I find it hard to believe that Bill Moyers would engage in character assassination over one evening news broadcast -- even given the political imperatives of the moment. But I confess , I find it harder not to believe it.

His part in Lyndon Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover's bugging of Martin Luther King's private life, the leaks to the press and diplomatic corps, the surveillance of civil rights groups at the 1964 Democratic Convention, and his request for damaging information from Hoover on members of the Goldwater campaign suggest he was not only a good soldier but a gleeful retainer feeding the appetites of Lyndon Johnson.

It's all too confusing. Bill Moyers, the sometimes overly pious public defender of liberal virtue, the First Amendment, and the rights of miniorities playing the role of Iago."

Of course Safer had felt the effect of one of Moyers nastier disinformation campaigns himself. LBJ and his press secretary Moyers summoned CBS head Frank Stanton to the White House and "threatened that, unless CBS got rid of me and 'cleaned up its act' the White House would 'go public'with information about Safer's 'Communist ties.'"

Moyers may not have "gone public" but somehow the ambassador to Vietnam called Safer "a KGB agent" and Secretary of State Dean Rusk noted his "ties to the Soviet intelligence apparatus."

Remember this while listening to Moyers' "objective reporting" the next time.

Posted by: Thomas Lipscomb, Senior Fellow, Heartland Institute | January 20, 2008 9:34 PM

Bill Moyers, LBJ's hatchet man
http://riverdaughter.wordpress.com/2009 ... l-ratfker/

The Washington Post had an interesting article on Thursday about FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s investigation of Jack Valenti’s sexuality in 1964 when Valenti was a top aide to President Lyndon B. Johnson. Valenti later became head of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and originated movie rating system.

Previously confidential FBI files show that Hoover’s deputies set out to determine whether Valenti, who had married two years earlier, maintained a relationship with a male commercial photographer. Republican Party operatives reportedly were pursuing a parallel investigation with the help of a retired FBI agent, bureau files show. No proof was ever found, but the files, obtained by The Washington Post under the federal Freedom of Information Act, provide further insight into the conduct of the FBI under Hoover, for whom damaging personal information on the powerful was a useful tool in his interactions with presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Richard M. Nixon.

Johnson initially blocked the FBI from obtaining a sworn statement from Valenti or approaching the photographer, asserting that Valenti was “attracted to the women and not to the men,” files show. But under FBI pressure, the president relented and approved an investigation of his close friend.

In the Washington of the early 1960s, allegations or proof of homosexuality could end a career. In October 1964, Walter Jenkins, another senior aide in the Johnson administration, was arrested for allegedly having sex in the men’s room of the Washington YMCA. The news leaked just before the election, and Johnson, rushing to stem the political damage, quickly secured the resignation of Jenkins, then his longest-serving aide.

I knew that J. Edgar Hoover was a old pervert who spied on everyone–he had files on “dissidents” like Martin Luther King as well as politicians whom he wanted to control with threats of blackmail. But this is what I found most interesting in the Post story:

Even Bill Moyers, a White House aide now best known as a liberal television commentator, is described in the records as seeking information on the sexual preferences of White House staff members. Moyers said by e-mail yesterday that his memory is unclear after so many years but that he may have been simply looking for details of allegations first brought to the president by Hoover.

I was just a high school kid in 1964, so while I recalled that Moyers had worked for Johnson, I didn’t know much about his career in politics. I was startled to see that Bill Moyers had been involved in Hoover’s spying. After all, in his second career as a journalist Moyers has become quite the sanctimonious, holier-than-thou Public TV icon, lecturing all and sundry on journalistic ethics and liberal values. And yet…. last year he jumped into the koolaid vat with both feet. Maybe his history in dirty politics helps explain Moyers’ attraction to Obama?

I decided to do a little more research on Moyers’ political career. It turns out that Moyers (born Billy Don Moyers in Hugo, OK) was Lyndon Johnson’s hatchet man–the Karl Rove of his day. He first served as associate director of the Peace Corps under John F. Kennedy, and then became a “special assistant” to LBJ after Kennedy’s assassination. According to Wikipedia, Moyers “acted as the President’s informal chief of staff from October 1964 until 1966.” He also served as Johnson’s press secretary from 1965-67.

Moyers was deeply involved in developing the infamous “daisy” ad that implied that Goldwater’s election would result in nuclear war. The ad officially aired only once, but got so much free airtime and discussion that it easily did as much damage to Goldwater’s campaign as the Swiftboat vets did to Kerry’s in 2004. According to Jason Maoz at Commentary, years later Goldwater said of Moyers, “Every time I see him, I get sick to my stomach and want to throw up.”

Moyers was apparently obsessed with outing homosexuals after Walter Jenkins was forced out of the Johnson Administration. Not only did he ask the FBI for information on two other LBJ staffers he suspected of being gay, he asked the FBI to investigate 15 members of Barry Goldwater’s staff and dig up any evidence they could find of homosexual activity.

And then there was the 1964 Democratic Convention. That year, Fannie Lou Hamer led a group of African American “Freedom Democrats” in trying to integrate the Mississippi delegation. Moyers ordered the group ejected from the Convention and prevented them from achieving their goal.

Worst of all, Moyers was heavily involved in the persecution of Rev. Martin Luther King by Hoover’s FBI. From the report of the Senate Committee investigating the FBI’s spying on Americans:

From December 1963 until his death in 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. was the target of an intensive campaign by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to “neutralize” him as an effective civil rights leader. In the words of the man in charge of the FBI’s “war” against Dr. King:

No holds were barred. We have used [similar] techniques against Soviet agents. [The same methods were] brought home against any organization against which we were targeted. We did not differentiate. This is a rough, tough business. 1

The FBI collected information about Dr. King’s plans and activities through an extensive surveillance program, employing nearly every intelligence-gathering technique at the Bureau’s disposal. Wiretaps, which were initially approved by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, were maintained on Dr. King’s home telephone from October 1963 until mid-1965; the SCLC headquarter’s telephones were covered by wiretaps for an even longer period. Phones in the homes and offices of some of Dr. King’s close advisers were also wiretapped. The FBI has acknowledged 16 occasions on which microphones were hidden in Dr. King’s hotel and motel rooms in an “attempt” to obtain information about the “private activities of King and his advisers” for use to “completely discredit” them. 2

FBI informants in the civil rights movement and reports from field offices kept the Bureau’s headquarters informed of developments in the civil rights field. The FBI’s presence was so intrusive that one major figure in the civil rights movement testified that his colleagues referred to themselves as members of “the FBI’s golden record club.” 3

The FBI’s formal program to discredit Dr. King with Government officials began with the distribution of a “monograph” which the FBI realized could “be regarded as a personal attack on Martin Luther King,” 4 and which was subsequently described by a Justice Department official as “a personal diatribe … a personal attack without evidentiary support.” 5

Congressional leaders were warned “off the record” about alleged dangers posed by Reverend King. The FBI responded to Dr. King’s receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize by attempting to undermine his reception by foreign heads of state and American ambassadors in the countries that be planned to visit. When Dr. King returned to the United States, steps were taken to reduce support for a huge banquet and a special “day” that were being planned in his honor.

The FBI’s program to destroy Dr. King as the leader of the civil rights movement entailed attempts to discredit him with churches, universities, and the press. Steps were taken to attempt to convince the National Council of Churches, the Baptist World Alliance, and leading Protestant ministers to halt financial support of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and to persuade them that “Negro leaders should completely isolate King and remove him from the role he is now occupying in civil rights activities.” 6 When the FBI learned that Dr. King intended to visit the Pope, an agent was dispatched to persuade Francis Cardinal Spellman to warn the Pope about “the likely embarrassment that may result to the Pope should he grant King an audience.” 7 The FBI sought to influence universities to withhold honorary degrees from Dr. King. Attempts were made to prevent the publication of articles favorable to Dr. King and to find “friendly” news sources that would print unfavorable articles. The FBI offered to play for reporters tape recordings allegedly made from microphone surveillance of Dr. King’s hotel rooms.

Bill Moyers testified before the Committee, and his role in enabling Hoover’s repulsive obsession with MLK and his sex life is spelled out in the report. Moyers gave the go-ahead to Hoover to spy on MLK. He leaked information on MLK, including audiotapes, to the press and made efforts to undermine MLK in Europe when he traveled to accept his Nobel Peace Prize. White House Memoranda show that Moyers made sure that LBJ was aware of the dirt on MLK and was give a heads up when there were leaks of private information on MLK to the press.

snip......

[Bruce Dazzling]

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I love Brother West, and I thought the speech he made to set off all the criticism was righteous. And I love Brother Hedges, but I don't make much of his general liberal-bashing for sport.

Who are these liberals? His article doesn't mention any by name, and he'll be hard put to find too many among his targets who are willing to call themselves by that name. The people who do freely identify as "liberal" on principle may be really good people, and very likely undeserving of Hedges's critique. In fact, they're probably just like Hedges...

You should post this analysis in the comments section at Truthdig, Jack. I'd be interested to read a response from Hedges.

[Bruce Dazzling]

.

I love Brother West, and I thought the speech he made to set off all the criticism was righteous. And I love Brother Hedges, but I don't make much of his general liberal-bashing for sport.

Who are these liberals? His article doesn't mention any by name, and he'll be hard put to find too many among his targets who are willing to call themselves by that name. The people who do freely identify as "liberal" on principle may be really good people, and very likely undeserving of Hedges's critique. In fact, they're probably just like Hedges...

You should post this analysis in the comments section at Truthdig, Jack. I'd be interested to read a response from Hedges.

Or better yet, mention it to him during the Q & A session following his presentation at Cooper Union tomorrow night, and I'll videe it for the RI crowd. I'm sure it would make for a very interesting discussion.

[Nordic]

.

I love Brother West, and I thought the speech he made to set off all the criticism was righteous. And I love Brother Hedges, but I don't make much of his general liberal-bashing for sport.

Who are these liberals? His article doesn't mention any by name, and he'll be hard put to find too many among his targets who are willing to call themselves by that name. The people who do freely identify as "liberal" on principle may be really good people, and very likely undeserving of Hedges's critique. In fact, they're probably just like Hedges...

You should post this analysis in the comments section at Truthdig, Jack. I'd be interested to read a response from Hedges.

Or better yet, mention it to him during the Q & A session following his presentation at Cooper Union tomorrow night, and I'll videe it for the RI crowd. I'm sure it would make for a very interesting discussion.

I'd go to my best computer to watch that.

[JackRiddler]

.

I love Brother West, and I thought the speech he made to set off all the criticism was righteous. And I love Brother Hedges, but I don't make much of his general liberal-bashing for sport.

Who are these liberals? His article doesn't mention any by name, and he'll be hard put to find too many among his targets who are willing to call themselves by that name. The people who do freely identify as "liberal" on principle may be really good people, and very likely undeserving of Hedges's critique. In fact, they're probably just like Hedges...

You should post this analysis in the comments section at Truthdig, Jack. I'd be interested to read a response from Hedges.

Or better yet, mention it to him during the Q & A session following his presentation at Cooper Union tomorrow night, and I'll videe it for the RI crowd. I'm sure it would make for a very interesting discussion.

Thanks for the suggestions. I tried registering at Truthdig and it's turned into a techno-asspain, still no account activation.

As for Q&A, those are usually not opportunities for debates and I can't say right now if I'll be there. You try and make an extended speech, the crowd turns on you. I suppose I could boil it down to, "Didn't the liberal class die already in the 1960s, after the assassinations? Isn't it true that today few people use this word to describe themselves? It's usually not a self-description -- 'I am a liberal' -- it's almost always ascribed. A label. And the ones doing the ascribing are the corporate media and the so-called conservatives. They're the ones using 'liberal,' as an attack term. Are you sure you want to use this word, at least without always carefully defining who and what you mean? I don't think Larry Summers is a liberal, or that he thinks of himself as one, and I think a lot of good people fall into the false liberal-conservative dichotomy and DO think of themselves as liberals, as a synonym for progressive, and your critique doesn't really apply to them."

Or I suppose I could be the guy who rambles on incoherently about thermite in Building 7 and threatens him with gatekeeper status if he doesn't answer right.

.

[Bruce Dazzling]

.

I love Brother West, and I thought the speech he made to set off all the criticism was righteous. And I love Brother Hedges, but I don't make much of his general liberal-bashing for sport.

Who are these liberals? His article doesn't mention any by name, and he'll be hard put to find too many among his targets who are willing to call themselves by that name. The people who do freely identify as "liberal" on principle may be really good people, and very likely undeserving of Hedges's critique. In fact, they're probably just like Hedges...

You should post this analysis in the comments section at Truthdig, Jack. I'd be interested to read a response from Hedges.

Or better yet, mention it to him during the Q & A session following his presentation at Cooper Union tomorrow night, and I'll videe it for the RI crowd. I'm sure it would make for a very interesting discussion.

Thanks for the suggestions. I tried registering at Truthdig and it's turned into a techno-asspain, still no account activation.

As for Q&A, those are usually not opportunities for debates and I can't say right now if I'll be there. You try and make an extended speech, the crowd turns on you. I suppose I could boil it down to, "Didn't the liberal class die already in the 1960s, after the assassinations? Isn't it true that today few people use this word to describe themselves? It's usually not a self-description -- 'I am a liberal' -- it's almost always ascribed. A label. And the ones doing the ascribing are the corporate media and the so-called conservatives. They're the ones using 'liberal,' as an attack term. Are you sure you want to use this word, at least without always carefully defining who and what you mean? I don't think Larry Summers is a liberal, or that he thinks of himself as one, and I think a lot of good people fall into the false liberal-conservative dichotomy and DO think of themselves as liberals, as a synonym for progressive, and your critique doesn't really apply."

Or I suppose I could be the guy who rambles on incoherently about thermite in Building 7 and threatens him with gatekeeper status if he doesn't answer right.

.

Well, if you go, I'll be the guy who doesn't really look like Moby but who always gets mistaken for him because people tend to make lazy associations.

And your boiled down version could very well lead to an interesting response. I've seen a few of these Hedges talks, and he often interacts with his questioners quite liberally, whatever THAT word means...

[JackRiddler]

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I'm failing to register with truthdig. Just don't get what the problem is. Can someone who can post there help out? Please let me know first (so that I can edit it appropriately). Because I am curious what he says. Thanks!

.

[8bitagent]

.

I love Brother West, and I thought the speech he made to set off all the criticism was righteous. And I love Brother Hedges, but I don't make much of his general liberal-bashing for sport.

Who are these liberals? His article doesn't mention any by name, and he'll be hard put to find too many among his targets who are willing to call themselves by that name. The people who do freely identify as "liberal" on principle may be really good people, and very likely undeserving of Hedges's critique. In fact, they're probably just like Hedges...

You should post this analysis in the comments section at Truthdig, Jack. I'd be interested to read a response from Hedges.

Or better yet, mention it to him during the Q & A session following his presentation at Cooper Union tomorrow night, and I'll videe it for the RI crowd. I'm sure it would make for a very interesting discussion.

Thanks for the suggestions. I tried registering at Truthdig and it's turned into a techno-asspain, still no account activation.

As for Q&A, those are usually not opportunities for debates and I can't say right now if I'll be there. You try and make an extended speech, the crowd turns on you. I suppose I could boil it down to, "Didn't the liberal class die already in the 1960s, after the assassinations? Isn't it true that today few people use this word to describe themselves? It's usually not a self-description -- 'I am a liberal' -- it's almost always ascribed. A label. And the ones doing the ascribing are the corporate media and the so-called conservatives. They're the ones using 'liberal,' as an attack term. Are you sure you want to use this word, at least without always carefully defining who and what you mean? I don't think Larry Summers is a liberal, or that he thinks of himself as one, and I think a lot of good people fall into the false liberal-conservative dichotomy and DO think of themselves as liberals, as a synonym for progressive, and your critique doesn't really apply to them."

Or I suppose I could be the guy who rambles on incoherently about thermite in Building 7 and threatens him with gatekeeper status if he doesn't answer right.

.

I agree with everything you said said, 100%. However when I myself talk about hypocritical liberalism, I'm talking directly about the college and yuppy people who openly consider themselves liberals.
They all need to watch documentaries on 60's radicalism, anti Vietnam movement and John Lennon:) That image of the donkey covered in corporate logos is so pitch perfect.

To me it isn't just the blind support of the wars in Afghanistan/Pakistan/Libya/elsewhere, its not just the religious fervor partying at the news of OBL's killing, nor the often smarmy smug holier than thou attitude. It's the(to use a popular youth phrase online) "meh" generation. Hey, as long as I have my 4g network smart phone, netflix streaming on my roku/ps3/hd lcd tv/blu ray, my Xbox live and my twitter/facebook..."it's all good, b'rah". The iGeneration/MeGeneration/ADDgeneration.

Supporting gay rights and racial/class equality just can't be the only lofty agreed upon push of the leftist realm, but at the very least...liberals should not be so quick to attack. You can go on mother jones, counterpunch, daily kos, Huffpo(now ultra corporate), Mediamatters, crooksandliars, etc and see what happens when you try and present anything outside of the agreed upon terms of leftgatekeeping.
I KNOW that the right wingers make themselves blue in the face with "damn liberals this/liberal that" all day long. But from where I'm standing, modern day American liberals aren't all too far removed from right wingers when it comes to a lot of issues, sadly. But I'm not the ideology police, and I hope someday the spirit of 1968-1972 will return. A time when both student, worker, and even frock alike stood shoulder to shoulder to oppose tyranny and promote equality.

[JackRiddler]

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The lack of history has everything to do with it. Especially the cluelessness about the 1960s, as you say.

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