Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!
Wed, 27 April 2011
 Welcome to Episode 85 of Light On Light Through, in which I discuss the inadvisability of unconstitutional wars - that is, wars not declared by both houses of Congress, as required by the U.S. Constitution - such as the one we're now waging in Lybia...Helpful links -
my home page: http://paullevinson.info more blogs: http://InfiniteRegress.tv more podcasts: http://Levinsonnewsclips.com videoclips: http://www.youtube.com/user/PLev20062006
my latest media book: New New Media my latest novel: The Plot to Save Socrates "challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly "Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News and Brian Charles Clarke says The Plot to Save Socrates "resonates with the current political climate . . . Sierra Waters is sexy as hell . . . there's a bite to Levinson's wit"-- in Curled Up With A Good Book
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Mon, 8 November 2010
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 81 - 15 minutes of clear, cogent analysis from me about why MSNBC was dead wrong to suspend Keith Olbermann. Well, I'll leave it to you to judge whether my analysis is clear and cogent, but the long and the short of it is, although I've found fault with Olbermann's over-the-top denunciations of everyone from Hillary Clinton to Bill O'Reilly to Jack Bauer, his suspension from MSNBC is based on the dangerous and foolish myth that news commentators are supposed to be "objective," and not connected in any way to those they may interview.
my home page: http://paullevinson.info more blogs: http://InfiniteRegress.tv more podcasts: http://Levinsonnewsclips.com videoclips: http://www.youtube.com/user/PLev20062006
published on 3 September 2009: New New Media my latest novel: The Plot to Save Socrates "challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly "Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News and Brian Charles Clarke says The Plot to Save Socrates "resonates with the current political climate . . . Sierra Waters is sexy as hell . . . there's a bite to Levinson's wit"-- in Curled Up With A Good Book FREE audiobook of The Plot to Save Socrates from Audible special trial offer!
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Thu, 13 May 2010
Welcome to Light On Light Through,
Episode 77, in
which I discuss concerns that I and other civil libertarians have raised about U.S. Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan's views of the First Amendment, in particular her suggestion that objectional speech - such as hate speech and in pornography - can be restricted by government if it uses laws against physical abuse in hate crimes (which are indeed Constitutional and necessary for the government) to chill or limit the speakers.Links:
home page: http://paullevinson.info more blogs: http://InfiniteRegress.tv more podcasts: http://Levinsonnewsclips.com videoclips: http://www.youtube.com/user/PLev20062006
published on 3 September 2009: New New Media my latest novel: The Plot to Save Socrates "challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly "Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News and Brian Charles Clarke says The Plot to Save Socrates "resonates with the current political climate . . . Sierra Waters is sexy as hell . . . there's a bite to Levinson's wit"-- in Curled Up With A Good Book FREE audiobook of The Plot to Save Socrates from Audible special trial offer!
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Sat, 1 May 2010
Welcome to Light On Light Through,
Episode 76, in which I discuss how the new Arizona Immigration Law, even as amended, violates the 14th Amendment to our Constitution.Links -
home page: http://paullevinson.info more blogs: http://InfiniteRegress.tv more podcasts: http://Levinsonnewsclips.com videoclips: http://www.youtube.com/user/PLev20062006
published on 3 September 2009: New New Media my latest novel: The Plot to Save Socrates "challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly "Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News and Brian Charles Clarke says The Plot to Save Socrates "resonates with the current political climate . . . Sierra Waters is sexy as hell . . . there's a bite to Levinson's wit"-- in Curled Up With A Good Book FREE audiobook of The Plot to Save Socrates from Audible special trial offer!
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Tue, 30 June 2009
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 63: Sonia Sotomayor vs. the First Amendment: An Interview with Avery and Lauren Doninger. The First Amendment has almost never been under greater fire. Broadcasters are being fined record amounts and the FCC and Congress are calling out for more. Students are being taught the wrong lessons about freedom of expression in some of our schools, and courts are supporting these schools. One of those cases - involving a 16-year old high school student, Avery Doninger - made its way to the Second Circuit Appeals Court, where Sonia Sotomayor and two colleague justices supported the school. Judge Sotomayor now seems likely to be confirmed by the US Senate to serve a lifetime position on the United States Supreme Court.In this special episode of Light On Light Through, I interview Avery Doninger and her mother, Lauren Doninger. You can hear in their own voices what was at stake in Avery's case - what the case was all about - and their reaction to the adverse decision of the Sotomayor court. The case may well reach the U.S. Supreme Court... Helpful links and contacts:
home page: http://paullevinson.info coming in Summer 2009: New New Media my latest novel: The Plot to Save Socrates and Brian Charles Clarke says The Plot to Save Socrates "resonates with the current political climate . . . there's a bite to Levinson's wit" -- in Curled Up With A Good Book
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Fri, 16 January 2009
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 58: A Conversation with Paul J. Feiner, Town Supervisor of Greenburgh, NY, about Blogging, Obama, and Caroline Kennedy. Paul Feiner has been Town Supervisor - a two-year elected office - since 1991. He has a weekly radio show, The Greenburgh Report, on WVOX Radio in New Rochelle, NY. He also maintains a blog, and has trail blazed new media in our Westchester County town, including the introduction of competition in cable television providers. I was a guest on his radio show on January 9, 2009, and this episode of Light On Light Through is excerpted from our conversation. We talk about Paul Feiner's blog, Facebook, Twitter, the role of new media in Barack Obama's administration, and why Governor David Paterson should appoint Caroline Kennedy to the Senate...Helpful links:
home page: http://paullevinson.info my latest novel: The Plot to Save Socrates and Brian Charles Clarke says The Plot to Save Socrates "resonates with the current political climate . . . heroine Sierra Waters is sexy as hell . . . there's a bite to Levinson's wit" -- in Curled Up With A Good Book
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Fri, 2 January 2009
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 57: I'm A Progressive Libertarian ... in which I explain how one can insist that the government respect the Bill of Rights, and stay out of our business whenever possible, but also act to promote our welfare by supporting rights of women, gays, and minorities, and spend money to reduce poverty, provide health care, and explore space. I'm in favor of no income tax for anyone earning under a million dollars a year, and raising taxes on millionaires and billionaires. Regarding governmental intervention to help with the current economic crisis, I see that intervention as an antibiotic. In general, we want our bodies to fight off infection on their own. But if our lungs are filling with fluid from bacterial pneumonia, we better get some antibiotic intervention as soon as possible.Plus flashes ... Contrary to critics such as Heather Havrilesky in Salon, I see the new golden age of television roaring back in 2009, with Lost, 24, Damages, Battlestar Galactica, Fringe, Life on Mars, Heroes, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, The L Word, Bones, The Unit, and more all coming back with continued or new seasons... Helpful links:
home page: http://paullevinson.info my latest novel: The Plot to Save Socrates and Brian Charles Clarke says The Plot to Save Socrates "resonates with the current political climate . . . heroine Sierra Waters is sexy as hell . . . there's a bite to Levinson's wit" -- in Curled Up With A Good Book
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Sun, 10 February 2008
Welcome to Light On Light Through Episode 51, "Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton," in which I examine the strengths and differences of these two extraordinary candidates ... Obama may be the greatest orator of our time ... his election as the first African-American President would make history, as would Hillary Clinton's as the first woman in the White House President ... how do Obama and Clinton compare to the Republican candidates ... plus ... a critique of MSNBC's shoddy treatment of Hillary Clinton...Helpful blog links ... Obama Sweeps Three Primaries, Gives Magnificent Speech ... MSNBC Needs to Stop Sniping at Hillary ... I'm Voting for Barack Obama in New York Today home page: http://paullevinson.info my latest novel: The Plot to Save Socrates and Brian Charles Clarke says The Plot to Save Socrates "resonates with the current political climate . . . heroine Sierra Waters is sexy as hell . . . there's a bite to Levinson's wit" -- in Curled Up With A Good Book
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Fri, 2 November 2007
The networks continue to denigrate the results of their own post-debate polls- Last night, Chris Matthews mentioned on MSNBC's Hardball that Barack Obama won the poll that MSNBC conducted after the Democratic Presidential debate on Tuesday- To which Chuck Todd, MSNBC's "official" pollster replied - that poll was done with cell phones, via which Obama's supporters could keep pounding the call keys... To which Matthews responded - like in the 1936 Literary Digest poll... To which I would respond: No, Chris, not like that 1936 poll at all, which was supposed to be a poll of a randomly selected part of the voting population, but was skewed or biased because it was conducted from lists of automobile owners and people who had telephones in their homes, and only very rich people had those luxuries in those days, so the Literary Digest poll wrongly showed the Democrat FDR losing... Which has nothing in common with MSNBC's post-election poll - except that it, too, was conducted by phone. But it was never designed as a randomly conducted poll. What Chris should have said to Chuck Todd was: wrong, callers can't cast votes more than once on the same phone... Or, if by some bizarre chance they could, then simply install a program on your vote-reception software which would make it impossible for anyone to cast a vote more than once on the same cell phone. Very easy, really - and certainly preferable to encouraging viewers to vote in your poll, and the undercutting the results. Well, at least Ron Paul now has company - now Obama's supporters, like Ron Paul's, are discounted because they participate in a poll that a network conducts, and then expresses no confidence in because they don't like the results. ============= My 50-minute lecture about network after-debate polls and the media's misreporting of Ron Paul, delivered to my class at Fordham University Category:Politics
-- posted at: 5:54 AM |
Mon, 22 October 2007
Category:Politics
-- posted at: 8:44 AM |
Fri, 19 October 2007
As you know, I devoted 50-minutes of my Intro to
Communication and Media Studies class last month at Fordham University
to a lecture about the mass media's mistreatment of Ron Paul. Although
Ron Paul is now getting much more media attention, the mistreatment
continues - as evidenced, to give just one example, of CNBC's taking down of a post-debate poll
which Ron Paul won - and this means that people who value our
democratic system need to continue to keep a wary eye on our media, and
call them out when necessary. 1. Consider Ron Paul’s Presidential campaign the Source of communication. Using the Shannon-Weaver model, explain all the steps that the campaign must go through, in order to reach its Destination, the American people. Make sure you address each step in the process, as well as what can (and did) go wrong in the process, and possible remedies for addressing this. (Option: If you like to do this analysis for another Presidential candidate, that would be acceptable, but make sure you have specific examples to present.) The exam was open book, and the students had a choice of questions. I don't know yet how many chose to answer this one. The crux of the correct answer was that the media misreporting of Ron Paul constitutes noise in the Channel, and the best way of remedying that is providing feedback - meaning, let the media and the world know that such misreporting is unacceptable. I'll keep you posted on how my students do on this question (without, of course, revealing any names.) Category:Politics
-- posted at: 10:37 PM |
Sun, 14 October 2007
Welcome to Episode 46 of Light On Light Through, in which I offer a modest proposal for greatly improving our political process: why not work for the best candidates in each of the two parties, so as to give Americans the best possible choice in the general election. I go over my choices - just Ron Paul for the Republican nomination - Gore, Obama, Edwards, Kucinich, Gravel for the Democratic nomination (a lot more to choose from there) - and give my reasons why. Plus flashes ... Judy Woodruff reclaims the fine art of the civilized, informative interview in her PBS NewsHour interview with Ron Paul ... Michael Clayton is a fine, originally directed movie ... still time to send me your mp3 greetings for the next episode of Light On Light Through - our first anniversary show... Helpful links:
more blogs: http://InfiniteRegress.tv and http://www.myspace.com/twiceuponarhyme videoclips: http://www.youtube.com/user/PLev20062006 videoclips: http://www.youtube.com/user/PLev20062006 The Plot to Save Socrates - my latest novel |
Sat, 13 October 2007
I wrote the following on another blog back in March. In view of the growing number of Ron Paul supporters - people who believe we should take the Constitution and its restrictions on government seriously - and Al Gore's winning the Nobe Prize yesterday, my modest proposal that we should work to support the best candidates in each of the two major parties seems more viable and relevant than ever... The approach most people take to Presidential elections is, pick a candidate - if you can - one candidate, and support him or her to the hilt. If your candidate fails before getting the nomination, you may or may not switch to another, and go through the same process. If your chosen candidate is a Democrat, you likely will have little real interest in the Republicans, except to hope that they choose the weakest person to run for office. And vice versa - if your favorite candidate is a Republican, all you likely will care about regarding the Democrats is what they can do, presumably unintentionally, to help your Republican candidate win. But does this approach get the best out of our democracy? I'm trying something a little different this time around. I am going to try to pick my favorites in both the Democratic and the Republican fields, and do whatever little I can to help them get nominated. If I'm lucky enough to see both nominated, I'll then decide whom to vote for in the general election. So far, here are my favorites, and why: Democratic Party: Al Gore: pluses: his election would correct the deep injustice of the 2000 election, he was anti-Iraq-war from the beginning, he is genuinely interested in science to improve our human condition; minuses: I'm concerned that he may be in favor of Congress's crackdown on "indecency," given his wife Tipper's history on this issue Barack Obama: pluses: he was anti-Iraq-war from the beginning, he would bring a Kennedy-esque youthful vitality to the White House, it would be healthy for America to have an African-American President; minuses: not enough experience, and untested on many issues *John Edwards: see below for note added on April 21, in which I've including Edwards in my Democratic favorites Republican Party: Ron Paul: pluses: he was anti-Iraq-war from the beginning (and, better than Gore and Obama, was in office at the time, and voted against the war resolutions), he is a vigorous defender of the Constitution and the First Amendment, he is an opponent of government censorship, he's in favor of private enterprise in space (so is Gore); minuses: he's in favor of states (but not the Federal government) banning abortion (I'm in favor of a women's right to choose), an opponent of gun control (I agree that the Second Amendment is consistent with Paul's position - I'm in favor of amending it), urged US neutrality in Israeli-Hezbollah war. *** So, there you have it. I currently consider myself a supporter of all three candidates. Regarding Gore and Obama, I would certainly be happy with a Democratic ticket that had them both (Gore for Pres, Obama for VP), and I would be happy with a ticket that had either for President. Regarding Ron Paul: at this point, there is no other Republican even remotely as good, in my view. Regarding the minuses for all three candidates: I'll keep researching their positions and records, and of course be on the look-out for new developments. And I'll also be open to any new candidates, or to any dramatic shifts in all of the candidates currently in the field, but I'm not holding my breath for either. *** *Added 21 April 2007 - John Edwards' Favorite Book is I. F. Stone's The Trial of Socrates. If find this so impressive - indicative of a love a freedom of expression, and a philosophic depth - that I now include Edwards along with Gore and Obama as Democratic candidates for President that I could enthusiastically support. ================= 25-minute podcast of this Modest Political Proposal Category:Politics
-- posted at: 8:08 PM |
Fri, 12 October 2007
To: Allen Wastler
Managing Editor, CNBC.com From: Paul Levinson, PhD Professor & Chair, Department of Communication and Media Studies Fordham University, NYC re: your An Open Letter to the Ron Paul Faithful of October 11, in which you explain why you took down your poll, conducted after the Michigan Republican Presidential debate, and featured on your web site 1. You invite comments and response to your Open Letter, and provide an e-mail address. Since your action is, in my view, a matter of great public concern, I am not only e-mailing this response to you, but publishing it in my InfiniteRegress.tv blog and here on LightonLightThrough. 2. I am not one of the "Ron Paul Faithful". Although I greatly admire many of his positions, especially his support of our Constitution, I have not yet endorsed any candidate, and am indeed on record as urging Americans to support the best candidate in each of our two main parties, so as to give us the best choice in the general election. You are welcome to see my How About We Look for the Best Candidate in =Both= Parties for details. 2a. I am writing to you, therefore, as a professor, scholar, and observer of media and politics, with a keen interest in seeing the press serve our democracy as Thomas Jefferson and our Founding Fathers intended - that is, by providing us with the truth wherever possible. 3. Let me now address the issues you raise in your Open Letter: You write that "these Internet polls are admittedly unscientific and subject to hacking". True, but the "scientific" polls - the ones that rely on random sampling - are subject to error, as well. See, for example, the famous poll that predicted that FDR would lose the 1936 Presidential election. Also, while the Internet may indeed be subject to hacking, do you have any proof that hacking took place in this case? You further say that your "poll was either hacked or the target of a campaign". Again, your proof? You further say that "[t]he next day, our email basked was flooded with Ron Paul support messages. And the computer logs showed the poll had been hit with traffic from Ron Paul chat sites. I learned other Internet polls that night had been hit in similar fashion." None of the above actions are "hacking". You owe Ron Paul's supporters and the American people an apology. Indeed, the fact that the polls reflected votes "from Ron Paul chat sites" does not even support your conclusion that your poll was "the target of a campaign" - conceivably some of the votes that came from the sites could have come from people who had come to the sites, impressed by what they saw of Ron Paul in the debate, and then went on to cast their votes in your poll. Does that sound to you like "a campaign"? You further say that Ron Paul's supporters, presumably including anyone who voted for Ron Paul in your poll, "also ruined the purpose of the poll. It was no longer an honest 'show of hands' -- it suddenly was a platform for beating the Ron Paul drum." What do you suppose influences public opinion in any election campaign? What is your definition of an "honest show of hands"? Is a potential voter who expresses support for a candidate, because that potential voter already liked that candidate prior to a given debate, somehow not "honest"? If what you wanted to measure in your poll was how previously undecided people felt about the performance of candidates in the debate, why did you not say so in your poll, and devise some way of measuring this? (For example, trying to identify a sample of undecided voters beforehand, and then asking them for their preferences after the debate?) Instead, you conclude your Open Letter with the following: "When a well-organized and committed 'few' can throw the results of a system meant to reflect the sentiments of 'the many,' I get a little worried. I'd take it down again." Again, you offer no evidence whatsoever that anything in the poll was "thrown," and you similarly offer no evidence about how "few" of the "many" were composed of Ron Paul supporters. Indeed, you offer no evidence of anything, really - just supposition and innuendo - and that gets me more than a little worried, about your competence and capacity to be Managing Editor of CNBC.com's website. If something needs to be "taken down," it may well be your position as Managing Editor. I call upon you to either apologize to the American people, or step down. Category:Politics
-- posted at: 4:55 PM |
Wed, 10 October 2007
Here are some of the highlights and lowlights in the Republican Presidential debate which concluded a fw hours ago in Michigan. It was on CNBC, and will repeated tonight at 9pm on MSNBC: Fred Thompson: started out nearly comatose, and then settled in. But he's fuzzy on most of the issues, and looks like Dwight David Eisenhower on a bad day. His best moment was responding to a pretty good crack by Romney, about the Republican debates being like Law and Order - a big cast, and Fred Thompson comes in at the end. Thompson smiled and said, pretty good, and I thought I was going to be the best actor up here. Mitt Romney: his response to whether the President needs to consult Congress before going to war - Romney said he'd leave that to the attorneys - was one of the lowest points, not only in this debate, but in American history, period. (See Ron Paul's response to this, below.) Rudy Giuliani: his response about whether the Internet required FCC-like cultural policing was troubling, to say the last. He's not in favor of creating new government agencies, but he might look into it, if the problem doesn't subside. But, what's the problem? No one disputes the need of police to go after predators, on and off line. The question was about the "cultural" problems of the Internet (porn?) and what should be done about that. A better answer would have been: "The FCC is unconstitutional even as a regulator of broadcasters. The last thing I would do is extend its violation of the First Amendment to the Internet." Too bad Ron Paul didn't get a chance to answer that question. Fortunately, Ron Paul did get a chance to respond about the President going to war... Ron Paul: his finest moment was his outrage over Romney's gibberish about consulting attorneys. Read the Constitution, Ron Paul said - it clearly says that Congress, not the President, has the power to declare war. You don't need to be a lawyer to understand that. You need to be just minimally literate. Also admirable was Ron Paul's unwillingness to blindly support whoever gets the Republican nomination - that nominee would need to stop following Bush's disastrous and unconstitutional foreign policy. It's rare indeed to hear a political candidate in either party speak such plain truth to the American people, and to the world. Category:Politics
-- posted at: 1:31 AM |
Thu, 4 October 2007
This is the lecture I delivered to my "Introduction to Communication and Media Studies" class at Fordham University last Friday, September 28, 2007, about the media misreporting of Ron Paul. The lecture, with student questions at the end, was about 50 minutes. It's divided into five parts on the YouTube video: 1. history of polling ... ABC May 2007 misreporting of Ron Paul ... 2. ABC continues misreporting Ron Paul (early August 2007).... 3. Mark Levin urges disinformation against Ron Paul on ABC radio ... Kucinich gets cropped ... the First Amendment ... 4. Hannity & Colmes misreport Ron Paul on Fox News ... reasons behind all of this ... 5. I answer student questions ... Note that the above is, of course, current only as of September 28, 2007, and contains no mention of ABC affiliate WMUR TV in New Hampshire failing to cover the Ron Paul "Family Day" rally on September 30... Category:Politics
-- posted at: 4:13 PM |
Mon, 1 October 2007
The Free Market News Network reports that WMUR neglected to cover Ron Paul at his "Family Day" rally in Manchester, New Hampshire this past weekend. WMUR is a state-wide television operation, with headquarters in Manchester. What struck me most about this was not the lack of coverage itself - infuriating and undemocratic, as it is - but the fact that WMUR is an ABC affiliate! Just this past Friday, at the lecture I delivered to my "Intro to Communication and Media Studies" class at Fordham University (we'll have the video up on YouTube soon), I detailed a series of outrageous ABC misreportings of Ron Paul since May - ranging from leaving him out of poll results to publishing misleading photographs that made his supporters seem far fewer at a rally in Iowa than they actually were. But I concluded, in an effort to be fair, that ABC seems to have been improving in the accuracy of its reporting lately, with Fox guilty of the worst recent transgressions. But here we are, once again, with a national ABC television affiliate apparently up to the same old business. If the Free Market News story is correct - and it's been up online more than a day with no opposing comments offered - then ABC is continuing to dig itself into a hole it may never get out of. Because, whatever happens in this election, the shameful performance of ABC News at so many junctures - regarding mostly Ron Paul, but also, at least once, Dennis Kucinich - will not be forgotten. Indeed, I expect it will be a section in many textbooks about media and politics. I know I certainly will be putting something about this in my next edition of The Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of the Information Revolution. See reviews of the most recent edition of The Soft Edge. Category:Politics
-- posted at: 3:50 PM |
Fri, 28 September 2007
I was delighted to hear Ron Paul say at the Republican Presidential debate on PBS that he is opposed to the Federal death penalty. He indicated that this was one of the few positions he changed his views about over the years - at one time, he supported the Federal death penalty - and his reason was that DNA evidence has shown too many innocent people found guilty. Category:Politics
-- posted at: 6:52 PM |
Thu, 27 September 2007
Category:Politics
-- posted at: 8:05 AM |
Sun, 23 September 2007
An Example of How Pro-War Republicans Are Trying to Mislead Us about MoveOn.org and General Petraeus
I heard your comments this AM on the radio concerning the Moveon.org ad in the NY Times. I was stunned by your take on it, but I suppose I shouldn’t be. You were simply reflecting your liberal bias and confirmed exactly what most know about academics in the liberal arts. Your views are so tainted by your liberal leanings, it’s impossible for you to present an evenhanded report on anything. And my reply ... You're the one who should have trouble looking at yourself in the mirror: you're obviously intelligent, and therefore must know that there's a big difference between saying someone's advice or assessment betrays the best interests of this country (which is what the MoveOn ad is saying about the General), and saying someone is betraying us on the battlefield or in dealings with foreign powers (which is what the Republicans are claiming). Category:Politics
-- posted at: 11:56 PM |
Sat, 22 September 2007
With the Fall at our doorstep, and the lecture I'm giving to my class at Fordham University about the media mistreatment of Ron Paul just a week away, I thought I'd share with you a little list I put together, which ranks the five major TV news networks on their coverage of Ron Paul as well as other presidential candidates these past six months. Since I'm not omniscient, I may have missed some network errors and abuses. All corrections and additions are welcome in the comment section. 1. CNN: in first place. They've done nothing wrong that I know of, and get kudos for the YouTube CNN debate a few months ago, in which questions came from people who submitted videos to YouTube, rather than so-called experts in the media. CNN decided which questions to air, but this is still a real breakthrough in the democratization of media. 2. MSNBC has in general done a fine job in its reporting of Ron Paul and the other campaigns. MSNBC commentators Tucker Carlson and Pat Buchanan have been public and explicit in their support of Ron Paul. But MSNBC got off to a bit off a rough start. Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, discussing the candidates' positions on the war after the debate of May 4, neglected to mention that Ron Paul has been systematically against the war. They both improved their reporting considerably, shortly thereafter. 3. CBS has done nothing wrong in its coverage of the current campaigns, either, as far as I know. But I put CBS in third place because of its continuing graceless treatment of Dan Rather, who was forced out of CBS after courageously reporting about George Bush's military past, in the election campaign of 2004. 4. Now we take a sharp turn downward with Fox News. Hannity and Colmes denigrated Ron Paul's first place finish in the Fox phone-in poll conducted after the last Republican Presidential debate on Fox - the two claimed that Ron Paul's supporters were multiple-dialing. Not only was there no evidence for this, it turns out a second call from the same phone resulted in a text reply that the vote wouldn't count. O'Reilly, to his credit, did have Ron Paul on his show. But to O'Reilly's discredit, he barely gave Ron Paul a chance to get a word in edgewise. 5. ABC is in the cellar. Worse than Fox, ABC failed to mention on at least one occasion that Ron Paul came in first in its post-debate poll. It removed comments from Ron Paul supporters on its online board, and then proceeded to shut it down. ABC also showed a lone Ron Paul supporter before the Iowa caucus, in contrast to big crowds for Romney, when in fact Ron Paul had big crowds of supporters, too. Then there was Mark Levin, in ABC's radio line-up, who called upon his listeners to call up Ron Paul headquarters with advice that Ron Paul couldn't win. And, just for good measure, ABC spread some its abuse around, and cropped Dennis Kucinich out of a photo Democratic contenders. The good news for Fox and ABC is that the election campaigns are continuing, and they can change their ways. Actually, Fox has been worse than ABC in the past month, and that may be a sign that ABC is finally seeing the error of its ways. I'd like to see all five major news networks report the election campaigns truthfully. The American people require no less. I'll keep you posted.  Category:Politics
-- posted at: 2:40 AM |
Fri, 21 September 2007
"Anyone listening to John Kerry should be tasered" - that "joke" came from a
former homicide detective, Rod Wheeler, who Fox News chose to have
as a guest on Hannity and Colmes last night.
Wheeler said a lot more - that Andrew Meyer clearly deserved to be tasered, that he was clearly threatening the police who were escorting him away from the microphone - even though the videos of the event clearly show otherwise. But Wheeler is entitled to his erroneous opinion of what happened. And he's of course also entitled to his deeply misguided sense of humor. I guess we should at least be happy that someone with his values is a former rather than a current homicide detective. But where was Sean Hannity's outrage or even disagreement with his guest for taking such a tasteless shot at John Kerry's supporters, at a time in which tasering and politics and freedom of speech have become sadly intertwined? Now, more than ever, we need candidates like Ron Paul who respect both the First Amendment and the necessary limits of police authority. Category:Politics
-- posted at: 5:11 AM |
Tue, 18 September 2007
Bravo to YouTube for making videos of police brutality, such as occurred with Andrew Meyer in Florida, more accessible than ever to the general public. In 1991, video allowed the public to see the Rodney King beating - nothing the police said in its aftermath could contradict what the public was able to see with its own eyes. YouTube has taken this once step further - allowing us to see such videos without having to wait for television to show them to us. The iPhone is helping as well, by allowing people to see such videos when they are away from their desktops and laptops. All of this is by no means stopping police from trampling on First Amendment rights - but it is making it harder than ever for them to get away with it. On the one side, we have retrograde forces like the commissioners of the FCC, and incompetent out-of-control police, who each in their ways imperil our freedom. On the other hand, we have miracles of technology, which speed us news of the FCC's misdoings, which provide immediate, irrefutable images of policy brutality and misconduct. These technologies have made freedom-loving people more equal to the task of combating these threats to our democracy. They are, in effect, media-philosophic partners of Ron Paul's run for the White House, and the respect he urges for the First Amendment. Category:Politics
-- posted at: 2:55 PM |
Sat, 15 September 2007
Joan Baez's 1966 performance of Bob Dylan's "With God On Our Side"... The voice of angel. Dylan's words are the most powerful refutation of war as a moral instrument ever written. Dylan first performed the song at Town Hall in New York City, April 12, 1963. Joan Baez took him by the hand and out on the stage of the Newport Folk Festival for an extraordinary performance of the song on July 25, 1963. You can see a clip from it in Martin Scorsese's 2005 No Direction Home bio-documentary of Dylan. Here in 2007, the hope expressed at the end of the song that, "If God is on our side, He'll stop the next war," remains unfulfilled. Ron Paul could make that happen. So could Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, John Edwards, Bill Richardson - even Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and to a degree any of the other Democrats. They're all talking now about stopping this unconstitutional war, started in lies. Ron Paul should use this song as a campaign song. So could Dennis Kucinich. I hope one of them does. The lyrics are here. Category:Politics
-- posted at: 8:57 PM |
