Bits and Pieces
Some short notes on current news:
Bye-Bye Boris Yeltsin. And good riddance, as well. One of the most over-rated world leaders of modern times passes into the great yonder. Celebrated now as a great democrat and dis-assembler of the Soviet Union, the frequently pickled former Russian President was a non-stop disaster. Yes, he dismantled the Soviet state but that was only the logical and inevitable ending to a process put into motion by the much grander Mikhail Gorbachev. Democrat Yeltsin is also the man who had the parliament shelled, whose government forgot to pay public servants, who helped engineer Russia’s corrupt mafia-capitalism and who empowered the decidedly non-democratic Mr. Putin. Also credit Yeltsin with launching the war against Chechnya — an ongoing disaster of Iraqi proportions.
Bye-Bye David Halberstam. Prize-winning journalist and author of a staggering total of total 21 books on subjects — ranging from Vietnam, to the civil rights struggles, to baseball and cars– has been killed at age 73 in a road accident. Fifteen of those books were best-sellers by the way. Halberstam’s writings on the war and the JFK/LBJ administrations are key to understanding a crucial chunk of modern American history. A younger generation would do well to find a copy of his “The Best and The Brightest” — a searing account of the collective political suicide of the liberal intelligentsia. It’s a cliche… but he will be missed.
Bye-Bye Fidel Castro. Well, just joking. El Jefe Maximo is still around and may be even kicking. Cuba’s state propaganda organs report that the 80 year old dictator is back on his feet and meeting with fellow Stalinists from China. Meanwhile, the Cuban government continues to imprison dissidents for non-violent thought crimes. You think Rudy Giuliani was tough on graffitti? Ha! How about a 12 year prison sentence for painting some anti-government slogans on a wall? Now, that’s justicia a la cubana! The sentence handed out by a Cuban kangaroo court to Rolando Jimenez is the second of the sort this month. Independent journalist Oscar Sanchez, arrested on April 13, was slapped with a 4-year jail sentence for the Orwellian crime of “social dangerousness.” His real crime was to have written some stories for a Miami website on dangerous conditions at a Cuban factory. Viva Fidel!
Bye-Bye L.A. Times. Here’s a news flash from Jim O’Shea, editor of the Los Angeles Times: “Life is unfair” he says in a job-cut memo issued on Monday. I was a bit bowled over by O’Shea’s bold assertion — but he just might be right. The Times’ owner, the Tribune Company (recently bought by “grave-dancer” Sam Zell), is cutting another 150 jobs from the paper. This is payback, I guess, for the recent Pulitzer garnered by the news staff. O’Shea’s memo trying to soften the cuts makes some pretty textured reading. He says he “did not come here to preside over a decline of this great newspaper” and that he considers “the loss of each and every journalist or employee in this company a failure.” OK. That’s 150 failures in one day — about a half-dozen per hour. The best part of his note, however, reads: “A number of you have asked me how we could cut jobs to save millions of dollars at a time when a group of unnamed executives will reap bonuses and stock grants worth millions when the change of ownership is complete. I cannot – and will not – defend any such bonuses. Frankly, I understand why you are angry about these plans…But this staff reduction is not because of — or about — bonuses.” Instead, he says, it’s about dwindling advertising though he admits the bonuses are going through anyways. Glad he explained that.
April 24th, 2007 at 5:57 am
How about some of Halberstam’s recent choice comments on the GWB administration as a fitting send-off?
April 24th, 2007 at 6:33 am
I remember the days when Marc Cooper would have welcomed the LA Times demise as progress.
I lament the decline of the culture of reading and education in America, but the death of the LA Times would be, for me, a mixed blessing.
April 24th, 2007 at 7:12 am
On Yeltsin….you give him too much credit – he was FAR WORSE than even you describe him. Gorbachev set in motions reforms that would democratize the Soviet Union, introducing market mechanisms while keeping the social-welfare state and increasing the actual power of soviets (Councils). This was a threat to the hardline Stalino-Breznevites who kidnapped and comitted a coup against Gorbie, which in turn gave an opening to what Gorbie called “adventurers” like Yeltsin, who went far farther than Gorbachev in the wrong direction.
Yeltsin was more authoritarian than Gorbachev. He indeed “dismantled” the Soviet state, in that while Gorbachev and other reformers wanted ot keep an activist redistributive state alongside market mechanisms, Yeltsin – with the now rehabilitated JEffrey Sachs, imposed “shock therapy” which basically sold state assets – vast vast assets – to cronies, KGB thugs and Russian Mafia, creating today’s oligarchs and new power elite – while poverty immediately sharpened. Inded he had the parliament shelled- shelling the vastly more popular at the time communist party. On public servants- htis is still an issue – loose nukes under whose watch are unpaid (and often arms dealing) Russians.
One wonders why in Russia, Putin is popular as is nostagia for the Soviet Union. The answer to that question is Yeltsin.
April 24th, 2007 at 9:34 am
Is it just me or have automobiles become a major killer of the prominent lately? Halberstam, Bob Clark, and -almost – Jon Corzine. And Corzine should, when he recovers, make PSAs about the virtue of wearing seatbelts!
One other Ave Atque Vale:
Goodbye Kitty Carlisle Hart. Maybe people my age remember her best at the panelist on “What’s my Line?” but I’ll think of her connection to Broadway’s Golden age and the Algonquin Round Table thru her husband Moss Hart.
April 24th, 2007 at 9:39 am
For once I’m in complete agreement with jcummings. Yeltsin will be remembered as the man who made democracy a dirty word in Russia. I knew it was all over when, in the mid-ninties, I saw a piece on “Nightline” about professional women in Moscow – doctors, engineers, translators – moonlighting as prostitutes to make ends meet. A society that does that to its upper middle class is doomed. All Putin had to do was go after the oligarchs and put some money in the system (lucky break with oil prices) and he’d be the toast of the town.
But its easy to see why Bush looked in his soul and liked what he saw. A pro-government group just acquiired the largest private radio net in russia and decreed that, from now on, at least half of the stories on its news broadcast had to be positive and pro-Putin.
Could FOX do it any better?
April 24th, 2007 at 9:57 am
Bush probably recommended that Putin study FOX for ideas.
April 24th, 2007 at 10:56 am
I’ll echo jcummings on Kitty Carlisle Hart, although I’ll add that while she did “What’s My Line?” she was most prominent on “To Tell The Truth,” which obviously George W. Bush would have failed.
The LA Times’ explanation reminds me of a story in a book on TV news that everyone should read, Bad News, by Tom Fenton, who was the longtime chief foreign correspondent for CBS News. In it, he quoted two of the big three network anchors as saying–Brokaw bluntly, Rather by allusion–that they offered to give back part of their salary to help pay for more newspeople, and the corporate suits said no, if they gave back the money it would go into the general budget. And we’re surprised when bean counters posing as journalists and publishers at the LA Times screw over their employees and the public?
April 24th, 2007 at 11:09 am
On a more positive note Bill Moyers returns to PBS with a piece on FRONTLINE Tmr and news that he’s going back on NOW. You know, back in the late eighties he approached the honchos at CBS, where he hung his hat, and asked them for their worst time slot. One that they never won. He would take a group of young reporters and put on a newsmagazine there that would be cheaper than any entertainment show they then put on (we’re talking pre-reality show here). In return, Moyers said, CBS would get the next generation of 60 MINUTES staff. The net turned him down and he left for PBS. I’ve thought NOW was that program.
April 24th, 2007 at 11:23 am
What did I say about Kitty Carlisle Hart? Who is Kitty Carlisle Hart?
April 24th, 2007 at 11:24 am
Ah – I see that was RLC. Moss Hart was a commie I think- or was he involved with Jim Henson – or both?
April 24th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
While it is quite easy to put all the blame of Russia’s post-Communist disaster on one man, I think history will be just as hard on all the liberal supporters in the West who pushed him along the road and propped him up at all the key moments (Clinton most prominently). When the dust settles it will be interesting to see how much the West funded and gave political cover to this man, who’s legacy of human death and destruction may yet be comparable to the worst of tyrants (millions dying prematurely, millions never being born, millions more destined to lives of poverty and misery). Did any good liberals (or any mainstream organization) oppose ANY of the economic moves Yeltsin made, or did everyone wish he even go faster and be more reckless?? Halberstam would have had a field day with that mess as well.
On Cuba, apparently the arrest of 2 people on that island is more noteworthy than our own Government orchestrating the release (on bail) of a mass murdering terrorist drug-running assassin on to the streets of Miami (Luis Posada Carriles) – through all kinds of legal chicanery. We can now bomb ourselves using Bush’s logic of states that harbor terrorists. But Cooper – and most of the MSM is silent. Only the LA Times and Boston Herald editorial pages have taken it up…
Cooper leaves out the true charges brought before the 2 Cuban dissidents. Rolando Jimenez Pozada was given the 12 years for divulging state security secrets, in addition to the lesser “desacato” charge – a law 17 other Latin countries have on the books. Given the security aspect, the trials were closed, so we do not have more information as to what was disclosed to whom. But to say the guy got 12 years for grafitti is more than a little disingenous, no?
The other guy was given 4 years for collaborating with the US subsidized Miami “news service” CubaNet.com (ring any bells). CubaNet receives funds from USAID and NED for the express purposes of regime change. Again I ask, is Cuba supposed to allow its citizens to facilitate the destruction of its country (ala the USSR) by working for enemies? He was charged for a lesser offense than many of his 2003 collegues, but was certainly guilty of the higher Law 88 offense (working with US paid agents to undermine the nation). Americans are not allowed to be paid by Granma or Prensa Latina, so why should Cubans be allowed to be paid by a state supported US “news service?”
And finally, aren’t we cheapening the horrors of Stalin a bit by calling the present-day China Stalinist?
April 24th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
jc, connecting the dots – “Moss Hart was a commie I think”
Actually, Kitty Carlisle Hart’s primary connection to Marx was via Groucho (“A Night at the Opera).
April 24th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
One of the most over-rated world leaders of modern times passes into the great yonder.
But he was a hell of a dancer!
You know if a nation is “undermined”, then its legitimacy is on very shaky ground.
April 24th, 2007 at 12:38 pm
That should say if a nation is “undermined” by words, then its legitimacy is on very shaky ground
April 24th, 2007 at 12:43 pm
When I saw that Marc mentioned Cuba in his post, I had to come and check out the comments. There was sure to be some painfully funny rationalizations for brutal tyranny.
Thanks, Leftside!
April 24th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Oh he’s the guy who wrote Whatever it is I’m against it, etc?
April 24th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
RP, if the legitimacy of the regime was on shaky ground, don’t you think we’d have seen at least one report of at least one person rising up to protest during the 8 months Fidel has been down?? Anyone who truly knows Cuba, like Phillip Peters, Wayne Smith or Julia Sweig, stresses over and over again the folly in underestimating the legitimacy of the Revolution in the hearts and minds of Cubans.
The reason Cuba reacts to “words” is because these ill sourced, misinformed, half-truth “reports” end up repeated (cleaned up of course) ad nauseum around the world. These words, in turn, are used to justify decades of very real terrorist attacks, an illegal and immoral embargo, which costs the nation $2 billion a year – and may one day soon be used to justify another ill-considered military invasion. So you can mock the significance of words that don’t tell the real story (these 2 cases are perfect examples), but the Cuban people do not.
April 24th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Noam Chomskey says mean things about the U.S. government, which are repeated around the world by our our enemies. Lock him up!
April 24th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Chomsky, I mean
April 24th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
don’t you think we’d have seen at least one report of at least one person rising up to protest during the 8 months Fidel has been down??
We did. They were arrested.
If the regime were stable, people could say whatever they wished, write whatever they wish and meet with whomever they wish, short of engaging in actual armed insurrection or the planning thereof without fear of imprisonment.
What I find so thoroughly silly-assed about your support (aside from the apaprent fact that you link legitimate criticism of the regime to terrorism) for Castro’s regime is that you enjoy every day rights that you have absolutely no qualms about being denied to others.
One can oppose the embargo, travel ban, and the Bush administration’s Miami-tainted policy towards Cuba while finding the repressive apparatus and the cult of personality in Cuba unacceptable.
But someone who enjoys freedoms that they have no qualms whatsoever being denied to others should be branded a hypocrite.
April 24th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Bob.. Chomsky recently said mean things about the U.S. to the cades at West Point. He was given a plaque as a thank you and so far has not been thrown in jail.
Anyway, guys, dont be too harsh on Leftside. We need at least one Useful Idiot as a punching bag… though I admit he’s a little too easy a target. He writes as if he’s already been punched one time too many. Duh.
April 24th, 2007 at 1:57 pm
What would have happened if Yeltsin had not stood on the tank and rallied the populace to stand up to the coupe and the military and get Gorbachev released from house arrest?
The Coup Attempt
—–
Only liberals and idiots read Chomsky.
April 24th, 2007 at 2:14 pm
Woody, liberals hate Chomsky.
On the other hand, there’s got to be a lot of idiots, because he is one of the most cited sources among graduate students, in the world. No sane person disagrees that he’s perhaps one of the more important linguists of all time.
April 24th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
The LA Times story is depressing.
The piece that won the Pulitzer is worth reading:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-oceans-series,0,7842752.special
Or listening:
http://www.npr.org/templates/dmg/popup.php?id=9537255&type=1&date=12-Apr-2007&au=1&pid=11546465&random=6554747124&guid=000DEFAA736E05E425DCCB5E61626364&uaType=WM,RM&aaType=RM,WM&upf=Win32&topicName=&subtopicName=&prgCode=FA&hubId=-1&thingId=9537252&mtype=WM
The thought that the LA Times does not see the value nor has the willingness to support this kind of journalism should be of serious concern to us all.
I should note that this story has serious ramifications, especially for anglers like Mr. Cooper.
I should also note that this is FAR more important than debating Cuba. At this point, Cuba matters very little. Ecological disaster will cause much more human suffering than Castro. This is an archaic debate suited for people who are nostalgic for the Cold War.
Yes Castro is a bastard and so was Boris the Spider. Even to blinded leftists, Cuba is not an ecological paradise. The former USSR is an unspeakable ecological disaster. Clearly Communism in ANY form will not liberate humanity in a way that is sustainable.
April 24th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
jcummings, let me change that to “only liberals quote or reference Chomsky.” Graduate students in business are okay and don’t need him.
Hey, G.M. never sent me your email. Would you mind trying it again? Thanks.
April 24th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
The LA Times is part of a broader trend of information disintermediation. Apparently, we have far more journalists than we need.
Before the Internet, we needed journalists to explain all manner of things, from which washing machine is better to which political candidate raised the most money from arms dealers.
Now, I can find out about washing machines from a blog about people who’ve just bought them and/or are looking to buy one, plus the washing machine maker’s own Web sites.
I can find out who’s bribing whom directly from the campaign filings on the Center for Responsible Politics Web site.
The investigative function of journalists remains, and, we can only hope that money newspapers save by canning nonessential journalists will be devoted to digging out stories that won’t be found anywhere else.
And…I strongly suspect that the reporters involved in the Pulitzer piece will stay on at the paper or find higher-paying work elsewhere.
April 24th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Woody…
Even if we disagree, we both have contempt for liberalism as a philosophy. Left wing and liberal are two very different points of view. A conservative like yourself should know that.
April 24th, 2007 at 4:22 pm
jcummings let me inform you.
Moss Hart was a giant of Broadway in the days when, as the song went, “a millions hearts beat quicker there, a million lights still flicker there.”
With George S. Kaufman he wrote “You Can’t take it with you” and “The Man who came to Dinner.” He wrote the book for musicals by the Gershwin boys and Cole Porter. He wrote the remake of “A Star is Born” for Judy Garland and Directed a little thing on Broadway called “My Fair Lady” which he co-wrote with Alan J. Lerner.
As Reg already told you, Kitty was the opera singer befriended by Groucho, Chico, and Harpo in the movie. (She didn’t like Groucho or Chico but adored Harpo – but then everyone did). Kitty was also one of the showgirls who hung around that table at the Algonquin.
And Groucho sang “Whatever it is, I’m Against it!” in “Horsefeathers.” But for our purposes here he should be known for his note resigning from the Hillcrest CC:
“I refuse to be a member of any club that would have me as a member.”
Better than anything Fuerbach ever wrote!
April 24th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Yes, yes – I am the “idiot†(cheers Mark). But apparently, after all my wasted typing, not one here can still differentiate between free speech and getting paid by an enemy (we call them ‘terroristâ€) government to offer aid and comfort. Chomsky or whoever else would be in prison for writing such pieces for Iranian or Cuban state supported media.
Am I to take the silence here that not one cares about our government releasing the biggest terrorist of the Western Hemisphere? Maybe now that I see Daily Kos has a diary on it, some of you will perk up to the judicial atrocity our government is committing here and now in our name?
As for the Times, why does anyone expect a publicly traded US company to focus on anything but the bottom line? Now we have a Times workforce cut by 40% since the Tribune bought it. And indications are this is not the last round of cuts. It would be nice if only household appliance reporters were canned, but we know it is often the most expensive foreign reporters and bureaus to go. The argument that bloggers can pick up the slack is very, very misguided.
April 24th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
I’ll give Marc credit for mentioning the Posada case when he entered the country illegally 2 years ago.:
Anything short of summarily deporting
a man who blows up civilian airliners and hotels will make a mockery of the
administration’s vow to fight terror.
But would anyone like to try to explain the difference between the way our government and media handled this case and say, Jose Padilla?
April 24th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Sad about Halberstam. He wrote the second best baseball book ever, “Summer of ’49″ (Bouton’s “Ball Four” # 1).
Woody & jcummings axis to show us why liberals are always wrong…hmm…You’ve got an amazing site Mr. Cooper.
April 24th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
Halberstam’s legacy, of course, was debased and dismissed not by liberals but by conservatives( and the deeply confused progressives who love them; see Cummings above). Every time The President (shudder) evokes war not being waged by politicans but by the Generals in the field, he’s essentaily pissing on the conclusions Halberstam took from Vietnam (the Generals AND the politicos were lying); which enjoyed a sort of sensible consensus circa 74-80.
Starting with the assent of Ronald “noble effort” Reagan, the right’s rewriting of History began in ernest, until the Nixon White House’s dead enders with their boy Prince, dragged the country into Iraq. The small tragity of the “radical” school as examplified by this blog is that they never seemed to absorb that while “The Best and The Brightest” ended in 68, the war didn’t.
Thus such radicals as Christopher Hitchens would end up colaberating with Henry Kissinger on new noble efforts, and would learn to take his Judge Garzon selectively.
Halberstam gave an interview in Salon right after 9-11, explaining that W’s unilateralist dreams had just come to an end.
When it became clear that would not be the case, he and some others were strangly silent for far too long. Also, for someone so firewall unforgiving of McNamara, he was quite the sucker for John McCain, who still swears by Vietnam, as well of our quagmire of choice in Iraq.
Also, writers like Halberstam were far too quiet on the entire “embedded” episode, an attept at perfectly seamless Military propaganda, no less disgraceful for becoming the fiasco within the fiasco.
That said, I thought the guy was great, and hope to one day get around to reading wonderful “Fifties” book again.
April 24th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
baseball = Cuba = legacy of despotism.
The Lakers need help tonight, they are playing a team from a
“right to work” state.
April 24th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
I am really going to try to limit myself from posting more here, as I think I’ve said it all. But perhaps folks are interested in the news that Cuba has just released 7 more “dissidents” from prison. The BBC is attributing this to the new Spanish policy of engagement that was roundly criticized by everyone to right of Zapatero two weeks ago.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6590217.stm
April 24th, 2007 at 6:41 pm
Want more dissidents released from Cuba? Just call on former President James Earl Carter, who helped free thousands of people in Cuba. Castro threw open the prison doors and those of mental institutions and shipped his worst elements to the U.S., who were welcomed with open arms by Carter. Why couldn’t we have gotten his baseball teams?
Speaking of Cuba, Mark Cuban, who owns the Dallas Mavericks, won’t do business in Georgia until a kid is released from jail (and, he should be.) But, Mark won’t go so far as to forfeit his games with the Hawks and pay fines to the NBA.
April 24th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Hey, Woody don’t feel bad for being a total stupid-head on political philosophy…I confuse fascist, right-wingers, reactionaries and Republicans all the time.
Like you…you are a total right-wing nationalist…which is a nicer way of calling you a fascist.
April 24th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
Leftside: Just so you know, your comments have been met with silence because they are so friggin’ idiotic. Get the message, companero.
April 24th, 2007 at 9:39 pm
Reagrding the Genarlow Wilson case, just one more reason why the state of Georgia represents the backward and nauseating dregs of our nation. Free Wilson, excise Georgia.
April 25th, 2007 at 10:18 am
Am I to take the silence here that not one cares about our government releasing the biggest terrorist of the Western Hemisphere? Maybe now that I see Daily Kos has a diary on it, some of you will perk up to the judicial atrocity our government is committing here and now in our name?
No, it’s just further proof of your witless wanking. It’s called Google.
April 25th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
BTW, Raul Rivero the man who leftside said was probably drinking himself to death in Spain was awarded an Ortega y Gasset prize today by Prisa Group, the publisher of El Pais, Spain’s leading newspaper.
If you don’t have the facts on your side, then I guess you just make shit up.
April 26th, 2007 at 7:45 am
“the frequently pickled former Russian President”
Maybe I am nitpicking, Marc, but you and another person once raked me over the coals for pointing out Christopher Hitchens love of drink…saying that what people do in that respect isn’t important, and shouldn’t be mentioned…aren’t you being a little hypocritical here?
May 9th, 2008 at 5:10 am
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