Their Fringe And Ours: Beck and Cockburn
I woke up yesterday morning with quite a start. Some automatic timer or another had clicked on my TV and I opened my eyes to see the horror of a C-SPAN rebroadcast of a Virginia town hall on health care featuring Democratic Rep. Jim Moran and Howard Dean. And… a roomful of shouting screwballs.
Let me be clear about this. There is a time and a place for shouting. And I freely admit to having done my share during my youth (I along with 18 other anti-Vietnam war protestors were arrested at gunpoint on LAPD warrants in an early dawn of March 1970, three weeks after committing the supposed crime of heckling and even shouting down the South Vietnamese ambassador at what is now California State University at Northridge. The resulting mass trial — and eventual acquittal– lasted 45 days and set the record as the longest midemeanor trial in the history of the Los Angeles courts).
With nearly 40 years of hindsight, I’d have to say that if I had it to do over again, I’d probably choose a different, more effective and persuasive tactic. While we were, indeed, wholly within our constitutional rights, we were just as ineffective and obnoxious. We were definitely over the top. But, unlike the howling mob I saw on TV Sunday, we weren’t out of our friggin’ minds! We were young and angry and excitable. But we weren’t bonkers.
It was all I could do to not crawl back beneath the covers and cower and shiver and I watched the CSPAN segment. These folks have all the rights in the world to believe that Obamacare is a bad plan. Or whatever. But the yammering yahoos who glommed onto the mike, their veins bursting and froth pouring forward, actually argued that –as in France– the new health care plan will impose a universal chip-embedded socialist health care card on every American. And the chip, with everyone’s complete medical history on it, would be then used by the jack-booted Feds to round people up and…. and? Well, I have no idea (As a veteran of two emergency hospitalizations, I wish such a chip had existed so I wouldn’t have to dictate my medical history to nurses, ambulance drivers, and EMT’s five or six times every 24 hours!).
No secret, of course, that the current wave of paranoid hysterics infecting the Screechy Right is being nurtured by a crew of cynical on-air hustlers ranging from Rushbo to Lou Dobbs to the execrable Glenn Beck (for whom we have the mighty CNN to thank for having made into a household name). Beck’s latest ploy is to whip up his zombie followers by warning that Obama is building a “secret army.” No doubt, these Canadian=trained storm troopers will know exactly who to throw into that gulag of Negro-run concentration camps thanks to all that info gathered on those embedded chips. Beck, in turn, has cadged much of this narrative from yet another whack-job, known as Alex Jones.
Here’s where it gets sort of interesting. Among other hobbies, right-wing fave Jones is also a “9/11 truther” which means that his “work” is often cited by self-styled left-wingers who have bought into the same crackpot theory that the downing of the Twin Towers was an inside job.
Lefties and “progressives” should also be advised to control their smugness in mocking the tin foil brigade of the Right as they – the Left– has a pretty piss-poor record of separating itself from its own legion of kooks and loonies. Which brings me to Alexander Cockburn who continues as a columnist for The Nation magazine while denying global warming and — as of late– more or less endorsing the sanity of conservatives who believe in “death panels.” Cockburn, who I honestly believe was one of the sharpest writers and thinkers of the 1980′s, has now descended into joining hands with those who denounce health care reform and pro-choice forces, in general, as baby killers. There’s plenty of strange fruit that Cockburn hangs out for display on his Counterpunch.org site. But there’s also a certain number of respectable lefties who, apparently, have no problem being published there as well — and without even any compensation (talk about selling out cheap!).
I generally avoid the site, as I do anything Cockburn writes nowadays, as I find it (sometimes elegantly) irrelevant (and usually pretty shameful). I had so many folks, however, send me his latest piece trashing Obamacare that I forced myself to read it. I recommend you do the same. Few places will you find such rational, biting criticism so deeply interwoven with notions that appear to border on psychosis (or cynicism if Cockburn is just making it all up to be a dissident voice). Check out these passages from his Obamacare piece where he defends the Sarah Palin death panel paranoia and decries the baby killers:
The liberals are howling bout the unfairness of these attacks, led by Sarah Palin, revived by her “Death Panel” talk and equipped with a dexterous new speech writer who is even adding footnotes to her press releases.
But what is a conservative meant to think? Since the major preoccupation of liberals for 30 years has been the right to kill embryos, why should they not be suspect in their intentions toward those gasping in the thin air of senility? There is a strong eugenic thread to American progressivism, most horribly expressed in its very successful campaign across much of the twentieth century to sterilize “imbeciles.” Abortion is now widening in its function as a eugenic device. Women in their 40s take fertility drugs, then abort the inconvenient twins, triplets or quadruplets when they show up on the scan.
In 1972, a year before the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion on demand nationwide, virtually all children with trisomy 21, or Down syndrome, were born. Less than a decade later, with the widespread availability of pre-natal genetic testing, as many as 90 percent of women whose babies were pre-natally diagnosed with the genetic condition chose to abort the child…
For forty years, every American president has deprecated the powers of government to improve the public weal. Why now should Americans believe that any government-backed “health reform” will do them any good, as opposed to assigning them the appropriate lifespan, relative to their income and contributions to the corporate bottom line, which is what the present system amounts to?
Why should, indeed, any American believe that government-backed health reform might do them some good? How about to prove they have an IQ above 75? Doesn’t matter anyway. We’re going to euthanize those who fall below, right?
August 31st, 2009 at 12:19 am
Alexander Cockburn is enough for me to refuse to subscribe to The Nation. I refuse to let a single cent of my money to get into his pocket. Fuck him.
August 31st, 2009 at 1:04 am
Kevin: If that’s your beef against the Nation, you can rest assured that relatively few cents of anybody’s money is getting into Cockburn’s pocket, or the pocket of anybody else who writes for that penurious journal.
August 31st, 2009 at 1:40 am
Actually, zzyx, you are way wrong. While The Nation often pays some of its freelancers very little, its regular columnists and few staff writers (and sometimes freelancers) are paid quite market competitive rates…maybe 75k or more. That’s to the credit of The Nation. Too bad, indeed, that any of it goes to Cockburn who is reviled by a fairly significant portion of the staff. He is retained, I surmise from inside experience, mostly out of fear… fear that he has a huge audience that would cancel its subs if he were canned. Those who make those calculations might be right, but everything in me tells me the opposite.
Indeed, without singling anyone else out, I think The Nation columnist line-up needs a radical dusting off and renewal. It’s pretty boring and predictable claptrap that continues to shut out a younger generation. Most columnists lose their luster after 10-15-20 years. Nation columnists are no different. Just more so. Why is isnt their a columnist writing about net roots social networking on campuses? How about a 25 year old film reviewer? Maybe someone who is NOT a Democrat but who is also not a CRANK like Cockburn or a whiny DNCoid like Alterman? How about Katha Pollitt ceding some space to a 3rd, 4th or 5th wave feminist? Maybe a serious INTERNATIONAL affairs columnist or euoropean or god forbid an Asian affairs columnnist??? How about someone with a bubbling sense of humour and who is capable of writing about American life as it is really is… free of finding a rightwing loonie under every rock or alternately a stolid but unrecognized progressive to lead us to salvation.
August 31st, 2009 at 4:43 am
Anyone read Cockburn’s White Out? It’s been a while since I read it, but if my memory is correct, in addition to being a follow up to the Gary Webb drug articles, Cockburn basically claims that Clinton had full knowledge of an operation that used air fields in Arkansas to receive cocaine deliveries from South America.
Oh, and didn’t Roger Clinton plead guilty on some cocaine charge? Must all be true then.
August 31st, 2009 at 6:31 am
Most any reform we see will be better than what we have now.
HOWEVER, all the hysteria about Federal budget deficits will pave the way to rationing care — more than otherwise, there will be rationing in any case — and that will lead to unpleasant decisions.
There are of course no death panels or anything resembling them that will be enacted, but the fear of rationing is not irrational, IMHO.
August 31st, 2009 at 6:39 am
Marc, I know you will shout me down for saying this, but I believe you are not getting the gist of Cockburn’s point. He is right. (ha ha)
And the loony progressive ideas about a lot of things also infected curriculums.
I have no regard for anti abortion scum bags and their lunatic rationales which usually mean they are for every other sort of murder rather than allowing a woman the right to bear children–but they always support the right to bear arms and kill those children.
Anyway…I have trouble with some of the creepy places technology is taking us with regards to the obsession with longevity at any price and torturing animals to test wack job theories or for more filthy drugs that only mask symptoms and whose side effects are worse than the syndrome rather than working towards standardization of long established holistic modalities–which are being integrated. And I mean Ayurvedic, Chinese and indigenous use of medicinal herbs.
I find the obsession to have a baby that leads to using surrogates and going to the bank for sperm INSANE. It makes the gift of life a commodity. Not to mention the psychological issue for this shopped little creature who materialist wack job mommy has to say I just HAD to have a child so I chose the sperm donor and had his sperm put inside some other woman, but first you were cooked in a test tube. We don’t really know anything about your daddy– or maybe your mommy except a sort of health history.
What the fuck is that? Like there are not enough children in the world needing adopting?
And when I finally looked up what the hoo haw was about on partial birth abortion I nearly vomited. As an emergency procedure to save life– of course. But as a routine procedure because some stupid, selfish, unconscious woman decides like 3/4 through the pregnancy she doesn’t want to go through with it?????? PUH LEASE. Where is a sense of ethical accountability–some sense of the the sanctity of life. And I am no fucking fundamentalist, but don’t feel either killing and torturing animals so we can feel better makes it right or allowing utterly ghoulish procedures is human, humane or ethical either.
Cockburn is alluding to the seduction of a mad technology and so called progressives a lot of whom have ice for blood do not use common sense on where to draw the line.
The education system was turned upside down with a lot of whacked out ideas this “values” study one of the most horrifying.
We are into the creepy era where a lot of people’s lust for gold is now a lust for eternal life.
THe Nazis did bizarre experiments just because they could and to see what would happen. There is a lot of medical stuff now that is pushing the envelope.
I was channel flipping awhile ago and came across a doc on a child born sort of without a face and everything from the neck up all hooked up wrong. Because of surgical technology this poor baby and now toddler has been subjected to the most horrifying surgeries peeling back skin to find eyes and creating breathing passages…anyway. I do think science has been miraculous, but to subject someone so tiny to such pain and suffering and consign them to what will be a short life demanding the most devoted care…its monstrous. This child was being used as a medical experiment.
I really think you are missing the point of Cockburn’s article.
And don’t miss the point of my response by citing long passages of examples of the beauty and miracle of when medical science has given life. Lets not state the obvious. I am talking about moral common sense. And, yeah, its a tricky one.
My rule is don’t kill, maim, or experiment on another living creature just to make yourself feel better.
August 31st, 2009 at 7:20 am
I see. You’re being fair by criticizing both sides. All of “their” (conservative) commentators are bad and some of “our” (liberal) commentators are bad, too. But, wait! “Our” side is nuts only if they appear conservative. I get it.
Is this what you mean by when you write “storm troopers will know exactly who to throw into that gulag of Negro-run concentration camps?” Video of the week: “It ain’t [America] no more, okay?”
August 31st, 2009 at 8:15 am
I love the logic-leap in the comments about abortion and Down’s Syndrome. Note that the decision to abort fetuses with Down’s was not made by the government. It was a decision made by the _mothers_, which is pretty much where the decision should be made.
And it’s interesting how Cockburn doesn’t seem to regard laws _prohibiting_ abortion as a kind of eugenics and government control of reproduction.
August 31st, 2009 at 8:18 am
Oh, Marc, about cleaning the _Nation’s_ roster? I’d hang on to Pollitt. She’s too good a writer to lose, and there’s a whole lotta good with bringing in a “3rd, 4th or 5th wave feminist” _in addition_.
August 31st, 2009 at 9:09 am
Mr. Cooper,
What is your beef with Alterman? I see what you wrote, “whiny DNCoid”, but what does that mean? I read both of you and you seem to have ALOT in common.
August 31st, 2009 at 10:47 am
Beck reaches millions on TV. I suspect that a large segment of his audience mistake his op-eds for news.
Cockburn’s Counterpunch and writings in The Nation reach, a much smaller audience yet this readership is keenly aware of issues and opinions expressed in these two journals of opinion.
That said there is a quantitative difference between Beck’s drivel and Cockburn’s opinion.
Beck has an impact and Cockburn does not.
Beck has persuaded untold thousands of viewers to accept lunatic conspiracies as operant fact.
The Left is NOT against Health Care reform and the Left accepts the science of Global Warming. There is no traction building on the Left based on Cockburn’s theories for the precise reason of the asymetrical impact between television and opinion journals.
That is, Beck’s grist comes sui-generis from far-right opinions already expressed in the rightwing press and blogoshpere while Cockburn’s opinions haven’t made it to Maddow.
Cockburn has had a long run in the Nation and his own Counterpunch, both journals which seem to be flourishing since the ascendancy of Obama. Cockburn is a fixture. That should imply permission to stray off of the reservation now and then; with the emphasis on now and then.
August 31st, 2009 at 10:59 am
Marc, you have a sharp and diverse readership, and you are now addressing conflicting views on the health care reform controversy. You are also describing various writers or protesters as “loons” or “fringe” elements.
I would be cautious with attributing the crazy label to your adversaries. Are they really mentally ill, or simply ideological, or deliberately deceptive in order to capture an audience. For instance, on my website I posted a long blog showing that Noam Chomsky had misprepresented the views of Walter Lippmann (the revered commentator who was active before your time) regarding “the manufacture of consent.” Chomsky claimed that Lippmann was advocating mind-management, whereas Lippmann was protesting propaganda of all types in the burgeoning mass media.
I didn’t characterize Chomsky or his followers as unhinged, because I simply do not know his or their motivations. It was enough to show evidence that they were mistaken. And this is turning out to be the most popular essay on my website.
I also want to thank your readers for their interest in my Pacifica memoir. After I left a comment here on your blog, we had almost four hundred hits in three days, quite a dramatic upsurge in interest for a website that is, according to some of my friends, too hard for ordinary people to read. So you must have an intellectually curious and engaged readership here. And by the way, almost all my blogs this month have been about mental health and the chaos surrounding just what that would mean (I mean the state of being not crazy. Surely that confusion and lack of agreement on the most basic definition of “health” should be at the forefront of our discussions.
August 31st, 2009 at 11:12 am
Cockburn’s niece is gorgeous.
August 31st, 2009 at 11:28 am
Randy.. one day I will rell you the whole story about how my daughter, 16, at the time, came within a half second of decking Alex Cockburn with a Sunday punch after he deliberately tried to provoke a physical fight with me… over his niece. Nothing sexual implied here, she is a declared Lesbian and I am a declared married man and someone. It was something direct and truthful I said to her about her nefarious duplicity in one of Amy Goodman’s schemes… she went and cried to her uncle who, drunk as a skunk outside the 2000 Dem Natl Convention, started getting abusive with me and shoved me. My daughter, standing, by my side, asked me” Dad, you want me to punch out this old man?” That’s just the teaser.
August 31st, 2009 at 11:34 am
Randy… oops, wrong niece. I was referring to Laura Flanders. Didn’t know about this one. The Cockburn’s are definitely a family that marries well… except Alex who has not been married for some decades, he sort of migrates from mate to mate. For a long time, his main squeeze was none other than the profoundly reactionary and profoundly wealthy Lally Weymouth (who is now..what? Something like chair of the WaPo board?). Way back when there was a critical profile of him written I dont remember where… but the operative line from it, closely paraphrasing, was “Alex Cocburn’s scorn for the ruling class is outmatched only bu his lust for their daughters.” That;s before he got kinda old and craggly.
August 31st, 2009 at 11:38 am
Clare.. I dont attribute the descriptor of crazy to my adversaries. I apply the descriptor to people who are crazy. The people I saw acting out and being clearly paranoid, racist and delusional in that Town Hall were manifestly crazy. Just as crazy as any crazy faction jumps and screams and shouts at a Pacifica National Board meeting. By the way, there are plenty of followers of Chomsky who are crazy. That doesnt mean he is unhinged. Chomsky is mostly myopic and enclosed in a self-constructed bubble.
August 31st, 2009 at 1:04 pm
One has to question the wisdom of Team Obama in going for those Town Hall meetings in the first place. Hadn’t they seen enough McCain rallies to predict how that was going to turn out?
August 31st, 2009 at 1:04 pm
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/08/15/alexander-cockburn-fetus-fetishist/
August 31st, 2009 at 1:07 pm
She’s on the tv series House, playing the character known as “Thirteen” and, to bring it full circle – at least to your daughter – , she also played the Emile Hirsch’s (Jesse James Hollywood character) girlfriend in Alpha Dog.
August 31st, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Which was not to imply that your daughter had anything to do with Jesse James Hollywood, just that she knew some of the people including the victim.
August 31st, 2009 at 1:16 pm
On the subject of who’s crazy now, I must insist that although many angry and frustrated persons may seem wacko to you, you don’t know for a fact which ones might be seriously unhinged, or simply mistaken and misled.
Surely you don’t want to line up with the irresponsible “moderates” who psychoanalyzed crazy Hitler for the Roosevelt administration, and whom I take apart with loving care on my latest blog, Klara Hitler’s Son? Take a look, old friend, and be advised.
August 31st, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Cocburn’s daughter is “13″ on House??? Did I get that right?
Interesting, I really find her character the one they could do without. Its not her acting–which is fine–just a dumb character that doesnt balance out the rest of the cast.
August 31st, 2009 at 1:23 pm
It’s his niece.
August 31st, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Clare. I know Crazy when I see Crazy. It’s not very hard. And it has nothing to do with ideology. And deeming crazy people crazy is not to line up with anybody in particular. Please.
Ahmed: Holy Batman! Proyect might be tangentially correct about Cockburn on this particular issue but, sorry, he’s a BIGGER crank than Alex and with about 5% of his (waning) talent. Ive asked before so I will have to do it again,. In the future, do not litter his site with links to the deranged Mr Proyect. He has consistently slandered and defamed me, distorted my words and views and mocked my health when I was in a delicate condition. He is a trash bin and I dont want a trace of him here. Read him on your own time, thanks.
Randy: No problem. I know you know about my daughter’s relationship to the Jesse James Hollywood murder. She was a 7th grade beau of the victim and his friend thru high school.
August 31st, 2009 at 1:48 pm
J. Wade:
I have no beef with Alterman. I have a tedious reaction, that’s all. He’s wholly predictable voice who sings in choir with the Democrats. Albeit the liberal Democrats which is marginally better than the Blue Dogs. But one tires after 20 years after reading the same thing over and over again.
August 31st, 2009 at 2:43 pm
It’s unfortunate that the Nation columnists I tend to agree with or at least respect – Alterman, Pollitt and the lawyer lady whose name escapes me – also tend to be boring and predictable. Hitchens and Cockburn always annoyed me but I found myself reading them, perhaps because on some level both men are sort of cranks and a little too obviously taken with themselves. Blogging has actually made the regular columnist slot at sites like the Nation obsolete…but I would argue that if you’re goiing to have columnists, a bit of eccentricity and an above-average literary talent is essential. The SF Chronicle – when it was a fun-to-read, engrossing shitty paper as opposed to an irrelevant, boring shitty paper – was notable for its multitude of great columnists. There were columnists I’d read who wrote mostly about stuff I had absolutely no inherent interest in, but I loved the columns because they were great stylists and/or wonderfully eccentric minds.
August 31st, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Sanctimony is an enemy of critical thought (which is also one of the reasons why religion makes people insane.) Abortion and global warming are two issues which almost anyone who claims to be on the left is very peremptory about these days. Neither of them has a very clear relationship to what I take to be the core ideas of the left, either. Someone has to drink the Communion wine, or go off the res, or whatever the right metaphor is, and cranky old Irish guys do that better than anyone else.
And, Marc, if you’re gonna fight him, let us know in advance so we can make odds.
August 31st, 2009 at 4:18 pm
It seems to me that the Nation has a recent tendency of losing some of their newer, fresher talent to other publications. Adam Shatz comes to mind. I could be wrong about this but he was for sometime the editor of the book review section and a brilliant journalist, who specialised in the Middle East and wrote about the regions history and polics with an informed kind of passion and nuance. He put out some breathtakingly brilliant peices about a host of subject; a long and critical review of faoud ajami, a sombre piece about the left’s reaction to 9/11, obituary for maxine rodinson and an essay about the history of jewish critique of Israel, both within the zionsit and anti zionist traditions. He then left and now writes the LRB and other publications
August 31st, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Btw, Laura Falunders is really a top rate journalist as is Andrew and Patrick, a remarkable feat for a single family/clan.
August 31st, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Last I checked, Marc Cooper only helps publish the sort fascist coup-loving, non-fringe former leftists who MURDER POETS.
(You fucking scumbag.)
August 31st, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Well, gee, so if we don’t believe in “government backed health reform,” we are morons.
You ca do better.
As for Beck… what a disappointment. I’ve listened to lots of conservative commentators, and it’s unfortunate that one of the few true loons gets such high readership. It makes the good ones look bad.
September 1st, 2009 at 12:57 am
Well, gee, so if we don’t believe in “government backed health reform,” we are morons.
No counterexample comes to mind.
September 1st, 2009 at 8:24 am
“No counterexample comes to mind.”
One thing common to every moron is little comes to mind.
September 1st, 2009 at 8:25 am
“As for Beck… what a disappointment. I’ve listened to lots of conservative commentators, and it’s unfortunate that one of the few true loons…makes the good ones look bad.”
Since the GOP’s Vice-Presidential candidate endorsed Beck’s “great work”, one wonders what the hell you’re talking about…
For what it’s worth, Beck isn’t making, say, Charles Krauthammer or George Will or David Brooks “look bad.” So far as I can tell the Wingnutosphere embraces him, i.e. Michelle Malkin, Erik Erikson, Jonah Goldberg, et. al.
(See: http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/196/4199/)
Golberg is, in fact, the “author” of Beck’s current “tiradeology” – Liberal=Fascist.
Glenn’s tutoring, popularizing and emboldening the loony-toons right – such as yourself – who are crypto-fascist, hysterical and hatemongering. You’re no different than Beck in many of the notions you’ve pushed here about – i.e. hang journalists for treason, Walter Cronkite betrayed his country, etc. etc. ad nauseum. Your faux-”disappontment” is a joke. The problem with Beck in your eyes is obviously that he doesn’t keep his big red clown nose in his back pocket where no one can see it…
September 1st, 2009 at 8:49 am
Of course, Moore might be right that there’s a tension in the conservative soul over Beck’s alarmist rants. Here’s a transciprto of a more responsible Conservative telling the hysterical Glenn Beck to calm down:
Beck: I fear this government, this administration has so much framework already prepared, that they will seize power overnight before anybody even gives it a second thought.
Rush Limbaugh: Well, I think — I think because of what you’re doing with your television show, your radio show, what we’re all doing, I don’t think they’re going to be able to seize it overnight without anybody knowing about it.
September 1st, 2009 at 10:22 am
Counterpunch is a horrible publication. Among other reasons that I hate it, in one article about six years ago it said that the Provisional Republican Movement had abandoned the Colombia Three (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colombia_three). The main, perhaps ONLY group campaigning in Ireland for the Colombia Three was the Bring Them Home Committee, which was led by a senior Sinn Fein member, Catriona Ruane. A google search of SF’s publication, An Phoblacht for the phrase “Colombia Three” came up with 944 results.
Sinn Fein did not abandon the Colombia Three.
A second big reason (besides Cockburn’s politcs) that I don’t like Counterpunch is that a clearly white supremacist and anti-semitic web-site http://www.theoccidentalquarterly.com/ links to Counterpunch as says “Counterpunch is a left-wing political web and print publication notable for its courageous discussions of Israel and Jewish power in the U.S.”
Tom
September 1st, 2009 at 10:48 am
“one of Amy Goodman’s schemes? Nefarious duplicity?
This is better than “Dallas”…..
Anyway, it should come as no surprise Alex is
hanging in there as a global warming flat earthier, his
most shameful work at the Nation was repeating the
“invented the internet” garbage on Al Gore, long after
it had been disowned even by the corporate media that
had created it. That, of course, was O.K. with Marc
Cooper as both were then allies in the Ralph Nader
campaign which would send Bush to the White House.
Here Cockburn is merely showing a soft spot for the
hapless right wing bottom feeder (it’s interesting that
Bob Somersby displays the same sentiment in a much
different way, and Marc Cooper does too) who are
victims of the TRUE evil, the shadowy neo-liberal
corporate establishment. It’s the libertarian,
conservatives, you see, who will keep Bush in line
and dissent on principle when it is important.
We saw how well that worked out. Same song as
Hitchens, and you saw how well he took on
Bush!
The Nation, Counterpunch, even Marc Cooper-
it’s wheat from the chaff, think for yourself.
September 1st, 2009 at 12:32 pm
There is a lot of fear in America now, and Glenn Beck feeds off of it. Last night I happened upon a country music awards show on ABC. There were a number of live songs played, and the two I heard both dealt explicitly with economic deterioration. One was about pride in being poor, and the other about the crime of giving bail-outs to corporate jet flying executives when Detroit is shutting down.
Those songs (and I realize 2 of 2 is not exactly strong statistical proof) tend to show that white working folks are not captives of right-wing thinking, and are looking for someone to channel their fear, anger and pride into something constructive.
Beck (most obviously) is using those feelings as justifications for his bizarre political analyses. Obama got the nomination and was elected in large part because he and his people “got it”…. We need to communicate to all Americans–as Teddy K famously put it, “north, south, east and west,” though the right has learned that sheer noise makes that much more difficult.
September 1st, 2009 at 12:56 pm
I can’t wait for the “how dare Cooper compare me to Cockburn” reaction from Alterman. Eric is still smarting over his encounter with Cockburn on the Nation Cruise. He’s so cute when he’s angry.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:11 pm
For what it’s worth “their fringe” extends to totally dishonest sacks of elephant doo-doo like RNC Chairman Michael Steele:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_09/019728.php
Contrary to Moore’s whining, most of contemporary “conservatism” really IS totally brain-dead and/or lacking in even the smallest semblance of honesty in conducting its discourse.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:52 pm
I think Beck truly believes what he’s saying – so he’s honest but he’s whacko.
Limbaugh was just being polite in his comments.
September 1st, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Marc and I have differences regarding appropriate language when describing our adversaries. So I wrote a blog about the activist versus the scholar on the Yankee Doodle Society website, http://www.clarespark.com. The blog is titled “Blogging with a difference.”
September 1st, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Tom Shelley is conflating the Provisional IRA with Sinn Fein regarding the Colombia 3.
Sinn Fein sought to distance itself from the drug running conducted by the Provos in Colombia which itself accentuated the differences between each faction which had split over the issue of a political solution with the UK sought by Sinn Fein.
That said each faction wanted repatriation for the Colombia 3. The Sinn Fein calls on the three to be repatriated because they shouldn’t languish in Colombian jails and the Provos want them out because they didn’t do anything wrong.
Here is the Counterpunch article from April 2004:
http://www.counterpunch.org/davis04272004.html.
The racist Occidental Quarterly does indeed link Counterpunch apparently for its defense of Mearsheimer & Walt for their article regarding the impact of the Israeli lobby on US which originally appeared in the LRB. The LRB article takes pains to differentiate M&W’s thesis and antisemitism; a difference which many neo-conservatives sought to erase. Counterpunch should not be tarred just because an anti-semitic organization seeks to validate its own ideology by incorporation of a scholarly critique.
Here is the Christensen article from Counterpunch:
http://icahdusa.org/2007/170#more-170
September 1st, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Roque Dalton Says:
August 31st, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Last I checked, Marc Cooper only helps publish the sort fascist coup-loving, non-fringe former leftists who MURDER POETS
——
Roque, as with much in your life, you defy death.
I miss the work that you would have published were you not cut short and am thankful for the work (and the translations ) you have left us.
My eyes were two soup spoons just reading your name here. you have lived enough for three of us and it is our duty to live once:
“forgive me for helping you understand
that you’re not made of words alone”
September 1st, 2009 at 9:52 pm
The eternal theme of this blog is that the Right is mean, stupid, corrupt and crazy, while the Left — with certain deplorable exceptions— is beneficent, smart, selfless and lucid.
But most Americans are non-ideological and non- partisan, so they don’t buy the crap you are peddling here, Cooper. You are just like the President and the Democratic Congress: you decline to discuss the alleged reform in particular, on its merits.
People know a power grab when they see one.
September 2nd, 2009 at 7:24 am
Tom Delay after the 2000 election:
Payback is a bitch.
But most Americans are non-ideological and non- partisan
And you base this on what?
Man up, Biff.
September 2nd, 2009 at 9:27 am
This is a response to Scott Edwards about the Colombia Three and the Occcidental Quarterly.
First, as far as conflating the two, I was a little lazy and also couldn’t find the article to see EXACTLY what it said (I read the article when it first came out and once since then). Although during the entire time that the Colombia Three were in jail in Colombia I was reading an average of about 150 articles a week from various sources about N. Ireland and reletaed events including the Colombia Three, it seems that I somehow forgot that there was a BRIEF period when SF were NOT pushing a campaign to “Bring Them Home.”
Below is something an editor of Irish indymedia just sent me about this. So I was a little off on some of the details. It doesn’t change the fact that shortly after their arrest and LONG before that article in Counterpunch was written, SF was behind the campaign to bring them home.
Also, you talk as if the term “Provo” only applies to the IRA and not SF. It’s more commonly used in reference to the IRA, but it is also sometimes used in reference to SF.
On the Occidental Quarterly, if people who are clearly anti-semites like Counterpunch’s coverage of Israel that means that Counterpunch is doing something wrong. It’s very important to make it clear that anti-semitism among supporters of the Palestinians is wrong. It’s been my experience that you have a better chance of getting people to support the Palestinians if you can assure them that anti-semitism you consider anti-semitism unacceptable, and there are some other reasons for making that clear among supporters of the Palestinians. If TOQ likes Counterpunch, Counterpunch is not doing this.
I also just don’t like a lot of positions Cockburn has taken, but between that and the two items we’re discussing, I don’t like Counterpunch.
Below is what the Indymedia.ie editor wrote to me about the Colombia Three (based on reading an average of 100 articles each week the last 8 years, I was pretty sure the accusation of drug-running wasn’t true).
Tom
Hi Tom
No evidence of any sort that C3 were involved wih drugs.
At the start SF tried to downplay involvement with C3 until it was proven that Connolly was SFs rep in Cuba. Cant say re IRA. I think Adams & co were hoping that Bush would get the C3 released. THat was a possibility prior to 9/11 but vanished afterwards.
Adams & co then launched a campaign for C3.
Its not the first time they played down the role of prisoners for political reasons.
Rgds
Pat
September 2nd, 2009 at 10:34 am
Biff Larkin Says:
September 1st, 2009 at 9:52 pm
The eternal theme of this blog is that the Right is mean, stupid, corrupt and crazy, while the Left — with certain deplorable exceptions— is beneficent, smart, selfless and lucid.
——
Biff forgot to add that the Right is also largely uneducated, unread, are unable to contextualize historical references, and lack critical thinking.
This is a generalization because the euridite among them aren’t shrill.
September 2nd, 2009 at 10:45 am
Tom,
thanks for your reply…
re- Counterpunch and anti-semitism, a serious charge made… pls provide an example to illustrate what you mean; you should provide something concrete when levying such a serious charge.
I do not read CounterPunch as I just don’t have the time and am forced to pick and choose.
Criticism of the State of Israel can be principled and constructive yet in the public sphere any elected official does so at her peril.
The LRB article on the effect of the Israeli Lobby on american politics is but one glaring example.
September 2nd, 2009 at 11:43 am
you’re right, that is a serious charge which should be backed up with evidence. Fortunately, all I meant was that if TOQ likes Counterpunch’s coverage of Israel, that coverage probably doesn’t make it clear that anti-semitism is some kind of problem among supporters of the Palestinians- a problem that needs to be dealt with. that’s all I meant, not that there is neccesssarily anti-semitic material in Counterpunch- I assume there isn’t, although it’s possible considering the praise from TOQ.
I haven’t read counterpunch hardly at all since that article about the colombia Three- between that and what I knew about Cockburn, I pretty much stopped reading it.
As I said, in my experience it’s helpful if supporters of the Palestinians make it clear they’re against anti-semitism and I have reason to believe Counterpunch isn’t doing that.
Hopefully that clears it up.
tom
September 2nd, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Sieg Heil
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/02/cia-usa
September 2nd, 2009 at 12:32 pm
You’re asking supporters of Palestinians rights who are part of a growing movement of people– most of whom would identify with the secular left–who believe that peace and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians must be grounded upon acknowledging legitimate Palestinian grievances tehmselves rooted in dispossession, and an occupation, to use disclaimer type language when they make their points. It implies that they must apologize or be defensive for their advocacy. Like Scott says the fact that anti semites motivated by a hatred of Jews may in some cases opportunistically cite say Chomsky or some piece by Cockburn does not invalidate the latters moral and political critique. There were probably people who hated the Soviet Union who were motivated by anti Slav feelings, does that mean anyone critical of Stalin must first pronounce in all cases that they are not anti Slav. Besides guilt by association can you please provide some substance, a quote or article to back up your spurious allegation
September 2nd, 2009 at 1:42 pm
My allegation is that if TOQ is linking to Counterpunch, Counterpunch must not be making it clear that anti-semitism is a problem among supporters of the Palestinians and that that problem should be addressed.
I’m not saying people have to denounce anti-semitism every time they express support for the Palestinians, but here and there they should make it clear that they’re against that. And in my experience, it is helpful when winning over new people to the cause of the Palestinians. When I got a group at CU-Boulder called Students for Justice in N. Ireland to endorse the campus Coalition for Justice in Palestine, there were some members of SJNI who wanted to be assured that CJP was not anti-semitic. After I assured them, they voted in favor and SJNI endorsed CJP and we put out some pro-Palestinian literature when we tabled around campus.
If you’re asking me to offer evidence that Counterpunch isn’t making it clear that they’re opposed to anti-semitism, I think the link from TOQ is enough. Such a site (TOQ) would not link to Counterpunch if it were making it clear that anti-semtism is a problem among supporters of the Palestinians.
I’m certain that if more Palestinian solidarity activists took the approach I advocate, the number of people in that movement would increase, maybe even double or something.
Tom
September 2nd, 2009 at 1:55 pm
Alex Cockburn’s Counterpunch blog is now literally promoting the blood libel. The context for this is an article supporting and elaborating on the Swedish tabloid story which spuriously claimed Israel is stealing human organs. Counterpunch argues that the medieval charges that Jews ritually murdered gentiles were true.
What kind of leftism is this? Next, they’ll come out in favor of the Spanish Inquisition.
(I’m writing something about this now for my blog — should be online tomorrow.)
September 2nd, 2009 at 1:56 pm
The right wing conservative movement in the US has for decades seized upon the legacy of MLK to fight against affirmative action and any other policies which come out of the very struggles MLk was involved in. Its not uncommon to hear folks like Dinesh D’Souza preface noxious speeches black americans are solely responsible for the real gaps of opportunitty which exist between themslves and the majority population with a quote from MLK himself. Now they do this with the knowledge that MLK is not around to rebut them but still given your argument the very fact that right wingers and racists quote MLK is evidence that he was not careful enough about his message which is of course bullshit, crime by association and in the case of Israel/Palestine a common and dishonest tactic used by those who defend and apologize for the occupation. If you want to attack counterpunch then cite something that they’ve written or an argument one of their writers has made. Your tactic about some group linking them therefore they are anti semitic, or not careful enough is pure drivel
September 2nd, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Regarding what Adam says Counterpunch is in fact running a bullshit tabloid story about Israeli organ snatchers by someone named Bouthaina Shaaban who is Political and Media Advisor at the Syrian Presidency. That is fucking disgusting. Besides the fact that the story is pure filth, it also seems to me that the Israeli government would want us to focus on this tabloid scandal to distact us from their crimes, their killing of children in Gaza which are all copiously documented by a plethora of human rights groups from Amnesty down. There are more than a few cranks who publish on Counterpunch and this is a case in which the web site should be rightly slammed, not some guilt by association bullshit
September 2nd, 2009 at 2:10 pm
I have mixed feelings about this. It still seems to make sense, I mean, why would they link to a site that makes it clear anti-semitism is a problem? One hand it still makes sense. On the other, it just occured to me that I could do a search of counterpunch for certain words, something I often do in situations like this, but I forgot until now. I’ve skimmed some of the 900+ results and so far it’s not very impressive, but I’m only just skimming them. I’ll probably read some, probably not all of them, and also see how many pages there are with the word Israel.
I won’t be done with this for a while, probably weeks. So, as far as I’m concerned, with this note, the discussion’s over.
I was only accusing them of not being careful enough.
I still have good reasons for not liking Counterpunch.
Lastly, irregardless of how good or bad Counterpunch is on this, I stand by my belief that there is a problem of anti-semitism among palestinian solidarity activists, including the left-wingers, and my belief that if it was made clearer to people that antisemitism is not welcome in that movement, more people would join that movement.
Tom
September 2nd, 2009 at 2:23 pm
<iThis is a generalization because the euridite among them aren’t shrill.
That itself is quite a generalization. For counterexamples, read NRO, the WSJ editorial page, Human Events, Krauthammer, Boot, etc.
September 2nd, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Your tactics remind me somewhat of Bill O’Reilly. He was debating Paul Krugman on Tim Russet’s old program and was forced to defend his assertion on radio that Michael Moore “hates America”. What did Bill do, he simply cited some personality within Hezbollah who apparently said something positive about one of Moore’s films, which is exactly what you’re doing here. I’ve been involved myself personally in Palestine solidarity work– where our allies are more often then not leftist jews– and I can tell you what you’re saying is bullshit. More so the reason that people that you’ve met might shy away from taking up the Palestinian cause has more to do with the blanket racism and demonization of Palestinian people specially and Arabs in general, the mythology of the Israeli state which holds firm and the ongoing systematic campaign to distort both fact and history of the conflict. That anti semitism should have no place in a movement in support of Palestinian rights is something I agree with, but the problem is that your vague language and guilt by association tactics end up muddying the water and dirtying the debate
September 2nd, 2009 at 3:10 pm
A quick internet search also found that The Occidental Quarterly also cited Noam Chomsky’s, himself a leftist Jew and in fact early Zionist of the Martin Buber persuasion, excellent book about the 1982 Lebanon invasion “The Fateful Triangle” in one of their articles, so I presume that we will now hear from Tom Shelley all sorts of bullshit noise about how Noam clearly wasnt careful enough in his writings, or such a group would have never footnoted his argument. Bullshit on stilts
September 2nd, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Yes, the “Israeli Bodysnatchers” article is a load of crap, and if the article is by an adviser to Bashir Assad, as Ahmed says, that’s no surprise.
That said, assuming the story really is based on rumors circulating among Palestinians, it’s not unusual to have delusional fears like that about a brutal foreign army that’s occupying your land and shooting at your kids.
The Palestinians didn’t get to choose what ethnic group would come from thousands of miles away on other continents, confiscate their land, and set up an exclusivist state based on someone else’s religion. There aren’t 200 Palestinians in the world who have ever heard of the blood libel, which is a medieval *European* legend.
September 2nd, 2009 at 4:37 pm
This is apparently the thread that has attained immortality. Please Cooper followers or refuseniks, go to my website and look at all the materials that dissect embedded antisemitism. And don’t miss the one I have been working on for two days, “Blogging With a Difference” (a response to my friend Marc Cooper’s article that started this latest thread).
September 2nd, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Come to think of it, if some Palestinians have a delusional fear that Israelis are stealing their internal organs, that’s remarkably parallel to American Zionists’ delusional belief that the Palestinians’ desire to live in their own country is motivated by anti-Semitism.
September 2nd, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Two good posts from Mr X. His point reminds me of Spike Lee’s documentary where he talks to many poor blacks in Katrina who sincerely and passionately believe that the government of the US bombed the levees in order to wipe poor blacks in New Orleans out. There’s no proof of this claim which is pure bullshit, IMHO. That said the popularity of the idea itself originates from multiple lived realities and historical memory. The Tuskegee Experiment performed on African American males, America’s long history of racial violence and the callous systematic indifference to the plight of the poor.
September 2nd, 2009 at 6:53 pm
Blissfully, I pay no attention to either Glenn Beck — remember, Marc, you had to explain how the yo-yo was — or Alexander Cockburn.
September 2nd, 2009 at 6:53 pm
… That should read “who,” now “how,” though it makes little difference to me.
September 2nd, 2009 at 8:56 pm
# Scott Edwards Says:
Obviously written by someone undereducated, historically ill-informed, and unable to think except in gross generalizations.
September 3rd, 2009 at 11:10 pm
And here they are, hIssing, creepin’ and crawling’, striking at one another in the bottomless snake pit of their own septuagenarian irrelevance.
And the clock keeps ticking.
September 4th, 2010 at 8:28 am
It’s perfect to view web-sites along with material and thx for the discuss which you’ve done. Usually, I’m really surprised, but etc…
November 12th, 2010 at 2:06 am
Gold Confiscation: Could it Happen Again? watch this http://www.youtube.com/edjuh10