The Big Bad Left

If you are a supposed leftist, and you want to get on NPR, you better be ready to bash the left and say something pro-Zionist. On Saturday morning, Scott Simon talks to France's Bernard-Henri Levy, who Simon describes as "probably his country's best-known public intellectual" (You might be forgiven for wondering when NPR News took an interest in public intellectuals!) One reason Simon is talking to Levy is because - according to Simon - Levy "says the left has too often become apologists for tyrants and bigotry - antisemitism to be blunt about it."

It is kind of funny to hear this critique in the US where one would be happy to have a strong "left" to critique in the first place, and where uber-Zionism is a prerequisite to being heard at all in mainstream political discourse. But the realities of the US empire aren't about to get in the way of distortion. Here are a few excerpts from Levy:

• "You have more and more liberals who say, 'Come on, wait a minute. Human rights in America, okay. Human rights in Europe, okay. But if you pretend to apply human rights for example to Arab countries, then - wait a minute - it is a colonial attitude, it is a neo-imperialist way of imposing a way of thinking..." [What US leftists decry insisting on human rights for Arab countries?]

• "You have a lot of liberals today, who before taking the party of the victims, first ask who is the executioner, and more precisely, would by any chance, America been involved in this execution, in this bloodbath. If America is involved, then they take the party of the victims. If America is not involved, if it is not the guiltiness, the fault of America - they care less." [No, what you have are activists who are more disturbed by human rights abuses that their tax dollars are supporting and who rightly question the argument that US military intervention has ever favored human rights improvements.]

• "...the only way to make antisemitism sayable and hearable...give sort of fake legitimacy is to mold it in the argumentation, the obsessions in the phrases of the liberal left. For example, antiZionism....I criticize Israel more than anybody...but antiZionism is something else. To be antiZionist is like to be anti-Francist or anti-Germanist as if you had the right to conclude from the faults...that France should not exist at all..." [Honestly, it's sad to see this sloppy logic passing as intellectualism. Yes, anyone would be anti-Francist or anti-Germanist if being ethnically French or German were a condition for citizenship and basic rights for anyone residing in France or Germany respectively.]

Don't look for a thoughtful look at Zionism on NPR. The arguments for and against Zionism are quite entangled, while the actual practice of Zionism in Israel is quiet blatantly racist and violent.

Reagaphilia

Here's a little challenge to any die-hard believers in NPR's liberal (or even balanced) credentials: Find just one progressive, critical piece on the presidency of Ronald Reagan aired on NPR News in the last 5 years.

Tonight on ATC I had to fight the gag-reflex as NPR aired an adoring commentary on Reagan by Rich Lowry, editor of The National Review. The commentary focuses on Reagan's staged "tear down this wall" speech in Berlin. Michele Norris introduces it by noting that "Lowry says if those words don’t give you goosebumps..."

Then Lowry tells us that "beneath Reagan’s sunny exterior was a stern determination and a hatred of Marxism…conflicts with communist-infiltrated unions in his days in Hollywood." He might have also mentioned that beneath that "sunny exterior" was one of the the most dishonest, corrupt, death-squad loving presidents we've had until - well until now! Lowry is also out to conflate revolutionaries like Che Guevara with mass murderers like Stalin by lumping them all under the label of "communism." He tells us about the "tens of millions of dead bodies in the twentieth century" that Communism left in its wake, but nothing about the millions of corpses left by just the US alone.

Well, it's one thing to give airtime to a Reagaphile like Lowry so that he can pretend that Reagan was worthy of anything but disgust or prison, but one has to wonder where any countervailing opinion is? It clearly is not on NPR.

One interesting little exercise is to search "Richard Lowry" on NPR's site (16 hits) or "Rich Lowry" (25 hits) and then search Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation (what do you know, 1 hit!). Twenty-five to one - sounds like a liberal bias to me! Even add in the editor of The Progressive, Matthew Rothschild (3 hits) and you still get a 25 to 4 hit return. I think NPR is trying to make a Bonzo out of all of us...

What Are They Paying This Guy?

Ted Koppel weighs in on ATC yesterday.

"There really are US interests at stake in the creation of a relatively stable Iraq, but even from a purely partisan point of view, the Democrats are making a mistake. They should depoliticize the Iraq issue. If anything they should publicly hope for the success of the President’s policies. If he wins we all win."

When I hear this kind of crass stupidity and think of my sad, little $60-a-year contribution to my local NPR station helping to pay for it, I get really ticked off. "Relatively stable Iraq"? "Depoliticize the Iraq issue"? "Hope for the success of the President's policies"? "If he wins we all win"?!!! Holy #%<+!!

No Greater Test of American Optimism?

Commentary at NPR continues to disappoint. Today Ken Harbaugh tells us that there is "no greater test of American optimism than the ordeal that is Iraq." He also tells us that the US military's task in Iraq is "to bring hope to a country burdened by its own traumatic past." What can any honest, decent thinking person say to this ridiculous commentary?