Now were kicking reporters off of Guantanamo for reporting information that was already public. It turns out that all Presidents in favor of the free flow of information . . . unless it is inconvenient. As this article concludes: "[N]othing says 'kangaroo court' quite like banning the free press."
Constance McMillen wanted to go to her high school prom. Like most students in the United States, she doubtless saw the event as the capstone of four years of effort, a gala event for students that represents a reward for getting to the end of their senior year and, presumably, graduating not only from high school but into adulthood. One night of glamor and revelry, dressed at a level of style and affluence many might never indulge again, to celebrate the matriculation into the next level of independence. A party where students can show themselves—to their peers and to themselves—as adults. It has become something more, probably, than it was ever intended to be. Patterned after high society “debuts” at which young ladies of good breeding (and potential wealth) are introduced to Society (with a capital “S”) in a manner that, when stripped of its finery and fashionable gloss, is really a very expensive dating service, with the idea of creating future matches between “suitable” couples, the high school prom is a showcase, a public demonstration of, presumably, the virtues of a graduating class. Over the last few decades, even the less well-off schools strive to shine in what a prom achieves. Instead of a local band in the high school gym, with bunting and streamers and colored lights to “hide” the fact that normally gym class and basketball are performed in this room, the prom has become elevated to a decent hotel with a ball room, a better-priced band (or a DJ), and all the attributes of a night on the town in Hollywood. Tuxedos and gowns are de rigueur and students’ families spare no expense to deck their children out in clothes they really often can’t afford. Limousines transport the budding fashionistas and their knights errant to the evening’s festivities and you know this cost a fortune. Students may be forgiven for believing that it’s for them. In its crudest terms, the prom is for the community, a self-congratulatory demonstration of how well the community believes it has done by its youth. It is a statement about what that community would like to see itself as.
I received a warning when I logged into my YouTube account recently. I had openly and with attribution used a couple of popular tunes in some of my videos. Those have been flagged as violations of copyrights, my account to be reviewed, and the videos may be pulled, or my account suspended. Meanwhile, those videos sport pop-up ads to buy the tunes. The two offending videos use tunes that had their heydays in the 1930's and 1970's. Even the children of the original creator and performer of the older tune are all dead. Is it right that some corporation is making a fuss over my sharing this with a few friends? There have been less than 75 views in the year since it's been posted. I see no reason to fight this. I'd be quite content to have ads pop up for the tunes I use. I even wish there were a mechanism in place to request ads to pay for use of related content. It's not so much that I like ads, but that I respect content creators. But I don't respect any right in perpetuity for corporations to hold creative rights once a creator and his direct heirs are out of the picture. Like McCartney having to pay the estate of Michael Jackson to use his own songs.
The mainstream media is going after anyone who dares to stray from what they consider to be the proper boundaries of discourse. He dares to treat mainstream political discourse "as the political freak show that it is." That's why Alan Grayson, who is one of the few people in Congress who is really working hard to get to the bottom of serious problems, has a big target on his back--he is being labeled as crazy by a mainstream media that doesn't know what to do when someone asks real questions about real issues. Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com explores this problem at length, pointing out the other side of the coin, that in Media-World, those who are certifiably insane are being labeled as "sane" as long as they stay within predesignated boundaries. For example:
Just consider who is supported and embraced by those who slap the "crazy" label on the forehead of every perceived dissident. Hillary Clinton -- the ultimate embodiment of Democratic Party Seriousness and Sanity -- supported the invasion of Iraq by warning of scary weapons and Al Qaeda ties that did not exist . . . and she spent her campaign beating her chest and doing things like threatening to "totally obliterate" Iran. While in office, Barack Obama has endorsed putting people in cages with no charges, assassinating American citizens with no due process, eavesdropping on Americans en masse with little oversight, increasing military spending beyond its shockingly inflated levels while searching for ways to cut Medicaid and Social Security, and blocking judicial review of presidential felonies and war crimes on the ground that those criminal acts constitute vital "state secrets" and must be protected. Most Serious, Sane Democrats have supported all of that insanity.What honest person can argue with Greenwald's list? But he was just getting warmed up. There's a lot more, including this:
Meanwhile, the GOP establishment from top to bottom spent a decade cheering on torture, disappearances, abductions, unprovoked wars, chronic presidential lawbreaking and truly sick McCarthyite witch hunts. Both of the Sane Parties conspired to transfer, with little accountability, massive amounts of public wealth to the very Wall Street firms which virtually destroyed the entire world economy, while standing by and doing very little about tragic levels of joblessness or the future risk of Wall-Street-caused financial crises; kept us waging war for a full decade in multiple countries (while threatening others) even as we near the precipice of bankruptcy, the hallmarks of under-developed nation status and the disappearance of the social safety net; and are so captive to the corporate interests which own the Government that they viciously compete with one another over who can be a more loyal servant to those interests.Greenwald is not suggesting that those who step out of the mainstream are always correct about everything they say. But he does give credit to Alan Grayson, Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul for not buying into most of the rubbish that we are being fed by the media. We live in world painted upside-down by a media that is largely not about traditional Fourth Estate values. Rather than feed us information that will allow a democracy to thrive, the mainstream media, based on its constant miserable failures over the past ten years, is clearly more interested in destroying those who dare to ask questions that might threaten our corporate-military-prison-industrial-Complex.
Here's an example of a type of news story that really bugs me, and it happens every so often. Someone gets fired for saying something, and the entire story revolves around the thing that was said. Should the guy who said it resign? Should he be suspended? Did he have a right to say it? Intense story, right? But wait a minute! What, exactly did the guy say? In stories like this, you never learn what he said. Nope, viewers are little babies and the news media must protect our ears from such potentially vile/rude/inappropriate language. Or should they? It all depends on what he said, and we'll never know. But it was rude and he deserved what he got, or maybe not.