Thousands more newspaper employees out of work.
Paper Cuts reports that, halfway through this year, 2,450 more newspaper employees are off the job. It's even worse than last year, when 2,907 newspaper employees lost their jobs.
Free Speech Above All
Johann Hari on Religious Censorship This video is an impassioned declaration on the importance of not allowing "sensitivities" and an unwillingness to offend become a force against free speech. It is also, underneath, an argument for rejecting the pseuodthink of irrational defenses of absurdity.
Bill Moyers on the state of the nation
On today's episode of Democracy Now, Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales the entire hour interviewing Bill Moyers, who had a lot to say about the state of the nation. Here are Moyers' closing comments:
I think this country is in a very precarious state at the moment. I think, as I say, the escalating, accumulating power of organized wealth is snuffing out everything public, whether it’s public broadcasting, public schools, public unions, public parks, public highways. Everything public has been under assault since the late 1970s, the early years of the Reagan administration, because there is a philosophy that’s been extant in America for a long time that anything public is less desirable than private. And I think we’re at a very critical moment in the equilibrium. No society, no human being, can survive without balance, without equilibrium. Nothing in excess, the ancient Greeks said. And Madison, one of the great founders, one of the great framers of our Constitution, built equilibrium into our system. We don’t have equilibrium now. The power of money trumps the power of democracy today, and I’m very worried about it. I said to—and if we don’t address this, if we don’t get a handle on what we were talking about—money in politics—and find a way to thwart it, tame it, we’re in —democracy should be a break on unbridled greed and power, because capitalism, capital, like a fire, can turn from a servant, a good servant, into an evil master. And democracy is the brake on my passions and my appetites and your greed and your wealth. And we have to get that equilibrium back. I said to a friend of mine on Wall Street, "How do you feel about the market?" He said, "Well, I’m not—I’m optimistic." And I said, "Why do you, then, look so worried?" And he said, "Because I’m not sure my optimism is justified." And I feel that way. So I fall back on the balance we owe in a—in the Italian political scientist, Gramsci, who said that he practices the pessimism of the mind and the optimism of the will. By that, he meant he sees the world as it is, without rose-colored glasses, as I try to do as a journalist. I see what’s there. That will make you pessimistic. But then you have to exercise your will optimistically, believing that each of us singly, and all of us collectively, can be an agent of change. And I have to get up every morning and imagine a more confident future, and then try to do something that day to help bring it about.
Celebrity Republicans
I'll assume that most of DI's readers, like me, hate the celebrity phenomenon of the "famous for being famous". This rising class of psuedo-celebs, the "famesque", are a newish phenomenon who owe their livelihoods to media over-saturation. In a world of thousands of channels and millions of websites, in an economy where celebrity gossip magazines and gossip sites flourish as newspapers decline, there is a consistent demand for fluffy content. The outrageous and fame-hungry, who are willing (it seems) to do anything to garner attention, bloom and profit in such an environment. If you have no standards and no shame, it is relatively easy to make a celebrity career of puff piece interviews and reality TV appearances. Far easier than launching a career based on hard-work, creative production, and talent, anyway. But there is a new subclass of the 'famesque', one far more insidious than the droves of Paris Hiltons and Snookies and Osbornes and Kardashians we all despise and ignore. They are Celebrity Republicans- wannabe politicos who are pundits just for the sake of being pundits. And they are tearing the Republican party and political discourse apart.
The depraved soul of Comcast, and the actions of heroic girls
If you haven't heard enough about Comcast to disgust you yet, check out the stunt Comcast pulled regarding a non-profit summer film camp for girls. Comcast displayed raw vindictiveness when one of the girls showed disrespect by criticizing FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker Attwell for taking a high-paying job lobbying for Comcast only four months after approving the Comcast-NBC merger. The details of the story are shocking, and these girls have become my heroes. Here's the account from a letter I received from Free Press today:
When Seattle’s Reel Grrls – an award-winning program that teaches teenage girls to make their own media – criticized Comcast on Twitter for its outrageous hiring of FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker, Comcast came after them. A Comcast VP immediately fired off an email saying the company was cutting off $18,000 in funding it had pledged for a summer camp teaching filmmaking, editing and screenwriting. Without those funds, the Reel Grrls camp won’t happen. We need to stand up to Comcast’s censors – and show these young media justice activists we’ve got their backs. Can you give $25 to Reel Grrls to keep their summer camp going without Comcast’s cash? Reel Grrls didn’t back down or delete their tweet. They didn’t let Comcast silence them. Instead, they called their allies and alerted the media. And once the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Associated Press got hold of the story, Comcast suddenly changed its tune. It claimed the threats were "unauthorized" and said it wouldn’t yank the funds. But Reel Grrls are sticking to their principles. They’re telling Comcast to keep its money if it’s going to try to censor what they say.
Here's yet another account of this story that includes the Tweet that started the troubles. After reading these accounts tonight, I was so moved that sent the girls $100 to help them carry on with their education. If you're interested in helping out, click here. This story illustrates the vast power the big telecoms have and the fact that they are all-too-willing to abuse that power. This is an illustration of what the telecoms have in mind for all of us with regard to net neutrality.