Look at this list again. Do you recognize one original thought on it? Any peculiar observation? Any evidence of extraordinary research into these vestiges of US society and militarism?
I don't. I was at Yale, when NW was there -- also Lyle and Pogue, for example. Both of them were at least Daily News reporters; both immediately graduated to NYT. Lyle earned the bonus of marrying, early in her career, into the Faber fortune; her "features," dispatched from London, may still be found occasionally in section A. NW? Not so much. NW and I lived in the same college, but were not in the same class. Nor were we friends. I will tell you, she was cultivating her "beauty" franchise even then from the purview of Feminist Studies or LitCrit vanity presses. I forget, because, frankly, she was not a recognized "leader" among the student arbiters and activists. (Understand: for these young women, Camile Paglia was a ineffectual political figure!) In any event, in the intervening 20 years, NW hasn't deviated from her brand of feminist mystique. Not once. No Naomi Klein is she. No Ray McGovern is she. No ...
Until this week. Perhaps you can imagine my dismay, when the PR for The End of America (thoughtfully linked to amazon and FDL), titled "Blackwater: Are You Scared Yet," shot to the top of the rec list without critique or even the author's participation. Following 140 comments without mention of Jeremy Scahill or even the faintest of ironic nods to any blogger who has been vilified for publishing "unsourced" pieces on US military fortification in the Indian Ocean, I quit the reception.
Why does one blog, when readers' tolerance for Manufacturing Consent is so high? When too few essayists and commenters can recognized the myriad instances in which one thought, "Indeed, we can't stop globalization or trade," is reproduced to suborn passivity in civil disobedience? So let's pass off advertising as news!
My only hope is that more ordinary readers will venture their experience as fact worth noting, as exemplary evidence of their political will to break professional courtesy extended to Writers of Interest and Journalists of Record. Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
If you prefer here are several of my personal essays on related issues: Saving Democracy
This one deals with the abrogation of the rule of law. It is based upon the work of legal philosopher Franz Neumann. Here is one version of his basic principles:
The second has to do with the trampling of civil liberties: Surveillance vs Civil Liberties
To make my point I only refer back to the history of Russia and the USSR starting with the freeing of the serfs. One can draw parallels to today or not as you see fit.
If you have issues with Naomi Wolf, I don't think this is the thread to discuss them. If this is important to you why not start a new diary and lay out your position in detail. Policies not Politics ---- Daily Landscape
For redstar's commentary invited discussion of socially-acceptable standards --as opposed to technical standards-- of journalistic craft. In that context, yes, I do have a problem with deference to Naomi Wolf rather than yourself in modeling political economy of investigation that is sustained by "professional" journalists and bloggers today. Can you not find the irony in the use of this quote to herald a "new society":
We don't necessarily distinguish between politics and policy, or activism and journalism, and we don't pretend that there is an above the fray and an 'in the muck'. Most of all, we respect ideas because ideas, when implemented, have immense power. Ideas matter. Conservative ideas have affected us personally, whether it was growing up in a suburb or having no health care insurance. And to the extent that you create ideas or appropriate ideas and organize around them, you can build a new society. That's what the right did, which is why we respect the right.
So, no, I would not immediately characterize any reconsideration of Neuman as "invalid." (Thank you for the link; I haven't visit in a while.) But I cannot apologize for presuming The End of America is another link in a chain of lengthy non sequiturs known as US journalism. Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.
