A Random Walk

dr. elsewhere here

Please forgive my long absence, folks. Life’s what happens while you’re busy making other plans, as the man said.

Try as I may, in the midst of life’s pressures, it has been almost impossible to keep up with all that’s been going on out in the UNreal world. And of the stuff I have managed to keep up with (sort of), it’s impossible to prioritize what’s worth a focus of attention for a post. Every hopeful, uplifting bit of news is then overshadowed by some damning slamdunk from reality. Er, UNreality.

Insanity overload, I’d say.

So I’d like to ease into this, beginning with, instead of new news, some old and encouraging reminders of what can happen for the better. Something like perspective, the kind we can get from checking in with history.

Call it a random walk, if you will, with a nod to "Random Notes" of The Rolling Stone magazine, which I promise will become part of our destination here.

But as our starting point, I would like for every one to take a moment to celebrate the 100th anniversary of one of the most important press leaks in our history. As it happens, it spawned the term “muckraker,” which was hurled by President Teddy Roosevelt at a true national hero, Upton Sinclair.

The Jungle, now a century old, was not torture, but an inspiration to read as a kid, because it framed for me the living example of just how our freedoms ought to work, and forced me to realize just why a free press is so important in a democracy.

Greg Mitchell at E&P today honors the events surrounding that publication, and it’s important to visit his excellent take on the history if for no other reason (there are so many) than to see yet another example of how nothing really changes, certainly in terms of politics, greed, and corruption. Another good reason is to see just how a hero can help the public get information that they can - and will - act on.

The piece gave me a little glimmer of hope, and actually led me to consider the latest decision by the Supreme Court regarding whistleblowers. The upshot of that total abortion of Constitutional justice is that the Supreme Five (you know who they are) is that government agencies are given unprecedented power over individual employees, whose rights as citizens are “set aside,” if you will, in order for agency managers to implement policy.

Hunh? I believe that is the appropriate response here.

But, so as to avoid a complete revolt by everyone who holds dear the document these five monkeys are supposed to uphold, they toss us this bone: We, as employees and UNcitizens, are still free to go to the press with whatever information we might wish to expose as dangerous or corrupt.

Ok. When you read Mitchell’s piece on The Jungle, that little bone could bring us some comfort.

But for only the briefest second. Because it turns out that the FCC – now two years without the evil Michael Powell, or anyone, at the helm, and thus with an evenly divided dem/repug balance – has a new chair, and they are poised to revisit the media ownership nightmare yet again.

These guys never give up. It’s utterly amazing. Not only did the public make their resistance to such nonsense unequivocally clear at the time, Congress and the courts soundly nixed the idea.

Not only do “these guys” never give up (who “they” are, really, who knows?), but they don’t miss the fact that the Nazis could not have taken over Germany without the radio falling in line with them, as well as the papers under the vicious, racist, and perverted manipulation by Julius Streicher. Nor do they miss the fact that those Americans who watch Faux Snooze and listen to Rush and Savage and Boortz et al., actually fall right in line with what they want us all to think and feel.

Nor do they miss the fact that, if and only if they can get the media – importantly including the internet – under their control, they will be able to do precisely what they want.

Almost four years ago, right after the 2002 mid-terms brought alarmingly home to me the fact that the repugs would clearly stop at nothing, including manipulating elections (remember that Tobin’s crimes were committed in 2002; and then there were Cleland and McKinney in GA, etc…..), and starting an unprovoked war on a crippled but oil-soaked country, I felt I had to prioritize my focus on what would be THE most important – and thus, most effective – areas of issue in preserving our democracy.

These emerged as the free press and the integrity of our votes. And when I thought about it, I had to place the free press even above the vote, and this is why:

If we are not informed by a free and unfettered press, we can never know that our votes are in danger.

And so we arrive at our destination, which should look like another - albeit infinitely more crucial - starting point: Today's publication of an expose on our endangered vote in a free press publication.

I therefore urge all of you to go out and buy the latest Rolling Stone (the sales figures will make a statement in themselves) and read RFK, Jr.’s courageous and pivotal piece on <Ohio '04.

Then contact all the major papers and networks and insist – RELENTLESSLY – that they get RFK, Jr. on the air and expose this heinous crime against our Constitution and our citizenry.

It is therefore perfectly fitting that, of all our media out there, the Rolling Stone is exercising this, our most precious democratic gift - THE FREE PRESS - with a muckraking expose of the dangerous threat to our equally most precious democratic gift - OUR VOTE, on this, the 100th anniversary of the first such expose by our most heroic of American free press muckrakers, Upton Sinclair.