Media
Planes and Propaganda
There’s still a lot we don’t know, but at this point it seems highly likely that the downing of a Malysian airliner over the Ukraine was the work of trigger-happy pro-Russian Ukrainian separatists who literally didn’t know what they were ...
Read MoreIsrael/Palestine: Explaining America’s Failure
In his newsletter yesterday, M.J. Rosenberg succinctly described the obstacle to peace in Israel/Palestine: Everyone knows that the only way to permanently end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is by Israel getting out of the territories occupied after the ’67 war in ...
Read MoreA Slight Imbalance
An article in today’s NY Times reports on the UN’s Human Rights Council’s decision to extend the term of its monitor for Iran. The vote was 21 to 9, with 16 abstentions. Iran, naturally, was opposed. Its government would like us ...
Read MoreThank you, Roger Cohen
The Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 disaster is a terrible tragedy. But the awful reality of the tragedy—the death of all the flight’s passengers—has long been obvious to everyone who doesn’t believe in fairies (or maybe mermaids). Why, then, do we ...
Read MoreRussia, the Ukraine and the West: Another View
The Cold War is history, but Cold War modes of viewing the world persist. The current crisis is playing out in the media as a familiar morality tale of Western innocence and Russian (/Soviet) perfidy. The reality, now as ...
Read MoreFalse Balance, Again
Once again the New York Times’s “Invitation to a Dialogue” feature has gotten me riled up. Yesterday’s “Invitation” author has come up with the idea that both political parties need to shed their extreme wings, which will somehow enable the ...
Read MorePerspectives on Media Bias
American right-wingers (i.e., self-proclaimed “conservatives”) constantly complain about the alleged liberal bias of the mainstream media (the “lamestream media” in Sarah Palin’s clever formulation). I am very critical of the media myself: I think there certainly is media bias, but ...
Read MoreThe Times and the Republican Civil War
Yesterday’s New York Times had a lengthy article on an intensifying battle for control of the Republican Party. On one side is the party establishment, which prefers to eschew the kind of extremist tactics that culminated in the party’s embarrassing ...
Read MoreWhat’s moderate?
Yesterday’s New York Times had a sympathetic front-page feature article on Rep. Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, focusing on Dent’s role as one of the small band of Republicans who have indicated a willingness to vote for a “clean” (i.e., no ...
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