JFK speaking at a meeting of the American Newspaper Publishers Association in 1961:
(hat tip = Democratic Underground)
"Solon decreed it a crime for any man to shrink from controversy" - that bit's pretty good, but beyond that, it seems like this speech is one of those moments in history that lets us see at least the beginnings of a certain unravelling.
He says it straight out - we have to take the right of all citizens to know what their government is up to and weigh it against the need to keep "the enemy" from knowing things we really need them not to know (insert snarky crack about Don Rumsfeld here).
I guess I could spend the next few decades trying to trace thru all the flips and turns of journalism just in the last half of the 20th century, trying to figure out where "it all went wrong". And while that may be a truly fun ride, I get the feeling it's not as useful right now as figuring out what's been driving the enormous changes we've been seeing. I'm not just talking about the tech revolution or whatever - I think it has everything to do with the tensions that are always present between What's-Best-For-The-Most vs what's good for a fairly narrow power agenda on the part of almost literally a few very well placed individuals.
Capt Obvious says, "Robbing the house gets a lot easier once you've killed the watch dog. And if you can get the homeowners to kill their dog for you, well then you're one clever mother fucker, and maybe you deserve all the booty you can carry, and whoa - can I give you a hand? Some of those pillow cases look pretty heavy."
We've had to fight this fight on several occasions - kinda what got us going in the first place back in the 18th century. So here we go again.
It's not about pointing and laughing at The Tea Party. Although it's great sport and somebody needs to do that, they're mostly people who're rightly upset, but who're being co-opted and misled.
And it's not about pissing and moaning about how the Dems have also been co-opted and now they're just as bad as the Repubs.
It's not about immigrants or brown people in general, or your upper middle class douche-y Libertarian neighbors or the jag-off at the 7-11 who doesn't seem to care about satisfying your every whim in a humble but joyous way while constantly expressing his gratitude for the opportunity to slowly starve to death on $8.50 an hour. It's also not about the kid in the do-rag and the baggy pants, and it's not about a whole fuckload of distractions that're easy to say and easy to understand and just as easy to recognize as total crapola once ya spend half a micro-neuron thinking about it.
It's not even about being mad at the right people - or being mad for the right reasons. It's about figuring out what to do about being mad at the right people for the right reasons. If I ever figure that one out, I'll be sure to let ya know, but in the mean time, yeah - let's take our country back. We can start by taking it back from Goldman-Sachs, and from Exxon-Mobil, and from Koch Industries, and from The Walton Gang, and from whoever else wants to rule over us instead of serving beside us.
(hat tip = Democratic Underground)
"Solon decreed it a crime for any man to shrink from controversy" - that bit's pretty good, but beyond that, it seems like this speech is one of those moments in history that lets us see at least the beginnings of a certain unravelling.
He says it straight out - we have to take the right of all citizens to know what their government is up to and weigh it against the need to keep "the enemy" from knowing things we really need them not to know (insert snarky crack about Don Rumsfeld here).
I guess I could spend the next few decades trying to trace thru all the flips and turns of journalism just in the last half of the 20th century, trying to figure out where "it all went wrong". And while that may be a truly fun ride, I get the feeling it's not as useful right now as figuring out what's been driving the enormous changes we've been seeing. I'm not just talking about the tech revolution or whatever - I think it has everything to do with the tensions that are always present between What's-Best-For-The-Most vs what's good for a fairly narrow power agenda on the part of almost literally a few very well placed individuals.
Capt Obvious says, "Robbing the house gets a lot easier once you've killed the watch dog. And if you can get the homeowners to kill their dog for you, well then you're one clever mother fucker, and maybe you deserve all the booty you can carry, and whoa - can I give you a hand? Some of those pillow cases look pretty heavy."
We've had to fight this fight on several occasions - kinda what got us going in the first place back in the 18th century. So here we go again.
It's not about pointing and laughing at The Tea Party. Although it's great sport and somebody needs to do that, they're mostly people who're rightly upset, but who're being co-opted and misled.
And it's not about pissing and moaning about how the Dems have also been co-opted and now they're just as bad as the Repubs.
It's not about immigrants or brown people in general, or your upper middle class douche-y Libertarian neighbors or the jag-off at the 7-11 who doesn't seem to care about satisfying your every whim in a humble but joyous way while constantly expressing his gratitude for the opportunity to slowly starve to death on $8.50 an hour. It's also not about the kid in the do-rag and the baggy pants, and it's not about a whole fuckload of distractions that're easy to say and easy to understand and just as easy to recognize as total crapola once ya spend half a micro-neuron thinking about it.
It's not even about being mad at the right people - or being mad for the right reasons. It's about figuring out what to do about being mad at the right people for the right reasons. If I ever figure that one out, I'll be sure to let ya know, but in the mean time, yeah - let's take our country back. We can start by taking it back from Goldman-Sachs, and from Exxon-Mobil, and from Koch Industries, and from The Walton Gang, and from whoever else wants to rule over us instead of serving beside us.
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