This is an archived
issue - see current issue at www.harvardsquarecommentary.org
Harvard Square Commentary
A political, social, literary journal,
Ernest Cassara, Editor, with
Contributing Editors
John R. Turner & Larry Hamby
16 January 2006
In this issue
■ From
■ The
■ “Pentagon
Expands Payoffs to Middle East Reporters.” By Sherwood Ross
■ “The
Dream of
Martin Luther King Jr.” Delivered
■
Books of Our Editors on Sale
■
“1914.” By Wilfred Owen
■
Wisdom from Polonius
■ The
■
Dedication to Elijah Parish Lovejoy
From
Liberty Street
By John R. Turner
Terror
in Vermont
The
TV pundit Bill O’Reilly has announced that he intends to take over my home state
of Vermont. I guess I should be shaking in my slippers.
Not
only has O'Reilly decreed that state judge Edward Cashman
be kicked out of his job, he has also said that the Speaker of the Vermont
House of Representatives should resign her position.
The
incident which has raised this furor was Judge Cashman’s
imposing a life sentence on a man who had molested a child, but suspending all
but sixty days of it.
There
are quite a few features of the case Mr. O’Reilly has neglected to emphasize.
First, the offender Mark Huelett is so limited in
intellect he cannot reasonably be considered an adult. He has an IQ of 80 and
the maturity of a twelve year old.
Second,
according to Republican state representative Michael Kainen
of Hartford, if one reads Judge Cashman’s sentence
carefully, he will see that there’s very little chance that Huelett
will be held in jail for only sixty days. The judge included an extensive list
of conditions for Huelett’s release which are
unlikely to be quickly met.
Third,
Judge Cashman made his decision because he had become
extremely frustrated by the way the criminal justice system deals with people
like Huelett. Based on his experience of twenty-five
years on the bench, he had concluded that simply locking up a defendant of that
sort did no good. “I discovered it accomplishes nothing of value. It doesn’t
make anything better,” Judge Cashman said.
One
may well disagree with his method of bringing the issue to public attention.
But, it doesn’t seem to me that his actions were so bad the state should be
surrendered to the orders of a national television personality, and,
particularly , not to one whose reputation for reasoned judgment is less than
exalted.
The
problem of TV sensationalism is getting ever more bothersome in America. O’Reilly
touts himself as a great defender of American youth. But what he’s really out
to defend are his own ratings. If he cared about kids he would use his
publicity machine to expose the conditions which harm the greatest number of
children in America — inadequate health care, for example. But O’Reilly never
deals with anything like that. Instead, he plucks out cases he can slather with
yellow sheet journalism and fulminates incessantly about his outrage. Last
Friday night on his TV show he denounced the fuzzy thinking that has
“permeated” Vermont and declared that he’s not going to put up with it. I’m
sure there is fuzzy thinking in Vermont, like there is anywhere else. But what
O’Reilly knows about it wouldn’t cover the bottom of a thimble. And, in any case,
nothing I’ve heard in Vermont over my long residence here approaches in
sloppiness O’Reilly’s own lucubration. If we can believe he actually means what
he says, then his own brain is in need of treatment just as much as Mr. Huelett’s is.
O’Reilly,
though, is not really the issue. He’s just a shallow-minded publicity hound.
And there will always be people like him in the entertainment business. What we
need to ask ourselves is why men of his ilk are listened to and are allowed, in
some cases, to direct the agenda of public debate. Are we really so addicted to
simplistic thinking we have to make the unusual actions of judge into a
black/white melodrama fit only for cheap TV shows? Obviously, when an
experienced judge becomes so fed up with the system he is forced to deliver
people into that he imposes an unusual sentence in order to draw attention to
the conditions within it, our response ought to be debate and investigation
rather than the crazed howling of a mob.
My
advice to Governor Douglas and to the leaders of the Vermont House, the Vermont
Senate, and the Vermont judiciary is not to deliver the state over to the O’Reillys of the world, but rather to use this incident to
work on the problems that afflict our criminal justice system. I don’t think
it’s either as dysfunctional or as cruel as the systems of many other states,
but it’s certainly a long way from perfect. And if Judge Cashmen helps us to realize that, he deserves our thanks
rather than being handed over to mob justice.
For
more commentaries by John R. Turner, visit the website:
www.wordandimageofvermont.homestead.com
The Harvard Square Observer
Alito on the Bench
Things to look for when Samuel Alito
sits on the Supreme Court Bench: Did he mean it when he listed items that he
admitted were settled law, and unlikely to be tampered with because of stare
decisis:
¶ One man, one vote. During his confirmation hearings, we learned
that it and other actions of the Warren Court are what inspired him to consider
studying for a career in the law. (He was opposed to this ruling!)
¶ Brown v. the Board of Education. It is inconceivable
that the U.S. would return to the days of segregated schools.
But, on the other hand, Alito weaseled
out of committing himself on the subject of Roe v. Wade. It was in the probing
of his view on that subject that the keen observer could see that he was
becoming irritated — especially, by Senator Schumer of New York — not, however,
to the extent of losing his cool and snapping back. Had he been honest, of
course, he would have waved his hand in the direction of the Republican
majority on the Senate Committee on the Judiciary and said, “Well, should I
concede stare decisis in that case, that crowd
will keep me off the bench. So, Democrats, I cannot oblige you. Of course, I
don’t want to anyway, for, as I recommended when working in the Reagan Justice
Department, it is easier to chip away at women’s rights to control their own
bodies than to overturn Roe outright.”
These thoughts were, no doubt, going through his mind.
Other things to look for when he is on the bench:
¶ The assertion of the “Unitary” view of presidential
power. That is, that the Chief Executive has control over the “independent”
agencies, thus depriving them of their independence. Actually, we have seen
some attempts by President Bush to control a certain “independent” agency. You
recall the dispute over whether the FDA will allow the sale of the “morning
after pill” over the counter. Interference by political appointees has
overridden decisions by the scientific staff of the agency.
¶ The proverbial man from Mars might
consider it odd that the Bush administration supports sex education that
promotes abstinence, and doesn’t want to pay for abortions when that plan
fails. Of course, it is against abortion under any circumstances. So, consider
the possibilities: A young girl must carry to term a pregnancy that results
from incest. (So, her old man could, also, be the father of her child! Consider
the other possibilities within the family!) The so-called “pro-life crowd” is
not concerned with the life of the prospective mother, doing away, if it could,
with abortions to save the life of the mother. And, so on.
Although the hearings are, thankfully!, behind us, one other
comment: Several Republicans on the Judiciary Committee pointed out that Ruth
Bader Ginsburg was approved for accession to the court, even though she had
been the chief legal counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union. These
Republicans, apparently, do not approve of an organization whose sole purpose
is to protect the liberties of Americans. Strange!
Aside from the question of abortion, Judge Alito
was troubled, also, by the accusation that he had been a member of CAP —
Concerned Alumni of Princeton — which strove to keep women and Blacks out of
Princeton. The organization published material, which Judge Alito
claimed he had never seen; he claimed he had never joined; he claimed that he
was appalled to be suspected of racism and being against women. Of course, he
did list membership in CAP when he was applying for a job in the Reagan
administration. At the time, he must have considered such attitudes welcome
among the Reaganites!
Potpourri
Never realized our public officials are so generous. Of late, they
have contributed an astronomical amount to their favorite charities. Of course,
technically, it is the dough that the Super Lobbyist Jack Abramoff
stuffed into their pockets, no doubt when their minds were on higher things!
By the way, clever that Abramoff owns a
fancy restaurant in D.C., where he is able to provide sumptuous meals to our
public servants. The ethics rules limit the lobbyist to treating our elected
official to just 50 bucks for food. No mention of drink. So, presumably, they
can booze it up till the wee hours without ethical concerns!
●
In the course of a couple of hours staring at television, the proverbial
man from Mars would conclude that we are a drug soused society. Sort of
difficult to preach to kids (not to mention adults) that they should avoid
certain (illegal) drugs, when the society seems to believe that life can be
improved so much by popping pills. Let’s see, pills for: stomach acid;
cholesterol; particularly difficult headaches; osteoporosis; high blood
pressure; menopause; elbow pain (bad for tennis); and, new to me: restless leg
syndrome. (New to me, I say, but hearing me grouse about the abundance of
maladies paraded before us on TV, My Better Half informed me that she
remembered a time when my restless legs caused her to move from the connubial
bed to the sofa!)
Pentagon Expands Payoffs to Middle East Reporters
By
Sherwood Ross
Middle Eastern journalists are the target of a
multi-million dollar Pentagon campaign to get them to write favorable articles
about the U.S. invasion of Iraq. By some estimates, $300-million has been
earmarked for the scheme.
The journalists may expect to be contacted by
any of three U.S. public relations (PR) firms picked for this delicate
assignment: the Washington-based Lincoln Group; San Diego-based Science
Application International Corp., and SYColeman, Inc.,
of Arlington, Virginia.
The three firms appear to be relatively new
operators, not known for previous PR chores, but are linked to the Pentagon.
Some of their assignments appear to have been obtained without competitive
bidding.
President Bush’s attempts to influence foreign
journalists first surfaced in 2002, when the Pentagon announced an Office of
Strategic Influence(OSI) to spread “rumors and
untruths.” A storm of protest sidetracked the scheme.
Now it’s back in a new guise. The Pentagon
awarded five-year contracts last June to the above-cited firms to create
slogans, ads, newspaper articles, radio spots, and TV shows to plug U.S.
policies overseas, USA Today reported.
The New York Times (Jan. 2nd,) said Lincoln has “paid Iraqi
newspapers to print positive articles written by American soldiers (and) has
also been compensating Sunni religious scholars in Iraq in return for
assistance with its propaganda work, according to current and former
employees.”
If Middle Eastern readers find their reporters
pocket Pentagon money funneled through PR firms, it could undermine their trust
in the free press, critics of the Pentagon initiative say.
America’s founders strongly believed
government should keep its hands off the press. Thomas Jefferson, the third
president, wrote, “The freedom of the press is one of the great bulwarks of
liberty, and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.”
However, there is substantial international
precedent for despotic governments’ bribing reporters. In the 1930s, according
to historian John Weitz, (Hitler's Diplomat),
Nazi propaganda boss Dr. Joseph Goebbels “made
strenuous efforts to assure good reports in the foreign press. Certain British
free-lance journalists were paid to write enthusiastic articles.”
Soviet dictator Josef Stalin also rewarded
editors who parroted the Kremlin line with fat salaries, dachas, and the
pleasure of his company. And Cuban dictator Fidel Castro is known to have
bribed Mexican journalists.
The U.S. has paid off Muslim clergy before.
After President Jimmy Carter took office in 1977, according to Politics
Today magazine, he put a stop to the CIA practice of slipping money to
Iranian mullahs and ayatollahs.
It was also revealed the CIA was making “a
worldwide pattern of payments to key figures, in a system of institutionalized
bribery circling the globe,” author Darrell Garwood wrote in Under Cover:
Thirty-Five Years of CIA Deception. (Grove Press).
The U.S. is already in trouble with the Middle
East press corps. A US Air Force fighter plane in April, 2003, targeted and
killed Al Jazeera reporter Tariq
Ayoub on the roof of his Baghdad office. About the
same time, the U.S. military also killed Taras Protsyuk of Reuters and Josê Couso of Spanish TV network Telecinco,
according to The Nation magazine.
These hostile actions apparently have been a
factor in the slide of America’s image as free press booster. United Press
International reported the U.S. has plunged to 44th place on the
list of 167 nations in terms of press freedom.
At home, President Bush’s regime has been
blasted for paying off American reporters. TV show host Armstrong Williams got
$240,000 to plug a Bush educational scheme. After it was learned in January,
2005, that columnist Maggie Gallagher got $21,500, Bush said the payoffs would
stop because “our (domestic) agenda ought to be able to stand on its own two
feet.”
Since the payoffs to foreign reporters will
continue, does this mean the Iraq war can’t stand on its own two feet? If so,
maybe somebody should tell the Pentagon good PR flows from good policies.
Shooting unfriendly reporters and bribing friendly ones don’t fit in that
category.
#
(Sherwood Ross has worked as a reporter for
the Chicago Daily News, as an executive in the civil rights movement, as
a columnist for a global wire service and as a PR consultant to scores of
magazines from The Harvard Business Review and Business Week to The
New Yorker and The Atlantic. Contact him at sross1@atlanticbb.net)
The Dream of Martin Luther King Jr.
Delivered
I am happy to join with you today in what will
go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of
our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in
whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This
momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro
slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a
joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still
is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly
crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One
hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst
of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is
still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile
in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful
condition.
In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital
to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent
words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were
signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note
was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be
guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of
Happiness.” It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory
note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this
sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check
which has come back marked “insufficient funds.”
But we refuse to believe that the bank of
justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in
the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we’ve come to cash this
check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the
security of justice.
We have also come to this hallowed spot to
remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the
luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is
the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from
the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.
Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands
of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make
justice a reality for all of God’s children.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook
the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate
discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and
equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who
hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have
a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be
neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his
citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the
foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my
people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice:
In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful
deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the
cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high
plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to
degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the
majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed
the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for
many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have
come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have
come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.
We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march
ahead.
We cannot turn back.
There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When
will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the
victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be
satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain
lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot
be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New
York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied,
and we will not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters, and
righteousness like a mighty stream.”
I am not unmindful that some of you have come
here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from
narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest —
quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered
by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative
suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is
redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South
Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and
ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and
will be changed.
Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I
say to you today, my friends.
And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow,
I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will
rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be
self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the red hills
of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will
be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of
Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the
heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children
will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of
their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama,
with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the
words of ‘interposition” and “nullification” — one day right there in Alabama
little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white
boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today!
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and
every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain,
and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall
be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”
This is our hope, and this is the faith that I
go back to the South with.
With this faith, we will be able to hew out of
the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to
transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.
With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to
struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together,
knowing that we will be free one day.
And this will be the day — this will be the
day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning:
My country ‘tis of thee, sweet land of
liberty, of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died, land of the
Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountainside, let freedom ring!
And if America is to be a great nation, this
must become true.
And so let freedom ring from the prodigious
hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of
New York.
Let freedom ring from the heightening
Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.
Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies
of Colorado.
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of
California.
But not only that:
Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of
Georgia.
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of
Tennessee.
Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill
of Mississippi.
From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
And when this happens, when we allow freedom
ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state
and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s
children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and
Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro
spiritual:
Free at last! Free at last!
Thank God Almighty, we are free
at last!
Books of Our Editors on Sale
By John R. Turner: Letters
To Dalton: Higher Education and the Degree Salesmen not only explains, in
detail, why the managers of most American colleges care almost nothing about education,
but presents an argument about what it would mean to care.
Special offer to
readers of the Harvard Square Commentary: $4.00 per copy, which includes
shipping & handling. Order by e-mail from: jrturner@adelphia.net
Or, if you prefer the postal service, from
John R. Turner, 45 Liberty Street, Montpelier, VT 05602. An invoice will be
sent with the book(s).
●
Ernest Cassara: The
Enlightenment in America. The development of modern science led to the 18th-century
Enlightenment, on both sides of the Atlantic. Cassara
tells the story of the profound changes that occurred in the American colonies
and the new nation. Chapters include: The Life Style of the Enlightened
American; The Pursuit of Science; The Rights of Man; The Science of Government;
The Religion of Humanity; The Diffusion of Knowledge. Illustrated,
with a Chronology.
By special arrangement with the publisher, the
book is available at the reduced rate of $12.00, which includes shipping & handling.
Order by e-mail: ecassara@aol.com
Order by regular mail:
1914
By Wilfred Owen
War broke: and now the Winter
of the world
With perishing great darkness closes in.
The foul tornado, centred
at Berlin,
Is over all the width of Europe whirled,
Rending the sails of
progress. Rent or furled
Are all Art’s ensigns. Verse wails. Now
begin
Famines of thought and
feeling. Love’s wine’s thin.
The grain of human Autumn
rots, down-hurled.
For after Spring had
bloomed in early
And Summer blazed her
glory out with
An Autumn softly
fell, a harvest home,
A slow grand age, and
rich with all increase.
But now, for us, wild Winter,
and the need
Of sowings for new Spring,
and blood for seed.
Polonius
“The good deed and the evil deed are not
alike. Repel the evil deed with one which is better, then lo! He, between whom and
thee there was enmity will become as though he was a bosom friend.”—The Koran
“Whoever destroys a single soul, it is as if
that person destroyed a complete world; and whoever preserves a single soul, it
is as if that person preserved a complete world.”—Mishna
Sandedrin
“Be the change you wish to see in the
world.”—Mohandas K. Gandhi
The Harvard Square Commentary Archives
Click on the date of the issue you desire to
access:
■ From
■ The
■ The Fifth Humor:
“ID is Really Funny.” By Larry Hamby
■ The Souls of Black Folk, by W.E.B. Du Bois, from Project Gutenberg
■ Letters to the
Editor
■ Websites of Our
Contributors
■ From
■ The
■ Essay: “Any Man
who Hates Dogs and Children Can’t Be All Bad. The Career of W. C. Fields.” By Larry Hamby
■ “Our History of Violence.” By James K. A. Smith
■ “The Wit and
Wisdom of Tom DeLay”
■ Jesus on Prayer at Football Games, Graduations, etc.
■ Letters to the
Editor
■ “Invictus.” By William Ernest Henley
■ Wisdom from
Polonius
■ Websites of Our
Contributors
This was a double issue, 19 & 26 December
2005:
■ From
■ The
■ “Tyrannosaurus Americanus.” By Sherwood Ross
■ The Fifth Humor: “Christmas.” By Larry Hamby
■ Essay: “Any Man
who Hates Dogs and Children Can’t Be All Bad. The Career of W. C. Fields.” By Larry Hamby
■ “Art, Truth and Politics.” The Nobel Lecture by Harold Pinter
■ Bishop Spong on Pat Robertson
■ The Speech by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Sierra
Club
■ Letters to the
Editor
■ Websites of Our
Contributors
■ From
■ The
■ “The Price is Wrong.” By Jerome Richard
■ Essay: “The
Psychological Impact of War and Militarism in Modern America.” By John R. Turner
■ “Sonnet.” By William Shakespeare
■ Wisdom from
Polonius
Hero of a
Free Press
When we decided to
establish this site, we were sorely tempted to name it in honor of Elijah
Parish Lovejoy, a native of Maine and graduate of the Waterville College (Colby
College), who was killed in 1837, defending his abolitionist press against a
pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois.
Read about him here:
http://www.altonweb.com/history/lovejoy/
This is an
archived issue - see current issue at www.harvardsquarecommentary.org