No body has our back in local journalism. Thursday evenings lead stories on the three local Albuquerque TV newscasts.....2 led with a story about a rabid bat and one about a crime scene with a reenactment by a so called reporter. Lead stories on the thousands of local laid off federal workers...none. Will some one please give the news directors and anchors at these TV stations a mind meld with the departed spirit of Edward R. Murrow? Damn.
2 comments:
Jim, I've said this before and I'll say it again: I often disagree with you on matters but not here. The degree of misinformation and blatant omission of important and relavent news by the AJ is mind boggling. Truly not fit for dog droppings it is.
That's a great headline - We Are Alone.
It may mean different things to different people. It has a meaning in the context of your blog post, but even at that, there are still the implications of being alone. What does that mean?
What are the consequences, the causes?
What about remedies? If you look at just the consequences of being alone, one set of remedies might come to mind. But if you look at the causes, another set might.
I've heard and read of instances where government workers are going to work knowing they might not get paid for it. I wonder, if the media looked up some of those people, what the public reaction would be?
We've been trained to resent public sector workers, but we've been trained to do more than that. We suspect and distrust everyone at some level. Yes, when we get to know individuals we gradually lower our barriers, but on seeing an unknown individual the immediate reaction is distrust.
We are, indeed, alone. Oh, we have family, some of us, we have a small circle of the trusted. But that isn't enough to remedy the problems we face as a society. For that you need political power. The power of the polity, the support of the whole.
Party politics can solve problems only insofar as the solutions coincide with or do not oppose the interest of the ruling class, as when the New Deal and Great Society programs were enacted -- were allowed to be.
A lot of people are put off by talk of class consciousness -- have been trained to be -- but whether it's called Socialism or whatever, I don't know of anything else that overcomes the barriers that keep us divided and alone like economic class solidarity.
Solidarity by racial or ethnic group or political party or garden club or golf partners or the guys at work I get along with just amounts to a further splintering.
We, the 99 percent, as a class have most of our interests in common. The president didn't invite us to the White House the other day. There were no working class people, no union members, no government workers. Obama had Jaimie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase's CEO, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan and other members of the ruling class up to the big house for talks.
Even though the deficit has been decreasing, Obama is not mentioning that. Despite it not being trumpeted in the media, he is once once again offering to cut Social Security and Medicare and accept Republicans' figures for cutting the deficit.
If you're attacking the 99 percent you start with the most politically powerless and work your way up. Even if you can't see that happening, where is your power going to come from if you abandon them, if you can stomach abandoning them?
We're either all in it together, or we're alone.
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