Newsweek's unintentionally revealed, central truth

Newsweek's unintentionally revealed, central truth - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

Newsweek's unintentionally revealed, central truth


In his just-released cover story on Paul Krugman's status as Obama critic, Newsweek's Evan Thomas includes these observations:

By definition, establishments believe in propping up the existing order. Members of the ruling class have a vested interest in keeping things pretty much the way they are. Safeguarding the status quo, protecting traditional institutions, can be healthy and useful, stabilizing and reassuring.

Thomas then acknowledges what is glaringly obvious not only about himself but also most of his media-star colleagues: "If you are of the establishment persuasion (and I am) . . ."

One day in the near future, Thomas should have a luncheon or perhaps a nice Sunday brunch at his home, invite over all of his journalist friends who work in the media divisions of our largest corporations, and they should spend 15 minutes or so assembling these sentences together, and then examine what these facts mean for the actual role played by establishment journalists, the functions they fulfill, whose interests they serve, and the vast, vast disparities between (a) those answers and (b) the pretenses about their profession and themselves which they continue, ludicrously, to maintain. To make the discussion less strenuous on the guests' brains, Thomas, as a good host, could provide visual illustrations such as this and this.

Also, in the name of consumer protection, television news shows and the largest newspapers ought to place that above-excerpted paragraph by Thomas as a warning at the top of every product they produce.

bridges...

Someone asked me this question:
What is life?

Spontaneously I answered:
A collection of moments...

these moments could be a few minutes,
or a few days,
or a few months at a stretch...
in other words, these moments could be a phase...

these moments are when we feel light and happy,
more alive and happy to be alive...
when we become free of the chain of moment-to-moment memories,
when two or three or ten hours pass by without us feeling it,
when a week or two pass by and it all feels like just yesterday...

it is in these times when we feel free of our thoughts, plans, worries, or inhibitions.
it is when we live intense,
it is when we live the moment.

the ecstasy of the moment lived fully!
how brief, how fast...
like an orgasm!

and then, the moment fades,
somehow forgotten,
swallowed by the waves of daily surprises and anxieties.


assume that these moments are like train stations,
from which our train of thoughts departs onto bridges,
these bridges cross through the landscapes of our lives,
and these landscapes are our own ideas,
terrains in the mind,
virtual terrains...

these bridges are the days we don't count,
days we have not lived fully,
days we can easily tear away from the calendar of our years,
days erased, days skipped, days left blank...

these are the days which we consider as insignificant,
as days leading us to better times (the stations, the moments)
and so, these insignificant days become our bridges.

these bridges,
they cross through deserts when we feel dry and empty,
over oceans when we feel lost and thirsty,
over mountains when we conquer, explore and achieve,
over valleys and rivers when we feel relaxed and at peace...
over volcanoes when our minds become like battlefields, war zones and minefields,
over black murky wastelands when we feel remorse, regret and fear...

these bridges,
they take us far and near,
in every direction they please,
up and down and sideways too,
inside out, upside down and in reverse,
like a magic mountain, they twist and turn,
they go in circles and loop around...

days passed on bridges,
days wasted,
days like roads and bridges, taking us places,
days spent in waiting for better days to come,
bridges to stations...

(Hady B)