The tea party Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have been defeated and humbled, so even though Christmas is not my favorite time of year, I have some Christmas cheer.
But that’s not why I’m writing today.
Over the past few days, my thinking has developed a little more on the subject of what constitutes “objective” journalism. So I want to get these thoughts down before I forget.
At Occupy protest encampments across the country this week, the controversy that was all the rage had to do with the defense budget bill just passed by Congress. The paranoia was palpable, and for good reason, considering how the issue was covered by the mainstream, corporate news media — and the implications for protesters worried about being arrested and detained indefinitely without due process as they carry their protests into an election year in 2012.
While much of the debate over the policy on detaining suspected terrorists on domestic soil was probably lost on much of the country now in a shopping frenzy with only a week to go before Christmas, even at the Occupy Birmingham encampment downtown activists were not happy with President Barack Obama. One even suggested he was taking a look at voting for Mitt Romney, the Mormon from Massachusetts, “because at least he represents a minority.”
The skies are grey. Rain’s on the way. It’s about time to take the canoe off the Chevy van for the winter and remove the futon mattress from the back too.
But I’m not quite ready for that. There must be one more useful trip in the works before the holidays take over the news and the weather turns ugly.
Oh, wait. Checking my Facebook events, it appears the Occupy Birmingham group is planning a road trip protest on Dec. 3 to the Etowah County Detention Center in Gadsden where Alabama prison officials tend to hold all the alleged illegal immigrants before deporting them back to Central and South America. This might be a newsworthy trip.
The first I heard of the place was in an interview I did with Democratic Party chair Mark Kennedy recently at the AFL-CIO convention near Montgomery. In case you missed it, he referred to the place as a “gulag,” named after Gulag the government agency in Russia that administered Soviet forced labor camps.
A new Gallup poll has some heartening results for the Occupy Wall Street movement, in that more Americans approve than disapprove of the protests, although it shows that the lack of an effective communications strategy and coherent goals could jeopardize the movement’s effectiveness (see Further Analysis below).
Less than half of Americans express an opinion about the Occupy Wall Street movement’s goals or the way it has conducted its protests. Those with an opinion are more likely to approve than disapprove, however, according to the latest Gallup poll on the subject.
The Occupy Wall Street movement has attracted significant alternative and mainstream media attention for its nearly month-long protest of major U.S. financial institutions in New York, with similar demonstrations taking place in other cities across the country in recent weeks.
“But the American public does not seem to be very familiar with the movement or its goals,” according to Gallup’s analysis of public opinion.
The cool October air has driven me inside. It’s that time of year again, when the rotation of the earth leads to shorter days and cooler nights.
God has nothing to do with it. That’s just how our planet works.
Meanwhile on the outside, people all over the planet are finally getting off their couches and protesting the abysmal economic situation brought on by the greed and corruption of the American moneyed class.
In New York, where the protests began, the Occupy Wall Street movement celebrated when the decision was made to keep Zuccotti Park open instead of forcing the protesters out while a company cleaned the park. They feared, probably correclty, that once the crowd was dispersed, the protest would effectively end.
A Lesson in New Web Journalism and Political Activism
Editor’s Note: In December, 2002, I was on the payroll of The New York Times National Desk operating from my duplex on Plum Street, two blocks from the Carrollton Avenue street car line in New Orleans, Uptown, when the Trent Lott story broke, bringing to an end to the rise in national politics of one of the South’s most prominent, conservative Republican Senators. Much has been made of this case study in the power of the new Web Press to influence both the traditional, national news media — and the direction of politics itself. This is my original contribution to this important story in the history of Web publishing, as well as the academic field of media influence on politics and public opinion. I publish it today because it is time.
“I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years either.”
— Mississippi Senator Trent Lott, Dec. 5, 2002
“On December 20, 2002, after significant controversy following comments regarding Strom Thurmond’s presidential candidacy, Lott resigned as Senate Minority Leader. In December 2007, he resigned from the Senate and became a Washington-based lobbyist.”
– Wikipedia
by Glynn Wilson
On December 5, 2002, about the time Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott was making the remarks that would bring him down at Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday party in Washington, D.C., I was in New Orleans sending an e-mail message to the brand new New York Times correspondent in Atlanta, David Halbfinger, pitching a story on the Alabama Ride to Freedom bus tour planned for January, according to my old Outlook Express e-mail archive. It goes back all the way to the 1990s, and is still on occasion a useful and reliable research tool.
Halbfinger and I never got to do that bus ride story together. But for the next few months, we would work on a number of stories. I also worked with the other more experienced Times correspondent in the South at the time, Jeffrey Gettleman, as well as Rick Bragg and a number of others. If either one of those guys had known what I knew about the history of Civil Rights struggles in the South, perhaps we could have done that bus ride story justice, especially since I was working a lot with photographer Spider Martin at the time. He was sitting on one of the most important collections of photographs from that era at his place atop the mountain in Blount County, Alabama, where I often stayed while working on stories in my home state for the Times and the Christian Science Monitor.
When the Lott story broke, it may not have caused a firestorm of publicity right away. But within only 15 days, Lott was gone and his rising political ambitions went stone cold dead.
Because of my academic research experience as well as the fact that I was one of the reporters who worked the story for the Times — in fact doing critical investigative work that was as important as anything done by the bloggers or television news in the battle — I have my own unique perspective on what went down and what it all means. But in part because I was a free-lance reporter for the Times and was never properly credited for my work on that story, along with many others, the academics in New York who used this story to make a name for themselves ignored my attempts to comment and provide some perspective for their research.
To me, it is an important lesson for bloggers trying to influence the mass media and public affairs — and for activists who are trying to change the country and the state for the better.
The very fate of our human species, yes, and your state too — as well as this country and the earth — may well depend on a compromise between science and religion.
Yes, you read that correctly. Not that I ever wanted to admit it before.
This will be a precarious journey with no guarantee of success like the fate of all life itself, from the beginning into the infinite future.
A top American scientist from Alabama writes that religion and science “are the two most powerful forces in the world today, including especially the United States.” That is from Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson’s book The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth, which he wrote to Southern Baptist preachers who hold sway over millions of votes that could have a positive, or negative, impact on all kinds of government policies.
Poor But Proud: Twenty Years Later
Auburn History Professor Wayne Flynt Answers the Central Political Question of Our Time
by Glynn Wilson
AUBURN, Ala. — In a state where intellectuals are generally scorned as “elitists” — or as former governor and presidential candidate George Wallace liked to call them for his own opportunistic political reasons, “pointy-headed liberals” — retired Auburn History professor Wayne Flynt is one expert who is widely known around Alabama. He is someone who people seem to listen to, at least those who pay attention.
Since moving back to my home state and city a few years ago after many years of chasing a journalism career and then an academic career elsewhere, and struggling to figure out what’s wrong with this place, a key question comes up over and over again in conversation. No one seem to have a simple, satisfying answer.
Why do working class people in the South so frequently vote against their own economic self-interest?
As a historian and author, Dr. Flynt tackled this question in great detail a little more than 20 years ago in a book called Poor But Proud: Alabama’s Poor Whites.
I know. It’s such a burden to be such a Socialist-Nazi, a horrible journalist and a major danger to society. On top of that, I’m a lousy lay.
If you believe the right-wing attack machine wingnuts on talk radio and their three fans, or the lefty bloggers and their eight anonymous commenters, that’s what I am.
Never mind that there is no such thing as a Socialist-Nazi. Don’t take my word for it. Take a minute to click on this link to see a graph of the political spectrum. There are tens of thousands of academics who have pondered this question over the centuries, my friends, probably all the way back to the days of Aristotle in Ancient Greece. According to them, Socialism is on the extreme left side of the spectrum. Fascism is on the far right. Never the twain shall meet. Or so they say.
But then, Glenn Beck never studied Political Science at the university level, so how could he possibly know that?
During the Bush years, we specialized in covering the politicization of the U.S. justice system as much as any news organization. Our archives are about the most comprehensive for anyone researching the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, and the original case against Richard Scrushy, which Glynn Wilson covered for The New York Times.
