Actual headline today (12/10/08) in the New York Times Dining section:

Great Meals for Two, Under $100 (It’s Possible)

Times food writer Frank Bruni stressed that it "was an experiment for lean times, but not an exercise in cheap eats." In case there was any doubt.

Looking back in the FAIR archives, one recalls that in 1997, the Times' wine columnist wrote: "The $100-a-bottle wine, once an example of vulgar excess, is now an everyday occurrence."

Earlier (12/18/92), the Times ran a story that dared readers to believe that it was possible to eat lunch and dinner in New York City for less than $50. "'Lunch and dinner in New York City for $50 a day?' sniggered a seasoned veteran of Manhattan restaurants. 'Is that sitting down?'" The story came with maps to show readers where this amazing feat might be possible.

As long ago as 1988 (3/11/88), the Times was announcing that "dinner for two in the average New York restaurant has broken the three-digit barrier." This is a special usage of the word "average" pioneered by the New York Times--meaning "catering to the extremely affluent."

Today's Washington Post (12/9/08) features an article on the possibilities for Employee Free Choice Act-- a measure that would recognize card-check unionization drives. EFCA has been pushed by labor groups and their allies, and the Post envisions the real battle is to come--hence the headline, "Battle Deepens Over Union Organizing: Labor May Be Key Issue for New Congress."

But in the Post, it's not much of a battle at all--judging, at least, by whom the paper decides to quote. Three critics of the measure are cited: Rick Berman of the Center for Union Facts, Katie Packer of the Workforce Fairness Institute and Republican political strategist Mark McKinnon. Weighing in for other side is one source--Greg Denier of the labor group Change to Win--who is quoted in the second-to-last paragraph of the story.

New Yorker writer Hendrik Hertzberg tells (12/5/08) of being targeted by Fox's Bill O'Reilly for connecting Newt Gingrich to "anti-gay bigotry." O'Reilly's grievance against Hertzberg sparks from this passage in the writer's December 1 New Yorker piece:

Like a polluted swamp, anti-gay bigotry is likely to get thicker and more toxic as it dries up. Viciousness meets viciousness. "Look," Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker, said the other day (on the air, to Bill O’Reilly), "I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence.... I think that it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion. And I think if you believe in historic Christianity, you have to confront the fact."

O'Reilly cried foul:

What Hertzberg did not tell New Yorker readers is that that conversation with Speaker Gingrich was about gay violence against a Christian missionary in San Francisco. It had nothing to do with the gay marriage vote, only militant reaction to it. Hertzberg does this kind of dishonest stuff all the time, because he knows many of his readers never watch the Factor, and Gingrich and I are easy targets for his distortions.

Maybe you won't be surprised to learn that O'Reilly wasn't giving the whole story. Here's what O'Reilly actually said just before the Gingrich quote:

OK, now the culture war, I know you've been flying around the country and doing stuff. In the last three or four days, really nasty stuff. I mean, you know, hyper. We’re going to show you some of the video. A woman getting a cross smashed out of her hand. We had a church in Michigan invaded by gay activists. We’re going to show you the video on Monday of that. We have exclusively. We had a guy in Sacramento fired from his job. We have boycotts called on restaurants. I mean, it is getting out of control very few days after the election. How do you assess that?

So the "nasty stuff" O'Reilly referred to really ranged from a cross-smashing (which actually sounds considerably less fascistic when you learn more about it) to boycotts of businesses--the latter being the sort of thing that O'Reilly routinely encourages his viewers to participate in. From this sort of predictable distortion, O'Reilly moved on to what Hertzberg described as "simply a lie":

O'Reilly said last night that I "refused to come on the Factor," as he calls his program.... Neither he nor any of his staff asked me to appear on his program, either directly or through anyone else at the New Yorker. I'm puzzled that O'Reilly said otherwise, since he has to know that we know he was lying. I guess he just doesn't care. He's got his base.

Hertzberg might be a little less puzzled had he read FAIR's book-length exposé of such loathsome behavior: The Oh Really? Factor: Unspinning Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, by Peter Hart.

Salon's Glenn Greenwald "marvels" (12/8/08, ad-viewing required) at "how easily [John Brennan-for-CIA-head proponents] can implant their message into establishment media outlets far and wide, which uncritically publish what they're told from their cherished 'intelligence sources' and without even the pretense of verifying whether any of it is true and/or hearing any divergent views":

All of this illustrates the unparalleled power which the "intelligence community" exerts over our political debates, how easy it is for them to manipulate intelligence reporters who depend on cooperation with their intelligence sources and who thus identify with them and happily amplify whatever they are fed, and--most of all--how profoundly unrealistic is the expectation that, now that Democrats are "in control," they're just going to blithely proceed to impose all sorts of new restrictions on the CIA and the rest of the Surveillance State--let alone launch probing investigations and impose accountability for past crimes--without much of a major fight.

Greenwald's extensive citations find much blaming of "liberal critics," "liberal bloggers" and "left-leaning bloggers and columnists" for Brennan's rejection, yet "unmentioned are his emphatic advocacy for rendition and 'enhanced interrogation tactics.'"

As President-elect Barack "Obama has made a point of appointing a diverse group of thinkers to his cabinet," Courtney E. Martin's American Prospect article (12/8/08) asks, "What about the diversity of opinion outside the White House?":

Let's start at the top. Kristal Brent Zook, author of I See Black People: The Rise and Fall of African American-Owned Television and Radio, reports, "Women of all races own just 5 percent of the 1,400 commercial broadcast television stations in America. People of color, who make up 33 percent of the national population (and will be more than 50 percent by 2050), own just 3.6 percent." But what about radio, favored medium of so many sharp-tongued and strong-willed politicos? Brent Zook also reports those abysmal numbers: "Women and minorities own just 6 and 7.7 percent of all broadcast radio stations in the country respectively. This means that listeners in an average radio market have 16 white male-owned stations to choose from, but just one woman-owned and two minority owned alternatives." Check out Out of the Picture and Off the Dial, two reports put out by Free Press, a D.C.-based media reform organization, for even more inexcusable statistics.

In case you "think it doesn't matter," Martin cites a Free Press finding that "having a minority- or female-owned station in a market is significantly correlated with a market airing both conservative and progressive programming." In short: "More diversity means more vigorous debate means a more enlightened democracy."

And independent media aren't immune either; see the current issue of FAIR's magazine Extra!: "Huffington Post Mutes Women's Voices: New Media, Same Gender Imbalance" (11-12/08) by Jessica Wakeman

Recalling that "during the mid-1960s, the conventional wisdom was what everyone with a modicum of smarts kept saying: higher U.S. troop levels in Vietnam were absolutely necessary," FAIR associate Norman Solomon is distressed to find (AntiWar.com, 12/9/08) that "today, the conventional wisdom is that higher U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan are absolutely necessary." Responding to news that "'the Pentagon is planning to add more than 20,000 troops to Afghanistan' within the next 18 months," Solomon writes that

right now, the basic ingredients of further Afghan disasters are in place--including, pivotally, a dire lack of wide-ranging debate over Washington's options. In an atmosphere reminiscent of 1965, when almost all of the esteemed public voices concurred with the decision by newly elected President Lyndon Johnson to deploy more troops to Vietnam, the tenet that the United States must send additional troops to Afghanistan is axiomatic in U.S. news media, on Capitol Hill, and--as far as can be discerned--at the top of the incoming administration.

Solomon finds that "bedrock faith in the Pentagon's massive capacity for inflicting violence is implicit in the nostrums from anointed foreign-policy experts. The echo chamber is echoing: The Afghanistan war is worth the cost that others will pay."

See the FAIR publication Extra! Update: "‘Accidents Will Happen: Excusing Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan" (8/07) by Peter Hart

The Center for Media and Democracy's PR Watch has propaganda watchdog Diane Farsetta asking (12/5/08) "when will the cable and network television stations that featured the Pentagon's pundits tell viewers that their war commentary was anything but independent?" Her "prime example" is NBC analyst former general Barry McCaffrey, who shilled Bradley Fighting Vehicles to the Pentagon and news audiences without revealing he was paid by the combat vehicle's supplier.

It's regrettable, but perhaps not surprising, that a military man wouldn't appreciate the need to disclose such conflicts of interest in his media appearances. McCaffrey's response... does not address the issue of disclosure....

However, the reporters at NBC News also failed to understand the importance of disclosure. NBC News president Steve Capus claimed that while McCaffrey is not held to the network's conflict-of-interest rules because of his status as a consultant, he is an "independent voice" whose business interests simply don't impact his commentary. According to emails obtained by Glenn Greenwald, NBC coordinated its response to Barstow's article with McCaffrey. Worse, NBC has yet to report on the Pentagon pundit scandal.

What "further shows the journalistic bankruptcy of war commentary," according to Farsetta, is the fact that "In the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, McCaffrey had 'significant doubts' about the size of the U.S. invasion force and the lack of post-invasion planning. Yet, in his appearances on NBC and its cable affiliates, McCaffrey was a cheerleader for the imminent war." Farsetta tells us that even "days before the invasion, McCaffrey told Tom Brokaw that he had no 'real serious' concerns about invading Iraq."

See FAIR's publication Extra! Update: "Network News Blackout on Pentagon Pundits" (6/08) By Isabel Macdonald

Just when you thought the "black voters killed gay marriage in California" myth had been completely debunked and put to rest, the New York Times (12/7/08) publishes an op-ed about Prop 8 and how black voters are homophobic. This comes one week after the Times published another op-ed (11/29/08) on Prop 8 and black voters that, despite admitting up front that "blacks probably didn't tip the balance for Proposition 8," went on to read a lot like another salvo in the blame game, focusing on black women as a whole (black lesbians apparently don't exist in author Charles Blow's mind) and black men on the DL as problems to be overcome in the struggle for gay rights.

This week's entry makes a show of indicting "white liberal Hollywood" for being racist and insensitive and urges them to give up on "good old-fashioned identity politics," but co-authors Caitlin Flanagan and Benjamin Schwarz make nearly as many racist and insensitive statements as the ones they attribute to Hollywood.

For example:

They came to the polls in record numbers to support Barack Obama, and they brought with them a fiercely held and enduring antipathy toward homosexuality: 7 in 10 blacks voted in support of traditional marriage. Whether that was the game-changer or not is a question for near-constant debate.

As many of those debunkings noted, despite the stereotype that African-Americans have "a fiercely held and enduring antipathy toward homosexuality," religion and socioeconomic level are much stronger indicators of how someone voted on Prop 8. And this (more bizarre, really, than racist and insensitive):

Of the values progressives hold dear, none can be as central or as cherished as the promotion of diversity. It is a word that has become almost a term of art. When a private school champions its embrace of "diversity," parents understand that the admissions office is not dying to enroll the son of a white evangelical minister or the daughter of a founding partner of a white-shoe law firm. Rather, we know that the school makes an intentional effort to include children of certain minority groups among its student body, and that most important among those groups are African-Americans and the children of gay families.

(Yes, the children of gay families are one of the two most important minority groups to private schools that champion that PC term of art, "diversity.")

It's important that media provide a space for dialogue about homophobia. What's sad is that the Times chooses to hand that space over to writers perpetuating racist stereotypes.

The corporate media has more or less been on the same page in applauding Obama's cabinet picks so far--"He's been pragmatic in choosing pragmatists," as the Washington Post editorial page cheered on November 28. There's been occasional criticism of Obama's choices as being too progressive, as when the L.A. Times (12/5/08) attacked the idea of Rep. Xavier Bercerra as U.S. trade representative, declaring that Obama "should break his promises and appoint a free-trader as trade representative."

So it was refreshing to see Michael Hirsh's piece in Newsweek wondering why left-leaning Columbia economist Joseph Stiglitz hasn't been in the mix:

But lost amid the cascades of ticker tape is the fact that, astonishingly, you didn't hire the one expert who's been right about the financial crisis all along--and whose Nobel Prize-winning ideas will probably be most central to fixing the global economy.

In Hirsh's mind, Stiglitz has a solid record that would recommend him in the current crisis--namely, that he saw much of it coming, unlike some of Obama's other advisers (specifically media favorite Larry Summers):

Stiglitz, more than anyone on the Washington scene, was the biggest fly in the ointment of "free-market fundamentalism" pressed on the world in the '90s by Summers, Geithner and their mentor, former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin—advice that has now contributed to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

That perspective was seconded by New York Times columnist Frank Rich on Sunday (12/7/08), who wondered if we are seeing a replay of Kennedy's "best and brightest" team of advisers:

No, it’s the economic team that evokes trace memories of our dark best-and-brightest past. Lawrence Summers, the new top economic adviser, was the youngest tenured professor in Harvard’s history and is famous for never letting anyone forget his brilliance. It was his highhanded disregard for his own colleagues, not his impolitic remarks about gender and science, that forced him out of Harvard’s presidency in four years. Timothy Geithner, the nominee for treasury secretary, is the boy wonder president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He comes with none of Summers's personal baggage, but his sparkling résumé is missing one crucial asset: experience outside academe and government, in the real world of business and finance. Postgraduate finishing school at Kissinger & Associates doesn’t count.

Summers and Geithner are both protégés of another master of the universe, Robert Rubin. His appearance in the photo op for Obama-transition economic advisers three days after the election was, to put it mildly, disconcerting. Ever since his acclaimed service as treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, Rubin has labored as a senior adviser and director at Citigroup, now being bailed out by taxpayers to the potential tune of some $300 billion. Somehow the all-seeing Rubin didn’t notice the toxic mortgage-derivatives on Citi’s books until it was too late. The Citi may never sleep, but he snored.

Geithner was no less tardy in discovering the reckless, wholesale gambling that went on in Wall Street’s big casinos, all of which cratered while at least nominally under his regulatory watch. That a Hydra-headed banking monster like Citigroup came to be in the first place was a direct byproduct of deregulation championed by Rubin and Summers in Clinton’s Treasury Department (where Geithner also served). The New Deal reform they helped repeal, the Glass-Steagall Act, had been enacted in 1933 in part because Citigroup's ancestor, National City Bank, had imploded after repackaging bad loans as toxic securities in the go-go 1920s.

Tom Engelhardt's nearly interminable list of media blogs and features about Barack Obama's presidential transition has him urging us (TomDispatch, 12/7/08) to "think of all this as Entertainment Weekly married to People magazine for post-election political junkies":

Obama--thank goodness--isn't George Bush. He doesn't arrive in office with a crew wedded to a "unitary executive theory" of the presidency, or an urge to loose the executive from the supposed "chains" of the Watergate-era Congress, or to "take off the gloves" globally. He doesn't have strange, twisted, oppressive ideas about how the Constitution should work, nor assumedly do visions of a "commander-in-chief presidency" (or vice presidency) dance in his head like so many sugar plums.

But don't ignore the architecture, the deep structure of the American political system. Make no mistake, Obama is moving full-speed ahead into an executive mansion rebuilt and endlessly expanded by the national security state over the last half-century-plus, and then built up in major ways by George W.'s "team." Despite the prospect of a new dog and a mother-in-law in the White House, the president-elect and his transition team show no signs of wanting to change the basic furniture.

"With so many catastrophes impending and so many pundits and journalists merrily applauding the most efficient transition in American history," Engelhardt can't help but notice that "no one, it seems, is even thinking about the architecture."

But really, to do any different would constitute a major break from corporate media protocol.

FAIR has a new Action Alert up about ABC's gross exaggeration of auto worker compensation. Feel free to post messages sent to ABC here--or any responses you get from the network.

Glenn Greenwald uses his regular Salon feature (12/1/08, ad-viewing required) to publish astounding email correspondence detailing "NBC and McCaffrey's coordinated responses to the NYT story" that exposed Barry McCaffrey as a prime example of Pentagon propagandists running unchecked in corporate media. One of the more nauseating bits features NBC declaring they:

are proud to have Gen.l Barry McCaffrey as a member of the NBC News organization, where he provides objective and nonpartisan analysis. He is a true American hero who is not afraid to speak his mind even if it sometimes ruffles some feathers in Washington. We believe our viewers have been, and will continue to be, well served by his incisive and thoughtful comments.

And McCaffrey's Pitch-perfect reply:

Very balanced, objective response.

Underscores my view of NBC as an enterprise based on journalistic ethics--and courage.

Proud to be associated with this team of professionals.

Barry

The exchange is particularly disgusting when you consider that it comes in response to a story that documented McCaffrey withdrawing his criticisms of Donald Rumsfeld when it was made clear to him that such criticism would jeopardize his lucrative career as a pundit/consultant.

See the FAIR Action Alert: "Pentagon Pundits: Media Facilitate Iraq Propaganda Effort" (4/22/08)

This week FAIR's CounterSpin radio show (12/5/08) takes on an important issue from the last U.S. invasion of Iraq:

For years, veterans claiming to suffer from Gulf War Syndrome were derided as cranky and hysterical by the Department of Defense and even by some journalists. Will that change now that a definitive report says the Gulf War illnesses are real, incurable, and caused by toxic materials used by the U.S. military during the 1991 Gulf War? We'll talk to Paul Sullivan, a veteran and the executive director of Veterans for Common Sense.

Also this week:

As the Obama White House takes shape, Americans are asking what the president-elect's cabinet choices suggest about the political direction his administration may take. Corporate media are making no effort to hide what they think are smart, responsible choices for Obama, but the reasons for those strong preferences are rarely explored. We'll talk with FAIR's Peter Hart about the press reception of the new cabinet picks.

Last week's program is still available online as well-- CounterSpin: "Mark Brenner on Big 3 bailout, Steve Rendall on the Fairness Doctrine" (11/28/08)--along with all our shows since 2004.

There was an Editorial Observer piece in the New York Times today (12/4/08) that really read like a piece from the segregated South of the 1950s, taking the side of the Jim Crow-enforcing sheriff against the outside agitators.

The piece described an event at a church in Patchogue, N.Y., that encouraged immigrants to talk about hidden hate crimes in a community where a gang had allegedly targeted immigrants for a string of assaults that went unreported until the crimes escalated into the murder of Ecuadorean Marcelo Lucero. The church's pastor, working with an activist group, got immigrant crime victims to record their stories and tried to hook them up with lawyers. Then they held a press conference.

By the New York Times' account, that's pretty much all that happened. But in the Times' telling, it was headlined as "A Hate-Crime Circus." Times editorial writer Lawrence Downes described it as a "guilt fiesta," bizarrely equating it in his lead with the stabbing that it was a response to--both were "crimes against immigrants."

In the role of the put-upon sheriff trying to keep the Freedom Riders from stirring up the local colored folk, Downes has the Patchogue Mayor Paul Pontieri, Jr., who "kept a rueful watch from the edge of the circus ring":

Mr. Pontieri has spent a lot of time getting to know his Latino neighbors better and insists that they are not angry. There is confusion and sadness, he said, but the anger--like the teens accused of killing Mr. Lucero--comes from outside.

(Actually, the accused teens didn't come from very far outside Patchogue; some of them came from East Patchogue, while the others came from Medford, which is close enough to have the same high school.)

Downes thinks of himself as an advocate for immigrants. With friends like these, who needs enemies?

SaveTheInternet.com's Megan Tady announces (12/2/08) an alternative Help Wanted ad to assist Barack Obama in appointing a new chair for the Federal Communications Commission. The desired qualifications:

This job requires a strong commitment to protecting the open Internet, ensuring fast and affordable Internet access for all Americans and diversifying media ownership.

Applicant must be willing to hold long and unruly public hearings and enjoy arcane telecom banter. Wardrobe malfunctions, NASCAR wreckage and fleeting expletives are discouraged.

While a "public interest background" is "strongly preferred," there is one caveat: "Industry lobbyists need not apply."