Caitlin Flanagan, primarily known (and embraced by mainstream media) for her anti-feminist writings, was back in the New York Times this weekend--this time attacking former '70s radical Sara Jane Olson. As a member of the Symbionese Liberation Army, Olson (born Kathleen Soliah) was indicted for plotting to bomb LAPD patrol cars; she evaded capture until 1999, during which time she built a life under her new name in Minnesota. She's now been allowed to serve her parole at home in Minnesota rather than in California, where she served her time.

Flanagan's peeved, because, she would have us believe, she sees a double standard.

"Thanks to Sara Jane Olson and her return to the spacious house and gracious life she’s made for herself in St. Paul," she writes in the Times, "we know what it's called when a rich, white woman gets convicted of trying to kill cops and robbing a bank: 'idealism.'" Flanagan concludes her piece:

The irreducible starting point of the SLA's agenda was the belief that the justice system treated blacks differently from whites. By offering herself up to serve her parole in the state, she will do her part to ensure that there are not two standards of justice, one for the white women who have Tudor-style houses and shadowed lawns to return to in a distant state--let us call such women the "fascist insect"--and the other for African-American women--let us call them "the people"--who enter the system with very little and leave it with even less.

Of course, if Flanagan was actually concerned about people being discriminated against by the parole system and institutional racism, the logical thing to advocate for would be changes in the criminal justice system so that they too were able to serve parole in their homes. Instead, African-American women here are just a useful tool for Flanagan to attack a white female leftist.

It's her specialty, after all: Her first big break was a piece on nannies, arguing basically that rich white feminists are hypocrites because they're only able to both pursue careers and have children by exploiting poor women as underpaid nannies. There, too, her point was really about bashing the white feminists, not about concern for the nannies--as Barbara Ehrenreich noted in a lengthy exchange with Flanagan about the article, "If your 10,000-word piece was about how employers should pay their nannies’ Social Security taxes, then my reading skills are in serious decline."

The Washington Post editorial page produced a remarkable editorial on Saturday (3/21/09) headlined "Victory in El Salvador." It's not surprising that the Post would try to  argue that the victory of left-wing FMLN presidential candidate Mauricio Funes was not another sign that the region's politics are shifting to the left. No, in fact it was a blow to folks like Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez: "El Salvador's election was also a triumph for a system that Mr. Chávez has disregarded: liberal democracy."

The Post didn't elaborate on that idea. They did, unfortunately, attempt to recast U.S. involvement in El Salvador's bloody civil war.  The U.S. provided support to the death squad-linked military leaders over the course of the conflict--a war in which the U.S.-backed government and its allies killed 75,000 Salvadorans, mostly civilians.

Somehow, though, this election was what the U.S. had in mind for El Salvador all along (see bold):

If Mr. Funes as well as the election's losers now respect the rule of law, the result could be the consolidation of the political system the United States was aiming for when it intervened in El Salvador's civil war during the 1980s. At the time, the goal of a successful Salvadoran democracy was dismissed as a mission impossible, just as some now say democracy is unattainable in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the right-wing ARENA party, whose leaders were linked to death squads in the 1980s, proved during the last few years that it could embrace democratic practices. Its presidential candidate, Rodrigo Ávila, acknowledged his defeat on election night.

Official U.S. policy towards El Salvador was based on a paranoid anti-Communism that insisted on supporting any government threatened by left-wing guerrillas, no matter its record of brutality. To suggest the goal was merely the "consolidation of the political system"--the mind reels.

The Post closes by saying the Funes goverment "has the potential to complete a victory for Latin American democracy--and U.S. foreign policy."

Wondering  at the "remarkable class solidarity" displayed by U.S. elitists, Robert Parry (Consortium News, 3/22/09) hypothesizes that "this may help explain why the Washington Post's editorial writers penned three editorials last week decrying the populist outrage over the AIG bonuses":

The first editorial on March 17, entitled "Bonus Blowback," purported to share the public's outrage but came down on the side of paying the bonuses. "We hope that the president is setting the stage to do whatever it takes to answer legitimate protests about AIG without adding to the existing dangers or jeopardizing the necessary rescues of the banking sector still to come," the Post said.

The next day in an editorial called "The Big Bash," the Post expressed stronger annoyance with the "'populist' backlash" against the AIG bonuses. The Post wrote:

No matter how morally satisfying, taking back bonuses now … would probably accelerate the exodus [of AIG executives], with the likely effect that the country would lose much more money on AIG than it would otherwise....

The relevant policy question here is not whether we feel like spending $165 million on bonuses; it is whether doing so will help wrap up the AIG rescue as cheaply and quickly as possible.

By March 20, the Post editorialists were starting to fume, equating the irresponsibility of AIG's risky bets on derivatives with the angry reaction from politicians and their constituents over the bonuses.

In an editorial entitled "Washington Gone Wild," the Post chastised Congress for trying to recoup the taxpayers' money by imposing a 90 percent tax on bonuses at firms that took significant government bailout funds.

Parry concludes that, being " too cozy with their brethren on Wall Street," Post editors "may share too much of what might be called a class interest... to understand how justifiably angry Americans are... at both the financiers who took the economy over the cliff and at the politicians and pundits who bogged the nation down in the bloody quagmire of Iraq."

Listen to the latest edition of FAIR's radio program CounterSpin: "Robert Johnson on AIG Bonuses" (3/20/09).

The lead of an article in the New York Times today (3/23/09):

KABUL, Afghanistan — A predawn raid by United States Special Forces that killed five people on Sunday has produced sharply conflicting accounts from the American military and local Afghan officials as to whether the dead were civilians or militants, resurrecting a sore point that has troubled the American-led war here.

"Resurrecting a sore point?"  For something to be resurrected, it has to have gone away, right? That's not the case with civilian deaths in Afghanistan--nor would most people belittle such suffering as a "sore point."

The day before, the Times had a Week in Review piece on drone attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan with the awkward headline "The Downside of Letting Robots Do the Bombing." Reporter Mark Mazetti can't be held responsible for that headline, but the piece plays down the impact that such attacks have on civilians, which is treated as mostly an afterthought (the real question, of course, being what waging war by "joysticks" means for the United States):

Over the last six months, CIA operatives wielding joysticks have launched more than three dozen strikes by Predator and more heavily armed Reaper drones. Missiles fired from them have hit militants gathering in mountain redoubts, and they have hit truck convoys ferrying ammunition across the border into Afghanistan.

Some agency veterans draw comparisons to the Israeli policy of "targeted killings" of Hamas leaders--killings that claimed scores of the group’s top operatives in the Palestinian territories, but didn’t keep new recruits from attacking Israel.

Intelligence officials in Washington and Islamabad said it was nearly impossible to measure the impact of the strikes on the so-called "war of ideas." Even when precise, the drone strikes often kill women and children in militant compounds. When that happens, local Pashtun customs of "badal" obligate their survivors to seek revenge.

There's a lot going on here, but the upshot is that civilian deaths are treated as some sort of inexplicable fallout-- that "even when precise," such drone attacks kill women and children, or that somehow Israeli strikes on "Hamas leaders" don't prevent other Palestinians from seeking retribution. Mazetti writes of "local Pashtun customs" that "obligate"  survivors to "seek revenge" against those who killed their families. Is that such a strange concept, meriting a special foreign term, for U.S. readers to fathom--in an article that is in part about the war in Afghanistan, after all?

The media activist group Free Press has a new release (3/19/09) warning of the latest threat to free speech online: "a technology known as Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) that offers Internet service providers unprecedented control over Internet content." DPI, says Free Press, "could spell disaster for the free market online," AKA Net Neutrality. According to Free Press, DPI is designed to "monitor, control and ultimately charge subscribers for every use of an Internet connection," because it "'enables service providers to project potential revenues and profits from setting up a tiered service infrastructure' and allows providers to 'reduce the performance of applications with negative influence on revenues.'" All of which adds up to "a major threat to the open Internet":

DPI technology has played a central role in recent controversies surrounding Net Neutrality and online privacy. When Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, was caught secretly using DPI to block peer-to-peer applications, it was met with overwhelming public opposition and ultimately ordered by the Federal Communications Commission to stop the practice. And after advertising startup NebuAd, in partnership with several ISPs, used DPI to secretly monitor users' Internet traffic and insert unwanted advertising, the company was investigated by Congress, dropped by its ISP partners and forced to abandon the business model.

Cox Communications is the latest ISP to receive public scrutiny for its use of DPI technology. The cable company is conducting trials of a new system that uses DPI to prioritize traffic from online applications it arbitrarily deems "time sensitive." Cox has a history of DPI usage: Research by the Max Planck Institute in Germany last May indicated that Cox was engaging in the same blocking practice as Comcast.

Read the full Free Press paper, "Deep Packet Inspection: The End of the Internet as We Know It?", a co-author of which states that "the Cox trial, coupled with other DPI abuses, is setting the alarming precedent that Internet service providers can pick winners and losers online."

It takes a special kind of person to send stalkers out after a woman because she wrote a blog post criticizing you for blaming a victim of rape and murder for wearing the wrong sort of clothing.

If you look at the front page of the New York Post today (3/23/09), you see a big headline about New York State's "Secret Deal to Tax 'Rich.'" The scare quotes are there to indicate, presumably, that the taxpayers in question--whom the Post refers to as "anyone making more than $500,000 a year"--are not really rich.

It's true that such taxpayers aren't as wealthy as, say, Rupert Murdoch, the guy who owns the Post, who has an estimated net worth of $8.3 billion. But they're still doing pretty well, with an income that puts them well into the top half of 1 percent of U.S. households. This is a group that sociologists variously refer to as "the rich," the "upper class" or the "capitalist class."

Interestingly, if you go inside the paper, the actual article bears the headline, "Gov Plots Secret Tax Hike on Rich"--no scare quotes necessary. Maybe Murdoch just reads the front page?

Journal-isms writer Richard Prince is highlighting (3/19/09) an article in the current issue of GQ headlined "You Think Your Job Sucks? Try Working for Lenny Dykstra"--the title of which might be an understatement, considering some of its reporting therein:

A photo editor's unflattering portrait of baseball-player-turned-financial adviser Lenny Dykstra as a racist, sexist and homophobe has prompted an African-American NBA official to call for a boycott of Dykstra and the magazine he produces.

In the upcoming April issue of GQ, already online, Kevin Coughlin recounts his experience working for Dykstra's glossy magazine, the Players Club, which offers athletes financial advice as it touts a luxurious lifestyle.

"At one meeting, Lenny goes off on how a particular layout looks 'faggy'--despite the presence of a gay page designer in the room," the piece reads. "(Later, Lenny says to me: 'Did you see the look on that fag's face?') On another occasion, I field a call from Lenny about potential cover subjects while I'm at home; Lenny's on speaker when he proudly states, for both my wife and me, that 'nobody can call me a racist--I put three darkies and a bitch on my first four covers.'"

Coughlin tells how, in disbelief over his publisher's description of the first Players Club cover personalities--Derek Jeter, Chris Paul, Tiger Woods, and Danica Patrick--he asked Dykstra to repeat himself: "I said I put three spearchuckers on the cover!" came the charming reply.

Upon seeing that, "on her show Tuesday night, Fox News' Greta Van Susteren devoted an entire segment to criticizing David Letterman" for having "made jokes about Sarah Palin and her family," Political Animal blogger Steve Benen (3/19/09) notices that

there seems to be a pattern here. In fact, it's hard not to notice that Van Susteren seems to enjoy closer ties to Palin than most media professionals. Matt Corley explained, for example, "In September, she hosted a one-hour 'documentary' on the GOP vice presidential candidate, titled Governor Sarah Palin--An American Woman.... After the election ended, Palin chose Van Susteren for her first national television interview. Since then, Greta has consistently covered Palin, keeping an eye out for any potential sleights of the governor and gushing over her popularity."

As it turns out, there's a reason that helps explain why Fox News' Van Susteren has taken on the role of media publicist for the Alaska governor--Van Susteren's husband helps guide Palin's political image.

[John] Coale, a well-known Washington lawyer and the husband of Fox News Channel's Greta Van Susteren... in an interview with the Fix, described himself simply as a "friend" of the Alaska governor but acknowledged that he suggested she start a leadership PAC and helped her navigate through some of the questions surrounding her family that lingered after the campaign. Others familiar with Palin's political team insist that Coale has far more power than he is letting on--essentially helping to run Sarah PAC.

Benen quite reasonably asks, "Doesn't this seem like the kind of thing Van Susteren might want to disclose to her viewers?" See the FAIR publication Extra! Update: "Sarah Palin: Maverick Feminist?" (12/08) by Candice O'Grady

Think Progress editor Ali Frick (3/18/09) has posted video of CNN's celebrity xenophobe descending into the Rosie O'Donnell realm of racist ridicule of Asian language:

Yesterday on his radio show, anti-immigrant crusader Lou Dobbs attacked St. Patrick's Day as a needless "ethnic holiday." "How about an American day," he proposed. He also wondered whether other groups, like Jews or Asians, had "ethnic holidays," but he couldn't think of any:

"Is there a Jewish ethnic holiday? Is there one? No. Okay. … How about an Asian ethnic holiday? Is there one? You know, St. Jing-Tao-Wow?"

Trying to look beyond this appallingly belligerent ignorance, Frick thinks for a second that "maybe Dobbs' is right: What about an American day? Besides Independence Day, Presidents’ Day, Martin Luther King Day, Columbus Day, Thanksgiving, Veterans Day and Memorial Day, there's barely a chance to celebrate America at all."

Resisting the tide of "liberal blogger men" who "are thrilled with the New York Times' appointment of 29-year-old Atlantic blogger Ross Douthat to replace William Kristol on the op-ed page," Katha Pollitt (Nation, 3/18/09) contrasts the fact that "Douthat is best known for his conservative Catholicism (abortion is murder, frozen embryos are children, contraception kills romance)," with such Times-approving quotes as "'Smart move,' says Matt Yglesias. Ezra Klein and George Packer agree he's 'brilliant.' At TheNation.com, Chris Hayes calls it a 'fantastic choice,' and Eyal Press looks forward to 'thoughtful commentary.'"

Examples of such "thoughtful commentary" include Douthat "on those pesky WMDs": "It goes without saying that [Saddam Hussein], too, is busy trying to acquire a nuclear bomb, to supplement his extensive collection of biological and chemical weaponry." Additionally, Pollitt finds that

Douthat seems unusually averse to engaging with women intellectually, even on perennial topics like abortion and birth control, where you'd think we'd bring something missing to the table--like an interest in our health, well-being, happiness, longevity, pleasure and ability to have some control over our lives. Instead, he engages Slate's Will Saletan on whether contraception would prevent enough abortions to make it worth expanding government funding.

You can accuse some in the media of paying too much attention to the bonuses at AIG, but on ABC's newscast they've been doing the opposite--trying to tell people to stop talking down "our" company.

ABC's World News With Charles Gibson, March 17:

CHARLES GIBSON: Let me turn to Betsy Stark. There is an awful lot of, I guess you could call it AIG bashing going on. But as a lot of people pointed out today, there's a real danger in this, because everybody in this country has a vested interest in AIG succeeding, because we, the taxpayer, essentially own the company, right?

BETSY STARK (ABC NEWS): That's right, Charlie. American taxpayers own 80 percent of AIG now, and their best hope for recovering some of the tens of billions of dollars that they've sunk into the company is for the government to sell off AIG's many good businesses. But if the AIG name continues to get dragged through the mud, it's only going to run down the value of those businesses and make it harder for taxpayers to get the very best price, so the outrage is understandable, but it comes at a real-world cost.

ABC's World News With Charles Gibson, March 18:

CHARLES GIBSON: And one more thing, you and I talked last night about the fact that all of us, the taxpayers actually own AIG. And as this controversy goes on, we may be driving down the value of the company we own. You've talked to insurance people, I know, all day long. What do they say about that?

BETSY STARK (ABC NEWS): You know, the irony is that taxpayers could be cutting off their noses to spite their faces. Their anger is justifiable, these people say, but they have got to keep sight of the fact that they are talking about $165 million in bonuses, and they have got a $170 billion investment to protect. That's what they own.

CHARLES GIBSON: All right, that's what we all, in effect, own. Betsy Stark, thanks very much.

If one really took this argument seriously--don't criticize things owned by the public--then wouldn't all sorts of things be off limits?

Courtesy of the New York Daily News (3/18/09):

ABC's World News anchor Charles Gibson at one point considered being a sports reporter.

However, he ultimately realized the job was more difficult than it looked.

"I began to realize that sports journalism was so difficult because if you cover a team, you have to stay in the good graces of that team," Gibson tells Michael Kay in the YES Network's CenterStage airing Thursday at 10 p.m.

"So, do you pull your punches?" says Gibson. "Do you not write about the fact that so-and-so is a drunk? Or that so-and-so may be on the juice?"

Good thing that kind of thing doesn't go on in the big leagues of corporate journalism.

Editorializing in the Wall Street Journal (3/18/09) on how "Financial Journalists Fail Upward," Wrecking Crew author Thomas Frank sees the "world of financial infotainment" as its own "market where accountability does not seem to exist" and in which "the old order discredits itself, but the old order persists nevertheless":

This needs to be repeated every time someone pleads, "Who could have known?" Plenty of people did see the disaster coming. Most of them were marginalized, however, laboring at out-of-the-way econ departments, blogs and B-list think tanks. They were excluded and even ridiculed because their larger understanding of the economy was not one that fit well with the sort of Wall Street worship preached by the likes of CNBC....

The reasons the financial-entertainment biz failed us are many and complex, but they ultimately come down to this: In the marketplace to describe the marketplace itself, there is precious little competition. There is a single, standard product that comes in packaging that is alternately sultry, energetic or fun--bitter, brainy or Cramer "crazy"--but which rarely strays beyond certain ideological boundaries.

At such outlets, "Adversarial voices are few. Criticism is sacrificed for access. Advice sometimes shades over into simple propaganda." For some analysis of the current flavor of just such propaganda, listen to the new edition of FAIR's radio show CounterSpin: "Melissa Harris-Lacewell on Earmarks" (3/13/09).

Writing that "an astonishing number of North American dailies are gasping their last," veteran Mexico journalist John Ross (CounterPunch, 3/18/09) cites "a recent survey by the New York Times, itself on its last legs," that "lists 75 daily newspapers of being at risk from sea to stinking sea," and singles out how San Francisco Chronicle owner "Will Hearst threatens to close down the Chron if he can't break the unions and turn the Comical into a scab rag." Ross also looks at how "the New York Times has persuaded a Mexican billionaire to bail it out of impending shipwreck":

Well, not just any Mexican billionaire. Carlos Slim is usually ranked Numero Dos on the Forbes Hit Parade with $60 billion under his mattress.... The big guns of Slim's empire are Telmex, the Mexican phone monopoly that charges higher rates than any other such enterprise in the wide world, with which he was gifted in an excess of crony capitalism by the reviled ex-president Carlos Salinas, and American Movil--the Mexican tycoon's cell phone companies dominate 70 percent of the Latin American market....

Slim built his empire on corporate cannibalism and sees weaknesses in enterprises where we mortals do not. There is little else to explain his $250 million investment in the Times, a seriously sagging institution that had only $46 million cash on hand and $1.1 billion in debt when the Mexican tycoon came to the rescue. Since his initial investment, Slim has expanded his holdings to 7.4 percent with the possibility of increasing his shares to 17 percent ownership--only the Sulzberger family owns more.

"The Slim/New York Times connection suggests a solution for the ailing U.S. newspaper industry" to Ross: "Among possible Mexican investors: Joaquin 'El Chapo' (Shorty) Guzman, the capo of the Sinaloa cartel recently listed by Forbes in its up-and-coming billionaire rankings. Drug cartels in Sinaloa are said to already own several dailies in that Pacific coast state."