It is bizarre to see Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly denying that pundits from her network compare people to Nazis--contrasting this reticence to Rep. Steve Cohen (D.-Tenn.), who said calling healthcare reform a "government takeover of healthcare" was "a big lie. Just like Goebbels."

In fact, such comparisons are common currency on Fox News and in much of right-wing media, as FAIR has documented (Action Alert, 1/16/04; FAIR Blog, 4/2/09,  8/9/09, 4/28/10; Extra!, 3/10). Fox's Glenn Beck, a leader in this trend, compared the auto bailout to "the early days of Adolf Hitler" (4/1/09), said that Barack Obama's plans to expand the programs like the Peace Corps were "what Hitler did with the SS"  (8/27/09) and, when Obama said he was looking for "empathy" in a Supreme Court nominee, claimed that Hitler's empathy "led to genocide everywhere" (5/26/09).

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank (10/3/10), who wrote a surprisingly good book on Beck, did a count of how many times the Fox host had made various Nazi allusions:

In his first 18 months on Fox News, from early 2009 through the middle of this year, he and his guests invoked Hitler 147 times. Nazis, an additional 202 times. Fascism or fascists, 193 times. The Holocaust got 76 mentions, and Joseph Goebbels got 24.

Yep, the particular comparison that was so outrageous it merited in-depth examination on Fox News has been made on Fox's top-rated show at least two dozen times--along with hundreds of other Third Reich references.

For an added dose of hypocrisy: Bill O'Reilly (1/20/11) had right-wing talker Laura Ingraham on last night to weigh in on, among other things, the outrageous Nazi analogies coming from the left. Ingraham has a record of--you guessed it--playing the Nazi card while criticizing the Obama administration.

How does Fox get away with such shamelessness? It's hard to explain--if I'm not allowed to mention the Big Lie theory.

Big news in the New York Times today (1/21/11): According to their new poll, Americans overwhelmingly support slashing military spending.

Wait--that's not the news.

According to the story by Jackie Calmes and Dalia Sussman (headlined "Poll Finds Willingness to Cut Spending, Just Not Medicare or Social Security"), the real story is that people don't like the idea of cutting these entitlement programs, but are really worried about the budget deficit:

While Americans are near-unanimous in calling deficits a problem--a "very serious" problem, say 7 out of 10--a majority believes it should not be necessary for them to pay higher taxes to bridge the shortfall between what the government spends and what it takes in.

The Times has tried to tell us this story about the deficit before (though at other times they've told us the opposite).

If you read far enough into today's piece, the Times alludes to a different way of gauging public sentiment--one that finds people don't feel very strongly about the deficit:

Asked what Congress should focus on, 43 percent of Americans say job creation; healthcare is a distant second, cited by 18 percent, followed by deficit reduction, war and illegal immigration.

And elsewhere in the poll (but not in the Times story) they ask people to name the most important problem facing the country. The deficit garnered 6 percent support.

In other words, it's not at all clear that people overwhelmingly worry about the deficit. They do seem far more willing, though, to cut the military budget:

And asked to choose among cuts to Medicare, Social Security or the nation's third-largest spending program--the military--a majority by a large margin said cut the Pentagon.

Which leaves one to wonder why the headline wasn't "Poll Finds Broad Support for Military Cuts."

The other main lesson of the Times poll is that Americans don't support tax increases. The Times notes that the "antitax sentiment reflected in the poll is in line with Republicans’ mantra that spending, not taxes, is the problem for the federal budget." So the public doesn't want higher taxes, and doesn't want spending cuts--which the Times writes up this way: "Americans' sometimes contradictory impulses on spending and taxes suggest the political crosscurrents facing both parties."

But the tax questions in the poll mostly ask whether respondents want to raise taxes on "people like you." Obviously many  people aren't going to like that much. The Times posed one question that included a menu of tax options: increasing the gasoline tax, reducing the mortgage interest deduction, and so on. But they should have posed other options--raising taxes on the wealthy (i.e., people who mostly aren't "like you"), or a Wall Street financial speculation tax.

The story the Times wants to tell is a familiar one: The public wants to have it both ways (no spending cuts and no tax increases either). But reality's a little different. The public wants action on jobs much more than on the deficit. As far as the deficit is concerned, they're overwhelmingly ready to cut military spending. And, as some other polls have found, they're more than OK with raising taxes on the wealthy. As one Bloomberg survey found (12/10/10):

While they say they strongly support balancing the budget over the next 20 years, when offered a list of more than a dozen possible spending cuts or tax increases, majorities opposed every one of them except imposing a bigger burden on the rich.

But that is clearly a story that New York Times does not want told.

As Sam Husseini noted, one of the things we'll miss about print newspapers is ironic juxtaposition of stories. The front page of Yesterday's New York Times (1/20/11) provided a classic example: There was a story about Chinese President Hu Jintao visiting the White House, headlined (in the late print edition) "Obama Raises Human Rights, Pressing China." And right next to it was an article about how the Obama administration was acknowledging that Guantanamo would stay open indefinitely, with some prisoners to be held forever without trial, while others would be tried by military tribunal instead of a civilian court because they had been tortured while in custody. The story about Obama championing human rights didn't mention Obama institutionalizing human rights abuses, or vice versa.

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank (1/20/11) didn't see the irony; instead, he saw Obama and the White House press corps sharing one of their finest hours. Describing AP's Ben Feller asking Obama at a joint press conference "how the United States can be so allied with a country that is known for treating its people so poorly" and asked Hu to "justify China's record"--and Bloomberg's Hans Nichols repeating the question when it was ignored by Hu--Milbank wrote:

It was a good moment for the American press. Feller and Nichols put the Chinese leader on the spot in a way that Obama, constrained by protocol, could not have done. The White House press corps has at times been too gentle on Obama (recall the adulatory pre-Christmas news conference), but on Wednesday afternoon, Obama and the press corps were justifiably on the same side, displaying the rights of free people.

One of those rights is the right to be much more concerned about human rights abuses when they occur in countries other than your own. I suspect that Hu was less impressed with the press's demonstration of this freedom than Milbank was.

Someone wanted to set off a bomb at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day parade in Spokane, Washington. Luckily the suspicious bag holding the bomb was spotted, which likely saved lives.  As the Washington Post reported today:

"The device appeared to be operational, it appeared to be deadly, and it was intended to inflict multiple casualties,'' said Special Agent Frederick Gutt, a spokesman for the FBI's Seattle field office.

Law enforcement sources familiar with the device, which is being analyzed at the FBI lab in Quantico, Va., said it had a remote detonator and was positioned so that any blast would have been directed at the crowd of marchers.

Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Daily News wonders why the story hasn't received more media attention, particularly as a case of what would appear to be domestic terrorism. He writes:

When it emerged that alleged gunman Jared Lee Loughner was an almost certainly mentally ill 22-year-old who seemed to follow some bizarre conspiracy theories but not the political rhetoric of Palin or the Tea Party, there was massive pushback from conservatives who accused the mainstream media of jumping to unfair conclusions. Most famously, Palin herself emerged to call this a "blood libel." The former GOP veep nominee was savaged for using that charged term, but you have to wonder now if the pushback from Palin is actually a case of "mission accomplished."

That's because with this new episode in Spokane, not only have the pillars of the mainstream media not raced to any conclusions, but they seem to be in a competition as to who can most ignore the story altogether. But there's no need to jump to unwarranted conclusions here; the actual facts have been laid out by the nation's preeminent law enforcement agency, the FBI -- that we are dealing with a case of "domestic terrorism," that the sophisticated device along the King Day parade route was capable of causing mass casualties, and the target was American citizens celebrating an icon of the progressive movement, Dr. King.

Maybe the implications are just a little too frightening for the mainstream media to want to deal with.

There's a fairly well-documented history of media playing down domestic terror threats that don't involve Arab or Muslim conspirators.  Those that do are treated differently; there are plenty of cases where law enforcement stepped in long before such plans were operational-- and yet much of the media coverage would still refer to them as a form of terrorism. The attempted Times Square bombing might be the closest analogy, and that received widespread media coverage, much of which called it an attempted terrorist attack.

In this case, it doesn't seem like the media want to call it terrorism-- or even news, for that matter. NBC Nightly News did a segment on the bomb plot yesterday, but anchor Brian Williams said this at the end of the report:

All right, Pete Williams on what could have been a major news story out in Spokane. Pete, thanks.

Could have been?

In addition to his repeated murder fantasies, Glenn Beck harbors apocalyptic fantasies of mass death--suggesting, for instance, that if the direction of the country doesn't change,  "God will wash this nation with blood." (Barack Obama, are you listening?) But the Fox News host harbors many deranged obsessions.

He has long obsessed over Frances Fox Piven, the 78-year-old distinguished professor at the City University of New York. Central to Beck's lies about Piven is the charge that a Nation article she co-wrote with Richard Cloward in 1966 somehow holds the blueprint for a violent leftist takeover of the United States. Beck's similar fascination with the supposed threat posed by the Tides Foundation apparently led one of his fans to attempt an armed assault on the organization (FAIR Blog, 7/22/10).

Beck's supposed anti-violence pledge, issued in the wake of the Tucson massacre, contains a bizarre equation of Piven with a violent paramilitary cult under indictment for plotting the wholesale murder of police officers:

I denounce violent threats and calls for the destruction of our system--regardless of their underlying ideology--whether they come from the Hutaree Militia or Frances Fox Piven.

Needless to say, equating Piven's advocacy of grassroots democratic political activism with terrorism-based revolution is hardly an effective way to discourage violence. Unsurprisingly, some Beck followers have taken his demented fulminations a step further, posting death threats against Piven in the comment section of his website, the Blaze. As Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman recounted on her January 14 program:

On December 31, Glenn Beck’s website, the Blaze, published an article titled "Frances Fox Piven Rings in the New Year by Calling for Violent Revolution." In response to that article, several readers posted direct death threats to Piven. A user named JST1425 wrote, quote, "Be very careful what you ask for, honey.... As I mentioned in previous posts...ONE SHOT...ONE KILL! 'We the People' will need to stand up for what is right.... A few well-placed marksmen with high-powered rifles.... Then there would not be any violence," unquote.

User name SUPERWRENCH4 wrote, quote, "Somebody tell Frances I have 5000 roundas [sic] ready and I'll give My life to take Our freedom back. Taking Her life and any who would enslave My children and grandchildren and call for violence should meet their demise as They wish. George Washington didn't use His freedom of speech to defeat the British, He shot them," unquote.

Another reader wrote on Glenn Beck's website, quote, "We should blowup Piven's office and home. And while at it. Keel haul Bernardine Dohrn under one of her freedom ships and blow up Bill Ayers' house cars and anywhere he can be found," unquote.
And a user who goes by the name GREEN_MANALISHI wrote, quote, "I'm all for violence and change Francis, where do your loved ones live?" unquote.

Despite the overt threats, Glenn Beck has not removed any of the messages from his site, even though readers of the Blaze are encouraged to highlight troublesome posts.

In Tucson last week, shooting victim James Eric Fuller was arrested after exclaiming "you're dead" to a Tea Party activist who was criticizing gun control at a post-massacre forum. So apparently the laws against making violent threats still apply to some people.

UPDATE: Last June (6/10), Glenn Beck's demonization of progressives took an eliminationist turn when he told his Fox News audience that "radicals"-- he named Code Pink's Jody Evans, environmental and civil rights activist Van Jones, University of Wisconsin professor Joel Rogers, progressive strategist Jeff Jones and labor leader Andy Stern--ought to be "shot in the head" by Democrats instead of being courted by them.

Adressing Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, about American "radicals" and "revolutionaries," Beck said:

You've been using them? They believe in communism. They believe and have called for a revolution. You're going to have to shoot them in the head. But warning, they may shoot you.

They are dangerous because they believe. Karl Marx is their George Washington. You will never change their mind. And if they feel you have lied to them--they're revolutionaries. Nancy Pelosi, those are the people you should be worried about.

Here is my advice when you're dealing with people who believe in something that strongly--you take them seriously. You listen to their words and you believe that they will follow up with what they say.

Of course, there is no danger that Pelosi or other Democratic leaders will take Beck's demented words to heart. The danger is that Beck devotees are being told by their hero that these dangerous progressives, who may be homicidal themselves, are worthy of assassination. It wouldn't be the first or second time a Beck devotee took murderous action.

Note that Beck's words were in dead earnest. Without a hint of irony, Time magazine's civility panelist called for Democrats to assassinate American political activists.

When I saw the headline (1/19/11), "Vocal Physicians Group Renews Health Law Fight," I thought maybe--just maybe--the New York Times might be talking about Physicians for a National Health Program, the group comprised of "18,000 physicians, medical students and health professionals who support single-payer national health insurance."

But no. The Times story is about the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, a 3,000-member organization that is on the far right of the healthcare debate, and is garnering coverage now because they support repeal of the new healthcare law. How far? These excerpts from the Times piece should give you some idea:

Founded in 1943, the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons opposed the creation of Medicaid and Medicare. A decade ago, it was among groups that unsuccessfully urged the United States Supreme Court to release post-mortem photographs of a former Clinton administration official, Vincent Foster. In its brief, the group argued that an independent inquiry was necessary to confirm that Mr. Foster, whose death was attributed to suicide, was not murdered.

And:

Its internal periodical has published studies arguing that abortion increases breast cancer risks, a tie rejected by an expert panel of the National Cancer Institute, as well as reports linking child vaccinations to autism, a discredited theory. Another report, "Illegal Aliens and American Medicine," contended that illegal immigrants not only brought disease into this country but benefited if their babies were born with disabilities.

"Anchor babies are valuable," that 2005 report stated, using a negative term for children born in America to illegal immigrants. "A disabled anchor baby is more valuable than a healthy one."

Now perhaps the angle here is that since repeal is in the news, this group deserves coverage. And citing their extremist positions on an array of subjects might be useful for readers who want to know what sorts of folks are backing repeal.

But in the broader debate over healthcare, single-payer advocates like PNHP are largely sidelined. A search of Times coverage in the Nexis news database shows that PNHP usually shows up only in the letters section. A June 11, 2009 article, "Doctors' Group Opposes Public Insurance Plan," focused on opposition to the public option from the likes of the American Medical Association; it included a passing reference to PNHP.

It makes sense for the healthcare debate to include the voices of doctors and other caregivers. But that discussion needs to include those who support single-payer.

From comedian Joan Rivers' Twitter feed (read from the bottom up if you can):

Fox says, for the record, that Rivers wasn't canceled due to the joke;  the show was overbooked, and she'll be rescheduled. As someone who has been booked--and then canceled--by Fox a couple of times, I'm skeptical of Fox's story here.

With Chinese leader Hu Jintao in Washington, you got some of what you might expect in right wing  media outlets--Rush Limbaugh doing a fake Chinese accent, and Bill O'Reilly opening his Fox show last night with crack about a Chinese dinner that wasn't take out.

Meanwhile, on public television's Charlie Rose Show, the hour was spent with... Henry Kissinger. I had to go back to the Extra! archives to remember the Kissinger/China connection, which includes most notably his defense of the Chinese crackdown on Tienanmen Square. From Extra!, 10-11/89:

In recent months, Kissinger has used his high media profile in a spirited defense of China. In a Washington Post/L.A. Times column ("The Caricature of Deng as a Tyrant Is Unfair," 8/1/89), Kissinger argued against sanctions: "China remains too important for America's national security to risk the relationship on the emotions of the moment." He asserted: "No government in the world would have tolerated having the main square of its capital occupied for eight weeks by tens of thousands of demonstrators."

Kissinger's defense of China and other repressive governments has sometimes raised eyebrows. What it has not raised is tough questions from TV interviewers about Kissinger's business ties to these same governments. In a column alluding to FAIR's study that found Kissinger to be Nightline's most frequent guest, the Washington Post's Richard Cohen (8/29/89) sounded an urgent appeal: "Will someone please ask Henry Kissinger the 'C' question?" The "C" stands for conflict of interest.

When he's not pontificating in the media about foreign affairs, he's engaging in foreign financial affairs through his secretive consulting firm Kissinger & Associates. The firm, representing some 30 multinational companies--including American Express, H.J. Heinz, ITT and Lockheed--earns profits by "opening doors" for investors in China, Latin America and elsewhere (New York Times, 4/30/89).

A Wall Street Journal article by John Fialka ("Mr. Kissinger Has Opinions on China--and Business Ties," 9/15/89) reported that Kissinger also heads China Ventures, a company engaged in joint ventures with China's state bank. As its brochure explains, China Ventures invests only in projects that "enjoy the unquestioned support of the People's Republic of China." The Journal article was unusual in exploring the private business interests behind U.S. foreign policy, not the media's strong suit--even when, as in Kissinger's case, they are rolled into one person.

Did Charlie Rose want to interview someone on China with skin in the game? That would be a strange standard for public television.

Glenn Beck has expressed on-air desires to strangle Michael Moore with his own hands, beat Charles Rangel to death with a shovel, and once aired a sketch on his Fox News show that had him poisoning then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Appearing on the Today show this morning (1/19/11), responding to questions about his frequent murder fantasies (a specialty of Fox News personalities), Beck told host  Meredith Vieira that he was just being funny. Beck said the host should ask Jon Stewart and the Simpsons the same question. "Comedy is comedy," he explained.

Vieira did not point out that while Beck is a political commentator, the Simpsons is a cartoon, and Stewart is a comedian who is not known for fantasizing about the murder of people with whom he disagrees.

The reader can decide if continuous on-air fantasizing about the murderous deaths of one's political foes is okay, as long as one says he is joking.

I think it's a problem, not least because hateful jokes are not always harmless, and because it's often not clear when Beck is joking. After all, when one has just concluded a tirade against someone they portrayed as among the dark  forces trying to steal the country, with a whimsical fantasy about that someone's violent death--well, I think you get the point.

And sometimes Beck's violent fantasies are clearly not jokes.

In March 2003, Beck was one of the most energetic war mongers in the country. He was organizing and addressing pro-war rallies for his radio employer, Clear Channel, and using his national radio show to disparage and smear anti-war figures on a regular basis. In a program I heard on WABC-AM in New York City (3/16/03), Beck inveighed furiously against the anti-war activism of Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D.-Ohio), in a tirade that concluded with the host, in all angry sincerity, wishing to see Kucinich burned alive: "Every night I get down on my knees and pray that Dennis Kucinich will burst into flames."

But comedy is comedy, as Beck would say.

In his new book, Ron Reagan says he saw early signs of Alzheimer's disease in his father, Ronald Reagan, while the late president was still in the White House. When he said as much on ABC's 20/20 last Friday (1/14/11), he infuriated many on the right, including his older brother Michael Reagan.

Over the weekend, the older Reagan son took to Twitter, writing over the course of several messages, "My brother seems to want [to] sell out his father to sell books.... My father did not suffer from Alzheimer's in the '80s.... Ron, my brother, was an embarrassment to my father when he was alive and today he became an embarrassment to his mother."

Such angry denials in the supposed defense of his father's honor (it's apparently shameful to have Alzheimer's) garnered Michael Reagan much media attention, including an appearance on Fox's Hannity (1/17/11) where he denounced his brother, claiming "there's absolutely no evidence" that his father's Alzheimer's began while he was still president.

On CBS's Early Show (1/17/11), Michael Reagan repeated his denials. But what was most noteworthy about the CBS interview wasn't what Michael Reagan said, but what CBS journalist Erica Hill did not say.

In 1986, CBS's outgoing White House correspondent Leslie Stahl went to the White House to say goodbye to Reagan before moving on to another beat. She failed to report her dramatic observations at the time, a notable omission in itself, but recounted them in a 1999 book. As FAIR founder Jeff Cohen wrote about Stahl's belated findings at the time:

In her new book Reporting Live, former CBS White House correspondent Lesley Stahl writes that she and other reporters suspected that Reagan was "sinking into senility" years before he left office. She writes that White House aides "covered up his condition"--and journalists chose not to pursue it.

Stahl describes a particularly unsettling encounter with Reagan in the summer of 1986: her "final meeting" with the President, typically a chance to ask a few parting questions for a "going-away story." But White House press secretary Larry Speakes made her promise not to ask anything.

Although she'd covered Reagan for years, the glazed-eyed and fogged-up President "didn't seem to know who I was," writes Stahl. For several moments as she talked to him in the Oval Office, a vacant Reagan barely seemed to realize anyone else was in the room. Meanwhile, Speakes was literally shouting instructions to the president, reminding him to give Stahl White House souvenirs.

Panicking at the thought of having to report on that night's news that "the president of the United States is a doddering space cadet," Stahl was relieved that Reagan soon reemerged into alertness, recognized her and chatted coherently with her husband, a screenwriter. "I had come that close to reporting that Reagan was senile."

Stahl wasn't the only reporter to hold back. Nor were her bosses at CBS the only ones to pressure journalists to soften their coverage of Reagan, both of his policies and his person.

So CBS News failed to mention Stahl's dramatic story in 1986--and failed to mention it again in 2011.

UPDATE: Mother Jones' David Corn talks to Lesley Stahl about why she didn't report on Reagan's mental condition at the time.

Under the headline "Lawmakers Aiming to Increase Civility," the New York Times (1/17/11) reports from the front lines of the improved, post-Tucson political climate:

And the House speaker, John A. Boehner, used the phrase ''job-destroying'' instead of "job-killing'' in reference to the Democrats' healthcare overhaul in a speech to colleagues on Saturday--a subtle but pointed shift in tone, though not in substance.

Change is in the air!

On a serious note, this would suggest a shift from a mean-sounding, unsupported-by-the-facts attack on one's opponents to a slightly less mean-sounding, still fact-free attack on the Democrats and the Obama White House. As Dean Baker wrote at his Beat the Press blog today (1/18/11), many reports quote Republican politicians saying the new healthcare law is going to destroy jobs--without any suggestion that they should provide compelling evidence that this is in fact true.

Baker points to an AP "fact check" piece that does a good job of setting the evidence down--and showing that the Republicans have very little going for them. As he put it on Saturday:

In principle, reporters have the time to investigate allegations like the claim that the healthcare bill is costing jobs. Readers, on the other hand, do not. If the Republicans can make an untrue assertion and simply have it passed along as a credible statement because reporters do not do their jobs, then we should expect them to make even stronger statements. Perhaps we will soon be reading accusations from Republicans that President Obama and the Democrats are baby killers. After all, given the current practice of the national media, they would likely just pass the charge along as a reasonable statement about events in the world.

As we approach the Monday holiday, we're hearing a Pentagon lawyer suggest that Martin Luther King would support the war in Afghanistan. That makes it an ideal time to recall a 1995 column by FAIR founder Jeff Cohen and longtime associate Norman Solomon (Media Beat, 1/4/95). The full column appears below, and is archived here.

The Martin Luther King You Don't See on TV

by Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon

It's become a TV ritual: Every year in mid-January, around the time of Martin Luther King's birthday, we get perfunctory network news reports about "the slain civil rights leader."

The remarkable thing about this annual review of King's life is that several years--his last years--are totally missing, as if flushed down a memory hole.

What TV viewers see is a closed loop of familiar file footage: King battling desegregation in Birmingham (1963); reciting his dream of racial harmony at the rally in Washington (1963); marching for voting rights in Selma, Alabama (1965); and finally, lying dead on the motel balcony in Memphis (1968).

An alert viewer might notice that the chronology jumps from 1965 to 1968. Yet King didn't take a sabbatical near the end of his life. In fact, he was speaking and organizing as diligently as ever.

Almost all of those speeches were filmed or taped. But they're not shown today on TV.

Why?

It's because national news media have never come to terms with what Martin Luther King, Jr., stood for during his final years.

In the early 1960s, when King focused his challenge on legalized racial discrimination in the South, most major media were his allies. Network TV and national publications graphically showed the police dogs and bullwhips and cattle prods used against Southern blacks who sought the right to vote or to eat at a public lunch counter.

But after passage of civil rights acts in 1964 and 1965, King began challenging the nation's fundamental priorities. He maintained that civil rights laws were empty without "human rights"--including economic rights. For people too poor to eat at a restaurant or afford a decent home, King said, anti-discrimination laws were hollow.

Noting that a majority of Americans below the poverty line were white, King developed a class perspective. He decried the huge income gaps between rich and poor, and called for "radical changes in the structure of our society" to redistribute wealth and power.

"True compassion," King declared, "is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

By 1967, King had also become the country's most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his "Beyond Vietnam" speech delivered at New York's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967--a year to the day before he was murdered--King called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."

From Vietnam to South Africa to Latin America, King said, the U.S. was "on the wrong side of a world revolution." King questioned "our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America," and asked why the U.S. was suppressing revolutions "of the shirtless and barefoot people" in the Third World, instead of supporting them.

In foreign policy, King also offered an economic critique, complaining about "capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries."

You haven't heard the "Beyond Vietnam" speech on network news retrospectives, but national media heard it loud and clear back in 1967--and loudly denounced it. Life magazine called it "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi." The Washington Post patronized that "King has diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."

In his last months, King was organizing the most militant project of his life: the Poor People's Campaign. He crisscrossed the country to assemble "a multiracial army of the poor" that would descend on Washington--engaging in nonviolent civil disobedience at the Capitol, if need be--until Congress enacted a poor people's bill of rights. Reader's Digest warned of an "insurrection."

King's economic bill of rights called for massive government jobs programs to rebuild America's cities. He saw a crying need to confront a Congress that had demonstrated its "hostility to the poor"--appropriating "military funds with alacrity and generosity," but providing "poverty funds with miserliness."

How familiar that sounds today, more than a quarter-century after King's efforts on behalf of the poor people's mobilization were cut short by an assassin's bullet.

As 1995 gets underway, in this nation of immense wealth, the White House and Congress continue to accept the perpetuation of poverty. And so do most mass media. Perhaps it's no surprise that they tell us little about the last years of Martin Luther King's life.

Four months ago, Steve Rendall wrote here (9/10/10) about the militarization of the State Department and its role in the continuing occupation of Iraq--developments that were getting little attention amidst all the talk of the "end" of the war.

Now Aaron Davis of the Washington Post (1/14/11) fills in some of those details, writing that "the contours of a large and lasting American presence here are starting to take shape." Davis adds that:

Planning is underway to turn over to the State Department some of the most prominent symbols of the U.S. role in the war--including several major bases and a significant portion of the Green Zone.

The department would use the bases to house a force of private security contractors and support staff that it expects to triple in size, to between 7,000 and 8,000, U.S. officials said.

The piece is worth reading, despite its unfortunate headline: "U.S. Plans for Presence in Iraq After Pullout." Obviously, if you're planning on being present somewhere, then you're not really "pulling out."

Earlier this week (1/10/11) I wrote, given how short corporate media's memories are, "Let's hope that when someone convenes a civility in media discussion in 2020, they don't ask Glenn Beck to weigh in."

No need to wait that long. Time magazine has convened a panel to talk about civility in our public discourse. And the first contribution is from...well, take a look:

Now in fairness, the list is alphabetical.  But seriously-- was Michael Savage too busy?

USA Today (1/12/11) continues the tradition of dishonest reporting on the number of civilian casualties in Iraq. In a front-page article, reporter Tom Vanden Brook writes:

Estimates vary among organizations that have tried to count civilian dead, according to a review last year by the Congressional Research Service. The Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights reported that 85,694 Iraqi civilians died from insurgent attacks from 2004 through 2008. The Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, estimated that more than 111,000 Iraqis died from war-related incidents from 2003 through 2010.

So estimates vary between about 85,000 and 111,000, right? Wrong. As the Congressional Research Service report (10/7/10) that USA Today cites makes clear, the highest estimate from a credible source is over 1 million--that's the number from ORB (9/07), a respected British polling firm. That number is in line with the Johns Hopkins researchers (Lancet, 10/11/06) whose epidemiological survey came up with a likely total of 600,000 violent deaths for an earlier phase of the war.

Different groups, using different approaches to the complicated task of estimating loss of life in a war zone, have come up with a broad range of numbers for the death toll in Iraq. USA Today, however, seems to be using a simple guideline for whether to include such numbers in its reporting: Do they make the U.S. look good?

That's the only reportorial approach that could justify the story's inclusion of this bit of self-serving, evidence-free handwaving:

Despite the imprecision, [Pentagon spokesperson Col. Dave] Lapan said the military believes insurgents killed far more civilians than U.S. and allied forces have in Iraq. However, the military is unable to quantify the claim, he said.