I just caught the end of Amy Goodman's interview of Bill Moyers on Democracy Now. I happened to pick it up when he was discussing media & politics. Spot on, I would say.
AMY GOODMAN: Why do you think these candidates, the leading candidates of the Democratic supposedly opposition party, do not call for an immediate end to the war, do not call for single-payer healthcare?
BILL MOYERS: Because the media doesn’t allow complicated thought to be articulated in ways that enlighten instead of misinform people.
(snip)
Can I get an amen, brother?
After hearing this, how could you not want to hear the rest (this was the end of the interview) then go in search of the transcript.
AMY GOODMAN: Is it money in politics?
BILL MOYERS: Oh, it’s who, the big winners in all this money that’s being spent? Obama outspent Clinton three-to-one, and that was all in television ads. It’s the industry that doesn’t want to reform that benefits from the ads. Yes, it’s money in politics, and it’s the triumph of ambition for self over ambition for the country. You know, Mrs. Clinton has a very serious issue to wrestle with in the next seventy-two hours. Is this race about the country, or is it about the Clintons? And ambition and power and particularly the appetite to see the first woman, who happens to be the first wife of a former president, the Adams tradition, the Roosevelt tradition—I mean, that takes over.
This is exactly what Hillary should be thinking about. Her country and not herself. This is exactly why I'm an Obama supporter because he, by all measure, does put country first even after all the hell the media has put him through about Rev Wright. And Mr. Moyers says this about that:
Politics often exposes us to the corroding acid of the politics of personal destruction, but I’ve never seen anything like this, this wrenching break between pastor and parishioner. Both men, no doubt, will carry the grief to their graves. All the rest of us should hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America, where the gluttony of the nonstop media grinder consumes us all and prevents an honest conversation on race. It is the price we are paying for failing to heed the great historian Jacob Burckhardt, who said, "Beware the terrible simplifiers."
You'll forgive me, but when I heard the term 'terrible simplifiers', GWB was the first thing that popped into my head. Kinda like the word-association test.
The whole transcript is worth a read as he discusses quite a bit of his past with President Johnson & his roots with public TV all apparently discussed in his new book, 'Moyers on Democracy'. I had forgotten he quit PBS as a result of Rove's lacky that was put in charge.
I'm glad he'll be around to see the changing of the guard as it were. What a terrific journalist. I hope one of Obama's priorities will be to re-fund PBS and bring it back to its roots.
http://www.democracynow.org/...