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(Sargent Shriver and Peace Corps Volunteers - an abundance of optimism)
The Peace Corps came about as the result of The New Frontier - the brainchild of the Kennedy administration. In 1961 a program was set up to get Americas youth involved in the world by going overseas to help set up schools, libraries, infrastructure - anything to be of service where it was needed. A nice idea, and one which captured the imaginations of thousands of young adults wanting to be part of the optimistic change that was so prevalent in the 1960s.
R. Sargent Shriver was given the task of setting the agency up. He was its first architect. He was also given the task of having to explain just what it was he planned on doing. And so he went on the talk show circuit to lay out in plain terms, just what the Peace was and what it wasn't.One of those talk shows was CBS News' Capitol Cloakroom from October 1961.
Nancy Hanschman (CBS News): “Are your Peace Corps men expected to proselytize to Democracy in any way at all? What is the briefing you give them on this?
Sargent Shriver: “ Well we give them a lot of instruction in American history and government and theory in government and political life and we expect that when they’re asked questions by the people in their foreign country they’ll be able to give them intelligent, informed answers. We don’t go out there and tell them ‘now here is Course Number 101 in American Government – sell this, if you can to the people in the Philippines.’ They’re not out there as traveling salesman, they’re not out there to get up on a soapbox and give a speech. But they are supposed to be out there as well informed, intelligent Americans, able to respond to questions, and even to tough questions from people in foreign countries.”
The Peace Corps became a great success and did a lot to improve our somewhat sagging reputation throughout the world.
And considering the number of "yanqui go home" placards from demonstrations around the world that graced most newspaper front pages and nightly newscasts through the 1950s, that was a good thing.
Obama officials went on the offensive on the talk show circuit last Sunday, reminding America and the corporate media that Fox News is not a legitimate news organization.
Staying true to their entertainment format, on Monday Fox News responded by putting up a poll on their website and what do you know...all of the choices are incorrect and none of them allow for the possibility that Obama is right.
What a knee-slapper! Feel free to re-write your own reality-based poll for them in the comments.
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To the Villagers, the left have to be the ones to always, always compromise. If a president dares to govern to the left, it's mutiny in the Beltway. I don't remember the media getting all too upset when Bush's wingnut base freaked out over immigration reform and killed it. Tom Tancredo was invited to go on every talk show there was and even ran for president on it.
Tweety goes on and on saying the Democrats never even had fifty votes so if they wanted to use reconciliation they never had the votes to do it anyway, so they are just total failures. Really, Tweety? I wonder where he got his information from. A 900 number maybe...the Psychic Network...
Matthews: Yeah, so a lot of this has been talk, so Vick you pick up on this. Given the fact that the Senate's not going to approve a public option because they can't get any where near sixty...
Right...
...and by the way I'm wondering were they ever going to get fifty.
Yeah.And all these guys are going through reconciliation-- we're going to ram it through-- they never had fifty! Okay, that's just my hunch and my belief.
Matthews: And I would argue that if you're going to be the party that believes in government, which the Democrats do believe more than Republicans do, they believe in positive government-- you have to be able to govern and prove that you're affective at governing. If you blow it, you can't say you believe in government because you've failed at government. Thank you very much. That's a little redundant.
WTF does this mean? If you believe in government, but you fail to pass a bill---does that mean you don't believe in government? Isn't that what governing is all about? Republicans just say they hate the government so they can get elected to work FOR the government. Conservatives make a lot of money being IN the government, you freaking buffoon.
This type of health-care reform has never been done before. Ever. And with idiots on my dial only talking bullshit it really makes it hard for working families to ever get a fair shake. The Villagers like Tweety, with their million-dollar houses, actually think they represent average working-class families, but his rant just shows a lack of understanding about the basic workings of how political parties operate in America.
What does it mean to Chris when Bush (at one time Chris Matthews got very warm and fuzzy looking at the codpiece) failed to privatize Social Security? Lucky for us he didn't get a chance to destroy that also. OK...NEXT!
WALLACE: ...That’s exactly my position: I think Fox News Sunday is a truly fair and balanced show.
O’REILLY: You’re not an ideological show at all.
WALLACE: No. And it’s like they refuse to take “yes” for an answer. There’s a kind of childishness or pettiness about them…
O’REILLY: You know, that’s a…it’s an immaturity that if you don’t …if you don’t hold our line, we’re just gonna ice you.
He used to maintain the appearance of a neutral talk show because the media would never dare to call out a fellow Villager even though we've been exposing him for years now as a political hack.
Chris Wallace continued to criticize the president Sunday. "Every president is thin-skinned, but I wonder whether this administration, this White House, has a particular problem with criticism," he said.
His rating were always terrible for FOX on the Sunday Talk Show circuit and on Sept 13, he remained firmly at the bottom of the barrel. And ratings are the GOD that drives all TV shows, but I still find it unlikely that Rupert will fire him.
The subsequent whining and childish name-calling from Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace became incessant and, of course, revealed more about the bitter and bruised host than it did the White House. No doubt the pity party that the thin-skinned journalist threw for himself in the wake of the embarrassing snub was genuine. But it went on for so many days and became so consuming that it seemed there was more to it than Wallace being forced to watch the Obama newsmaking parade from the sidelines. I think the slow-motion temper tantrum perhaps reflected Wallace's larger realization that his days of being taken seriously as a journalist are fading and that he can no longer be associated with the collectively unhinged Fox News family and maintain any dignity in the process.
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By contrast, Fox News anchor Shepard Smith had the courage and the decency earlier this year to call out the right-wing "crazies" on the fringe who targeted Obama and were feeding off incessant, conspiratorial hatred -- hate "that's not based in fact," as Smith stressed. (Naturally, right-wingers online immediately called for Smith's firing.) At least that Fox anchor expressed a commonsense concern about what that kind of raw, irrational hostility does to a democracy. But not Wallace. He knows to sit on his hands and to keep his mouth shut.
Except, of course, when he's not busy spreading nonsense like the charade about the "death book," an absolutely absurd conspiracy theory that Wallace must have known came without even the faintest hint of reality to it. (Here's the theory: In order to contain health care costs, the federal government under Obama is using a booklet on end-of-life counseling to urge U.S. veterans to kill themselves; it's trying to convince them that their lives aren't worth living.)
It was the type of patented foolery you'd expect a proud partisan like Sean Hannity to push. But it was Wallace who signed on as the smear's chief sponsor. It was Wallace who sat through two Fox News Sunday segments teasing out purposefully ignorant questions about how bureaucrats were trying to off veterans. Wallace played dumb like it was an Olympic sport. While the other Sunday shows were at least trying to engage in actual civic debate, Wallace spent his Sunday clowning on air.
And as a bonus, Wallace may have made the single dumbest statement uttered on a Sunday-morning talk show this year. Playing dumb, Wallace wanted to know why anyone would think about end-of-life counseling unless they're, you know, dying [emphasis added]:
Usually people don't even contemplate end of life until they're in an irreversible coma.
Flash to Wallace: When somebody slides into in "an irreversible coma," it's a little late for them to begin end-of-life counseling.
With the "death book" production, Wallace didn't merely engage in lazy journalism or allow his guest to sidestep important questions, he served as archetype -- as a co-sponsor -- of the debacle. He plucked the story (a smear campaign, really) from relative obscurity, and then he trampled the facts in hopes of launching the story nationally...read on
Maybe FOX will decide to bump him and make Glenn Beck the host of their Sunday Morning talk show. You know, a kind of Jerry Springer format for politics where white supremacists come on and throw chairs at African American guests and other guests call each other racists and socialists and Beck hands out apple pie to them as long as they agree to spend a week in his imaginary FEMA camps whose existence he can't disprove.
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Sen. Bernie Sanders' appearance on the Rachel Maddow show last week really stuck in Bill O'Reilly's craw like a chicken bone, so he tried to spit it out by naming Sanders a "Pinhead" on The O'Reilly Factor last night.
Here's what Sanders said:
Sanders: We need to do grass roots organizing. I'll tell you what else we need to do. We need to understand that it is very, very hard for the president or anybody else to take on, not just the Republican Party - that's the easy part - to take on all of right-wing talk radio which covers 90 percent of talk show hosts, a whole FOX Network which is nothing more than an arm of the Republican Party.
O'Reilly's response: To make fun of Sanders' thick New England accent and insist that Sanders' charge was "false" -- though of course he had no way of proving otherwise. Especially since Sanders is saying something every sane person who watches Fox (admittedly, those numbers are shrinking) can see for themselves.
Though to be more precise, Fox actually is an arm of movement conservatism, and the GOP is the movement's political home. So they are both components of the same ideological movement, which means that Fox isn't really an arm of the GOP, but rather its ideological partner and cohort. The difference, though, is purely a matter of nuance, since the result and effect are exactly the same.
I was driving home from an acupuncture appointment yesterday and I flipped on LA's wingnut radio station. Larry Elder was doing one of his " The Word" segments I guess and he was criticizing Michelle Obama for finally being proud of America.
“Hope is making a comeback and, let me tell you, for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country. Not just because Barack is doing well, but I think people are hungry for change,” she said during a rally in downtown Milwaukee.
I wish I had the audio, but in typical wingnut fashion, Elder read off his jingoistic list of reasons why he's been proud of America for so many years. From what I can remember of his speech---and since the economy is in total shambles, ole Larry had to compare us with Greece. America is better than living in Greece, isn't it? And he talked about some time he spent in Italy a number of years ago and his big complaint was that the power would go out occasionally. How quickly we forget the comforts of America, he alluded to. I guess Elder must have forgotten all the power outages in LA when it gets a little too hot in the summer.
He brought up Bush 41's high approval rating right after the the first Gulf war. He was so proud. And then he threw in Bush 43's high approval ratings after we toppled the Taliban. Over 70%, he said. Wow, what memories....Aren't the Taliban back by the way, Larry? Was he proud of the Iraq war, or the way Bush handled Hurricane Katrina? Was he proud about the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the massive housing foreclosures? Is he proud of Larry Craig and Mark Foley? He didn't say. I'm sure he was proud of David Vitter though. I bet he gave him an in-studio standing ovation just like the Republicans did. Anyway, Elder, I was so proud of your list of denial.
Send him an email to sage@larryelder.com and tell him how proud you are of the Republicans in power. I'll try to stay off that radio station next time and find KJAZZ, but please Larry--- keep wanking away.
