"F.U." from The Nation

F.U.

No, not from us, from The Nation magazine. If you've missed the latest, lucky you. The rest of us have lived with the stink off the December 25, 2006 issue (that would be "the Christmas" issue for those who celebrate) for a bit now.

That's a big f.u.
To the tried and true
Watch us put the hammer down . . .

If the cover sang, that would be the song you hear. (Sing it to the tune of Jackson Browne's "Shaky Town" off Running for Empty.) The cover boasts the latest from the Susan Seaforth Hayes of independent media. That's been an in- joke for some time, but never was it more true than when we trudged through Christopher Hayes' "9/11 The Roots of Parnoia."

Backstory, in the seventies, NBC's Days of Our Lives decided, rather last minute, that they should address the issue of same-sex attraction. So Julie, played by Susan Seaforth Hayes (think Hope's mother/sister -- step-mother and half-sister -- for the younger readers), is chatting with a female neighbor who, it turns out, is interested in her. Julie freaks out and exits quickly. And that's where the Days of Our Lives' lesbian/bisexual storyline ended as well. (Well, actually the lesbian/bisexual ended up in the nut house and, you know this is coming, she wasn't really attracted to Julie, it was later revealed.)

Who kissed the Susan Seaforth Hayes of independent media, was our big question? SSH turns in another article not noted for facts (see this edition's "The Susan Seaforth Hayes of independent media") or for prose. (We did enjoy the second half which basically repeated what we'd said here some time ago.)

Now let's back up. 9/11 is an event most people are aware of. (We'd say "all" but . . .) The 9-11 Truth Movement is obviously bothering some people. Matthew Rothschild (The Progressive) elected to 'celebrate' 9-11 by rushing out his lengthy attempt at a book review (attention seeking behavior) on the anniversary this year. He earned the nickname "Drunk Uncle" because, as Kat put it, it was like visiting a warm, friendly uncle who suddenly grabs your breasts. Now Alexander Cockburn followed and one reader of The Progressive is mad that we had nothing to say about that. We actually did have something to say. C.I. says it and it's in a roundtable where Dona tells C.I. we do not have time left (in the round-table) to word it nicely.

But for those who don't get the difference between Cockburn and Rothschild, let's speak slowly: Cockburn's writing is angry, outraged and much more (we all enjoy Cockburn's writing). Rothschild? He generally comes off like the kind uncle. It's also true that Cockburn didn't rush out his piece so that it ran on the fifth anniversary of 9-11. But Cockburn, most important, didn't attempt to disprove or prove to any degree. The column he wrote can be summarized as, "It's not true. It's a waste of time. Others have addressed this at CounterPunch." Rothschild wanted to explore the 9-11 Truth Movement via a straw man and it was embarrassing to read.

But Rothschild need no longer feel that he's done the worst job. That honor goes to the Susan Seaforth Hayes of independent media. For laughs, someone please send us this on air promo Katrina vanden Heuvel did for this issue of The Nation. We can't remember if she called it an "exhaustively" researched article or what, we were laughing too hard, but we know she praised Susan's research. That should be hilarious to all familiar with the writer. (Again, see the "Susan Seaforth Hayes of Independent Media." Seriously.) The laughs just kept coming when the issue arrived. This is research? Susan's read Popular Mechanics.

That's research for those who believe that all the hard hitting scientific research today is being done in the Populars (Mechanics and Psychology). For those with a brain, not so fast. In the interests of an informed public, we'll now reprint the entire research from Susan's article:

In March 2005 Popular Mechanics assembled a team of engineers, physicists, flight experts and the like to critically examine some of the Truth movement's most common claims. They found them almost entirely without merit. To pick just one example, steel might not melt at 1,500 degrees, the temperature at which jet fuel burns, but it does begin to lose a lot of strength, enough to cause the support beams to fail.

And that is it for the laughable research that Katrina vanden Heuvel so breathlessly pants over in the on air promo for this edition. In doing so, she calls into question her own research habits. (We'll leave that for the online latter day Dylan to tackle. He has it out for her.) Matthew Rothschild created a straw man, his own false Frankenstein, in order to refute. We're not praising what he did. We will note that however he misused his research, he did do some. Susan?

Well for Susan, that probably does pass for research.

And one can also give Rothschild some credit for being first out of the gate this time of year. One can even note that his piece had an additional purpose besides slamming, he was 'reviewing' books on the topic.

There's no such excuse for Susan's 'work.' And that's why it's a big F.U. to the readers of The Nation. This crap is a cover story.

Now The Nation works overtime to ignore conspiracies -- real or imagined -- and if that's news to anyone, sorry to burst bubbles. That may be why it avoided the historical roots of the NSA, illegal, warrantless spying. God forbid the readers know what the government actually has done in the past.

We stated our feelings re: 9-11 Truth Movement in an article sometime ago, one Susan appears to have read. (Maybe that was research as well?) But to summarize it briefly, we don't have the time. If someone else does, have at it. Bonnie Faulkner has done intelligent, probing work on the issue. We applaud her for that. We know people avoided the topic like crazy and we know, unlike Susan, Faulkner is a serious journalist. On that and on other topics, Faulkner continues to demonstrate that there is not an off-limits and that she won't be brow beaten into silence. That's so much braver than anything Susan could ever dream of doing. (Faulkner hosts Guns and Butter, which airs on KPFA Wednesdays at one p.m. PST.)

We don't slam anyone involved in the Truth Movement. If someone is interested in that topic or a part of that movement and starts a conversation, we always listen. We think skepticsm is very important (a point we made months ago and one Susan trots out in his article). We also do not believe that the truth has been told about 9-11 and we think anyone who feels it has left the factory with too few screws. The Truth Movement has and will continue to unearth information. That's true of anything people dedicate their lives to researching.

We're also aware that 'conspiracy' could have tagged those who originally claimed the world was round and not flat. We could offer many other examples. We salute those citizen researchers who are tireless and involved. To repeat, they have made a difference and will continue to do so. Anyone who thinks otherwise should compare the once official story and the ever altering one of 9-11.

We're even more of the opinion that if you're going to scream "conspiracy" theory, you should be upfront about your own faith -- which does include religion. If you think people who believe in a god are nuts, you should let readers know that. Especially if you're attempting to make the case that the Truth Movement rests on 'faith.' If you're deriding them for what you see as a 'faith-based' belief as opposed to a reality-based one, you should be sure that everyone reading you knows exactly what you think of 'faith.' (All but one of us believe in a higher power, for anyone wondering.)

We're sure that there are readers of The Nation (or there were readers before Susan's story appeared) who are members of the Truth Movement. We're sorry if they paid for money for that crap issue. (We'll assume that they, like most of us, are subscribers who get stuck with whatever piece of crap gets squeezed out lately. Those who bought the nonsense at a store have only themselves to blame because they could have read it before purchasing.) And for those readers, we're genuinely sorry. We're sorry that your money's good enough for the magazine (in subscriptions as well as donations) but you aren't. (As one friend told the core six last week, "Well they cleared that up.") You got a personal F.U. from the magazine.

But we think everyone got an F.U. We think putting Susan's garbage in the magazine was nothing but an F.U. to readers. Exactly how is that article timely or needed? Who was saying, "Man, I wish The Nation would weigh in on the 9-11 Truth Movement?" (Who was saying that who actually pays for the magazine as opposed to . . .) No one. No one was asking for it. No one needed it.

And it certainly didn't require a cover unless the intent was to be sure readers got that they were being flipped off.

For over a year now, The Nation has wasted everyone's time as it hopped and bopped along from topic to topic. The magazine, like the Democratic Party they can't stop cheerleading, has no focus. It has been bad before but it has never jerked from print issue to issue over topics and issues. You think it's building up a head of steam on something and then, apparently plauged with ADD, it's off somewhere else in the next issue.

It's an out of focus travelogue that grazes but never lands. It's not a case of utilizing a broad vista, it's a case of having no vision.

Week in and week out, there's never time to address the war. As C.I. noted Tuesday of last week:

Also on today's Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman interviewed lefty mag Poster Boy Sherrod Brown and asked him what he would say to US war resisters such as Ehren Watada who think the war is immoral and illegal and the poster boy replied, "I don't know, I don't know what you say to them." [Goodman interviewed Watada's mother, Carolyn Ho, yesterday.] When asked by Goodman if there should be "pressure on the military not to prosecute these men and women who . . . are saying the war is wrong," Poster Boy replied, "I don't know. . . . I don't know the answer to that." Possibly had the leading magazines of the left, The Nation and The Progressive, put war resisters on the cover or printed even one article on them in 2006, the Poster Boy might have been prompted to consider the issue?
The Progressive ran two photos, November 2006 issue, in their multi-page photo eassay. The two photos (by Jeff Paterson of Not In Our Name), on a page of five photos, were of war resister Ricky Clousing. The Nation has provided nothing in their print edition. ["Leading" is based on circulation. Left Turn has published an article, in print, on Watada. Off Our Backs and Ms. have dedicated entire issues to war and peace this year.]
While the New York Times and the Washington Post, two leading mainstream, daily papers, have covered the war resisters (the Times has done major stories on both Watada and Clousing) and a leading wire service (the Associated Press) has significantly covered the war resistance within the US military, leading magazines of the left continue to avoid the topic and 2006 may end without either The Nation or The Progressive providing one single print article on war resisters. No wonder the Poster Boy feels comfortable avoiding the issue.
While the magazines have repeatedly avoided the issue, one of the Iraq stories of 2006 has been the war resistance within the military. Kyle Snyder, Ehren Watada, Darrell Anderson, Joshua Key, Ivan Brobeck, Ricky Clousing, Mark Wilkerson, Camilo Meija, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Jeremy Hinzman, Corey Glass, Patrick Hart, Clifford Cornell, Agustin Aguayo, Joshua Despain, Katherine Jashinski, and Kevin Benderman are part of an ever growing movement of resistance within the military. Speaking last Thursday with Nora Barrows-Friedman on KPFA's Flashpoints, Kyle Snyder noted that more war resisters who have not yet gone public are planning to in the coming months. (Snyder also noted that he meets war resisters who have self-checked out as he speaks around the country.)
The failure of the leading magazines of the left to cover this story stands as one of the biggest barriers of a free flow of information on the issue of the illegal war. It also calls to question, for many politically active college students across the United States, the magazines' committment to ending the illegal war -- more so for The Nation which is a weekly and which managed to mention Carl Webb in an article this year but failed to note that he was a war resister. (Webb was quoted in the context of an article on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.) [For what is focused while Iraq is avoided see the parody "The Elector."]

Now before some dumb ass writes in, "The Nation did two storeis on Ehren Watada!" -- we're talking about the print edition. We pay for the magazine, we don't just visit the website. And only a dumb ass who thinks they read the magazine but doesn't would offer up the two stories on Ehren Watada since they never ran in the print edition.

They had time, repeatedly, to profile Democratic candidates and ponder them (whether they were left, center or right) and they had plenty of time to waste -- but not on our damn dime.

There are writers we enjoy at the magazine. We all now flip to Katha Pollitt, Alexander Cockburn, David Corn and Patricia J. Williams. (We all now flip? C.I. finally gave up on reading the crap cover to cover.) We think those four demonstrate everything that's wrong with the rest of the magazine. How so? To use only one example, David Corn is the DC columnist. He is not the media beat guy. So why is that he, and not AlterPunk, was the one at the magazine seriously examing Bob Woodward's tortured conflicts of interests?

Corn and, outside the magazine, Arianna Huffington were all over the issue but the media beat guy, AlterPunk, was doing another scattershot column that never adds up to anything, that usually misses the point or declares a 'first' when it's only part of a long, long line of errors by whichever outlet he's criticizing.

Who needs his babbling? Someone does, someone requires a lot of babbling males which is why in the last three years one male after another's been added while women can hardly get a foot in the door. Want to explain how that happens when the magazine is under the helm of a woman?
How well did sad sack fetch the coffee that someone decided he is the go-to contributor to the magazine? Or maybe his 'jokes' about Alexander Cockburn were so 'delightful' that it required promoting him to writer?

We're not sure but we know he'll never do half of what Alexander Cockburn does in one year because pasty-faced little centrists never amount to much and they sure as hell don't belong at The Nation. What's going on behind the scenes, intentional or not, is a realignment politically and most long term "loyalist" are starting to catching on. Subscribers in general are catching on which is why the magazine that once trumpeted their circulation figures is now being mum about all the cancellations and expired subscriptions.

That happens when you have no direction and when your only purpose now appears to be electing Democrats (any Democrats!) to get a majority who . . . will do nothing or very little.

Last week, Carne Ross' statements to the 2004 Butler inquiry in England (over whether or not the BBC's report that facts were 'fixed,' and who said they were, was correct) were unsealed for the public. Where's the story on that? Not at the website and it does matter because it was The New York Review of Books and not The Nation that printed the Downing Street Memos.

Let's repeat that because it's an important point: The New York Review of Books published the Downing Street Memos, not The Nation. How does that happen? Well, when you dabble as opposed to lead, it happens quite often.


The failure to lead is why the magazine didn't run one article on war resisters this year. (War resisters who were profiled as war resister. The Nation did manage to mention Carl Webb in an article on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, it just didn't tell readers that Webb was a war resister.) The illustration to the left is the cover you didn't see all year from The Nation -- not on Kyle Snyder, not on any war resister. Nor did they manage to cover any of the war resisters in Canada or the ones turning themselves in even though this was one of the biggest stories of 2006. How do you manage that when you're a weekly, when all summer it was one war resister after another going public? How do you manage to miss that?

Maybe because you've been so damn busy hiding behind flags and uniforms that you can't cover the enlisted who go AWOL? Maybe because you find the topic distasteful? (If so, issue an inneroffice memo to that effect, some people would stop grumbling about the silence and leave the magazine.) Or maybe you're so damn busy trying to be 'respectable' to the outside world that you can't serve the readers?

That's all Susan's story was. An attempt to please the mainstream. There was no reason to cover the topic, there was nothing in the 'researched' article that was new or interesting. But, hey, it might allow for the 'respectable' sheen.

That's why ex-generals were a cover. It's 'respectable' to hide behind them. It's not brave. But there's been no bravery at all on Iraq. After the 2005 editorial that the magazine wouldn't support any candidate who wasn't calling for an end to the war, 2006 was non-stop puff pieces on Democrats who didn't call for an end to the war. If the editorial meant anything a year later, it meant that those candidates who were actually calling for troops home now would have gotten coverage. That would be using your power as opposed to hiding it so no one called you a bad name.

But there was time for that. There's time for the tag team of Dumb and Dumber to write their "More College Students Voted! So We're Going To Talk To The Ones Who Didn't!" and yet another hideous "red" state and "blue" state comparison -- thought pieces for the non-thinking and racists. (Toss in the "suburbs" piece as well.)

Actually covering the war? Please. They found an officer they could hide behind, a major. He should have been one of the 'fighting' vets running for office in 2006 because his thinking was as muddled as any of those 'geniuses.'

After the election, The Nation wanted to tell you the election was all about the war. If that is their belief, if people care that much about the war, why hasn't the magazine been covering it?
(Again, dumb asses, don't write us and say, "They just did a piece by Joshua Scheer . . ." No, they didn't. The website reposted Scheer's piece from Truthdig. Truthdig, still not a year-old, has covered the war more than The Nation has all year long.)

And that's why the cover of the December 25th issue is a big F.U. to the readers. They'd rather throw something on the cover (a badly written article at that) on a topic they don't believe in than cover what they supposedly believe: Ending the war.

And on those rare occassions when Iraq is covered, it's not the people, not we the people, it's an official or a general. The war resistance movement has received no coverage. Marc Cooper has an article online that won't run in a print edition in 2006 on Appeal for Redress. When Ruth noted the classist stance of hiding behind officers and generals, Appeal for Redress suddenly got a blog post at the magazine's website. But Appeal for Redress, whose petition is turned over on MLK day in January, will have gone all year without one print article.

Is it "a war"? (Only those who don't grasp how much C.I.'s bit the tongue while participating would even ask that question.) No, it's a refusal to accept bad independent media. It's a refusal to accept so-called independent media that wants to ape the mainstream media by making it all about officials. It's a refusal to accept that this is the best The Nation can do.

The Nation should be leading instead it plays it cautious. Those who visit the website saw that last week when Katrina vanden Heuvel weighed in on the death of a spy. It was a Russia story, her area of expertise. It had been brewing in the media for some time. We haven't noted it at any community site, we knew it was a media circus and we had more important things to focus on. So vanden Heuvel weighs in last week, obviously irritated and the question has to be: Why wait so long?

This was a media circus for some time, full of half-truths and associations. Possibly, like us, she felt it wasn't worthy of noting and then it got so outlandish that she had to weigh in? But when that's your field of expertise, people expect you to weigh in. Seventeen days is an awfully long time to form an opinion. Or, more likely, to express one.

It's another example of how The Nation could be leading but isn't.

Whenever any of us speak to students (high school or college), it's not very long before the topic of The Nation is raised by one and, more and more, that quickly leads to a lengthy discussion of the magazine as they point out everything that's not being covered and the useless crap that is being covered. Last week, Jess was with C.I. at a college where they ended up having to use a dry erase board and note the problems the students saw with the magazine before they could address any other aspect of the war. They ended up with thirty examples on the dry erase board before C.I. asked if they needed to give more examples of if the topic could change? The topic changed (but would have continued if that's what the students had wanted).

If The Nation thinks it can build a long term audience with students of today on the basis of its current work, it's kidding itself. While some are waiting for the return of Naomi Klein others are too new to the magazine to know her work and have a hard time believing that it was ever published in the magazine. It probably wouldn't be today if Klein wasn't established because the magazine can rah-rah and run any scribble by the increasing cast of male writers, but they can't seem to find women worth keeping. Possibly that's why Marie Claire had the article that should have run in The Nation? Or maybe Marie Claire's just more interested in Iraq than is The Nation?

As the magazine continues to dally and dilly and ignore Abeer, war resisters, the peace movement and so much more, it flips the bird at the readers each week. Students are noticing and they aren't the only ones. Older adults are comparing the current stage of the magazine to Torch Song -- where Joan Crawford's surrounded by untalented, young, suck up males. There's a reason for that and until the magazine finds a direction, it should expect to continue to bleed readers.