Betty: Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, said some disgusting things and the media's rushing to protect him as is Barack. Barack Obama was not the person insulted. Black people were insulted and that no one in the press is screaming over his use, in 2008, of the word "Negro" is appalling.
Ty: We wrote it as a short piece, the article we did on this for this edition, and that was mainly because it is upsetting. Betty's not the only one upset. I'm appalled. We have a line in it that says something like, if he uses "Negro" when he's feeling happy, what's he calling us when he's unhappy? It's a question worth asking.
Jim: "We" on that article is Betty, Ty, Cedric, Ann, Stan and Marcia. They wrote the article. Ty was originally planning for it to be a Ty's Corner piece and to tackle it himself. Ty, what changed that?
Ty: What Betty and I are talking about, a White man, supposedly a liberal, using the term "Negro" in 2008. When I heard the story, and I heard it on radio, it was about "light skinned" -- Barack being "light skinned" and they didn't really go into the entire story or mention that Harry Reid had used the N-word.
Cedric: I heard it on the radio as well, different station, different area of the country. And I figured it would be touched on here. Maybe in a silly article, something written to get a laugh. And I was tossing around a few ideas for that. Then Betty is just furious and I'm not getting why and Ann's explaining to me what's going on.
Ann: Right. Same radio station, Cedric and I listen to the same radio stations. But I heard an early report and had heard of the word "Negro." Once Barack decided it was okay -- a decision he can't make -- our local radio station dropped the word "Negro" from their report.
Stan: I was different. I saw it online first. And it didn't really register. I think I was just disgusted by Reid's entire remarks. However, around the second or third story I read, I started asking myself, "Why aren't they making an issue of Harry Reid using 'Negro' to refer to Black people?"
Marcia: And that's when my cousin called me. Stan calls me and asks me about it and I've missed the story because it's Saturday and I'm doing my weekend stuff. So I do like a lot of us, I pull up three to five different articles on the same story. And I'm flipping from one to the next and at the end of the five, no one's raised the issue of Reid using "Negro." Hate to break it to White America, but somewhere around the dawn of the seventies, that term stopped being used.
And I do find it insulting.
Betty: We all do. We're not talking about its use by historically Black organization where the "N" in their name stands for Negro. We're talking about someone using it in 2008. What does that say? To me, it's very insulting. And, no, Barack is not Black. It's not about him. It's about us. It's about Black America, we're the ones being insulted by Harry Reid.
Jim: Okay. We're highlighting a statement Diane Rehm made on her NPR show Thursday this week. Ruth, you wrote about it in "E.P.A. pressures Diane Rehm not to cover mountaintop mining." What's going on?
Ruth: The Barack Obama administation has said 101 different things regarding the coal industry. Diane Rehm decided to explore the topic on her show. When her people called the EPA to see if they'd like to provide someone to appear on the next day's show, they complained that 24 hours wasn't enough time for them to prepare and they informed her that they wished she wouldn't cover the topic.
Jim: Which really isn't a statement the government needs to be making to any news outlet -- especially one like NPR which does depend upon government funding. Diane Rehm addressed this on the broadcast?
Ruth: Yes. She introduced her guests and then, before the discussion started, she explained what had happened.
Jim: Okay. There was a lot of media criticism last week. Ann, that includes you.
Ann: Marcia, Trina and C.I. had a suggestion. I gladly grabbed it. I'm following the number of male guests KPFA's The Morning Show books and how many females and it's not pretty. And it hasn't been pretty which is why they suggested I grab it. Some days I'll comment on the show. Most of the time, I'll blog about something else but tell you the guest ratio. Now in my Friday post, I was too mad at that idiot Aimee Allison to do the guest ratio.
Jim: Right and Jess wanted to talk about that. Jess?
Jess: There are a number of things to say and some we'll say in the editorial that we're supposed to do right after this. However, the one thing that Ann and I share that others participating don't is that we're Green Party members. Aimee Allison is supposed to be a Green Party member but her disgusting on air cheerleading for Barack Obama -- in 2008, in 2009 -- indicates otherwise. I'm as sick of it as Ann is. And I'm glad she called it out.
Jim: But no one's as sick as C.I. who three up four times in a row before we started this and she may not speak as a result. She and Ava are taking notes as usual, but if she doesn't speak that's why. Elaine, you're covering an audio as well.
Elaine: Right. I'll be grabbing Connect the Dots with Lila Garrett most Mondays. It airs on KPFK. I don't know how long I'll follow it -- that'll probably depend on how long I can put up with the crap -- but as long as I'm following it, I'll write about it. I'm grabbing it because Ruth has enough to grab. Especially on Mondays when she'd prefer to write about WBAI's new program Women's Media Center. So I'll grab it. Lila does great monologues. Then she does her interviews with all these pathetic Democrats pushing that the answer to our ills is to vote Democrat.
Mike: Let me jump in. Democrats have the White House. Democrats control the House. Democrats control the Senate. This "Vote Democrats" line is a joke. What? They need 100 Senators in the Senate to get anything done? This is insane.
Jim: I agree with you. Mike, speaking of radio, you used to cover Law & Disorder on WBAI. Not anymore?
Mike: I listen every few weeks. I've seen no reason to cover it. I don't know what's up with the Michaels. They're too damn scared to call out Barack. It's embarrassing. They used to act like they were the bravest in the world. Now? It's embarrassing. Maybe if Dalia Hashad was still part of the show we could get some truth telling.
Trina: Can I jump in? I just want to note one thing and this can count as my thing. Where are the pledge gifts? I ask because one of my readers e-mailed at the end of December asking me. He pledged to WBAI during their summer pledge drive, during the Law & Disorder slot. He pledged to get the MP3s of Law & Disorder. They took his payment, credit card, immediately. But they never sent the gift. He wanted to know exactly how long he was supposed to wait. I told him I'd ask around and I honestly forgot until right now.
Jim: Okay. Who wants to grab?
Dona: I'll grab. I've pledged to KPFA now that we live out in the Bay Area. KPFA gets you the gift immediately -- unless it's Democracy Now! which operates its own thing. But the KPFA programs get you your pledge gift immediately. Now before we moved out to C.I.'s, Ty, Jess, Ava, Jim and I lived in New York. When any of us donated to WBAI, it might be a year before you got the gift -- if you ever got the gift.
C.I.: WBAI's turnover in management includes a new management aware that there have been serious problems with the pledge gifts. If you haven't received a pledge gift within three months of your pledge, you should contact WBAI. If you're a community member -- and only if you're a community member -- you can contact me and I'll raise the issue to find out what's going on.
Jim: Okay. Thanks. Wally, Kat, Isaiah, Rebecca and Ava, we still need to hear from you before we wrap up.
Wally: Yeah, I'll jump in right now, Jim. I'll jump in and talk about Iraq. Kat, Ava, C.I. and I go around talking about Iraq. We've got our weekly Iraq feature here that will go up today and in it we're talking about how the Iraq Inquiry is just being ignored. And, as someone who does talk about the Inquiry on campuses and to various groups, I want to add that there is real surprise that an inquiry into the war is taking place and it is not being covered in the US. People are surprised by this, they're shocked by it. It's an establishment inquiry and I don't think anyone on the left expects that it will bring us 'closure' or anything like that. But there are a lot of things emerging that are important and you're going to miss them if you're not following the Inquiry.
Jim: Okay. Tell us one thing you've learned from the Inquiry?
Wally: I won't just note the two big items from last week because we include them in the article for this edition. So let me think a second. Okay, I'd say that when Tony Blair was Prime Minister, the British staff in Iraq, civilian staff, were hearing from the people under him daily. Sometimes more than that. They'd be called and told, paraphrase, 'I'm meeting with the prime minister in X hours, what is going on right now?' But when Gordon Brown becomes Prime Minister? That's gone. And he became prime minister in June 2007. Over a year before England pulled out the bulk of their troops from Iraq. And I think you can draw a line between his policies of continuing the illegal war that Blair started with Barack continuing the illegal war that Bush started and how both Brown and Barack don't give a damn.
Kat: And I'll jump in on that. There's real interst, as Wally pointed out, in the Iraq Inquiry when we speak. People are unaware of it. They often don't know it's taking place or that it's been ongoing. There is so little US coverage of it. And when you bring it up, people are genuinely interested. They'll have questions afterwards, after we're done speaking, questions that they didn't want to ask in front of everyone. In part, because they feel stupid because this is something they don't about. They shouldn't feel stupid or embarrassed. That should fall back on the media -- on all the media, big and small -- for not covering it. But there's huge interest. I don't care if we're speaking to a high school group, a college group, a labor group, a seniors group or a women's group, there is huge interest. "What are they discussing?" "What are they finding out?" "Will Tony Blair testify?" There's just huge, huge interest.
Isaiah: Okay, I didn't have a topic but I can jump onto Iraq. First off, Tony Blair is going to testify -- as Kat and Wally know. But think about. We get it from C.I. and we get other things from Ava and C.I. in the newsletters, like Spanish media, for example. But this is in English. If it were being held in France, we'd say, "Oh, well, they can't broadcast it because they'd need subtitles." This is in London. The witnesses are speaking in English. What's the excuse for not covering it? Every big newspaper and every media outlet has reporters or stringers in England. I've seen one article by Walter Pincus for The Washington Post, I've seen one article by John F. Burns for The New York Times and two articles by a woman with The Los Angeles Times whose name I don't know.
C.I.: .
Isaiah: Thank you. And that's all I've seen and I read a lot. All these outlets, all this money, and they can't cover it. And of course Amy Goodman's never done one segment on it. She can take her trashy ass over to Copenhagen for that staged crap but she can't cover what's happening in England? She can spend two weeks in Copenhagen but can't cover the Iraq War she rode to fame?
Jim: I'd agree with that. And it's shocking the veil that's been drawn over Iraq.
Rebecca: Well we live in a fog because people don't want to admit that Barack didn't end the Iraq War. So the Out of Iraq caucus disbands so they won't have to hold him accountable. And Tom Hayden rushes to cling to the Afghanistan War and pretend like the Iraq War is over. They all do it. They're all whores. I feel like what's his face in Shampoo.
Ava: Jack Warden.
Rebecca: Right. At the end when he's confronting Warren Beatty who's been sleeping with Jack Warden's wife -- Lee Grant -- and with his mistress -- Julie Christie. The Iraq War doesn't matter to these people. The fact that Iraqis continue to die doesn't matter. They've moved on. They don't give a damn. It's disgusting.
Jim: Alright. Thank you. Ava. I asked you and C.I. to write two pieces tonight/this morning and you wrote three. We appreciate that. But what can you tell us about them?
Ava: We're finally reviewing Gary Unmarried. We'd hoped to grab that during the first season. We never had time. We noted it a few times, but we never reviewed it. We grabbed it this week because of some test scores, some focus groups, we learned of from a CBS exec. The show has peaked. It is not increasing its audience and a large number of people were more inclined to the show in the first season than they are today. Changes that were made to tweak the show only succeeded in alienating the audience. That means Gary Unmarried may be cancelled and we're weighing in this week on what happened and how the show that had so much promise is now a piece of trash. We'd hoped to do something on Democracy Now! I don't remember what. Mid-way through the week, we'd both agreed we were going to have to tackle it this weekend and then we started this edition about 12 hours ago. We wrote the TV piece and another piece -- on Naomi Wolf -- and that's when, when we finished the second piece, when we tried to figure out what we were planning to do re: Democracy Now!? We couldn't remember and we just blew it off.
Jim: Stan wanted to say something about the TV articles here.
Stan: As I pointed out at my site last week ["Promise Her Anything" and "Those shows with bad ratings . . ."], the news media is telling us that Jay Leno's show is in danger and probably over and that this has to do with stations who carry NBC programming but are not NBC owned and how the November ratings were so awful that they're demanding the issue be addressed right away. That was news at the end of last week. Of course, it was news here back in November if you read Ava and C.I.'s "TV: The nightly talk shows." And I just wanted to be sure Ava and C.I. got credit for their reporting. They scooped everyone. Not the first time, won't be the last.
Jim: Thank you, Stan, and thank you to Ava and C.I. I noted Ava and C.I. wrote three pieces. C.I. do you want to talk about the third and then we'll wrap up?
C.I.: Sure. Briefly, Terry Gross is turning her program, repeatedly, into let's make fun of Republicans. She lets the guest do that and then does her annoying giggle to make sure we all know how amused she finds the put downs. Now there are several ways we could go with that topic but since Ava and I have repeatedly covered the way pulling the punch kills the laugh, we did an overview of comedy. Another angle on the same issue could address how smug elites like Terry Gross turn off potential voters with their attacks. When you're repeatedly calling people stupid -- and we're talking average citizens, not the media being called stupid, not politicians being called stupid, but the average Americans -- when you're repeatedly calling them stupid, you're feeding into every right-wing charge against you. And you're turning off a lot of people -- from the right, from the middle and from the left.
Jim: Okay. Thank you. This is a rush transcript. Our e-mail address is thirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com.