Norman Solomon

Macho Politics and Major Consequences

With two words, the governor of California has managed to highlight the confluence of anti-gay bias and misogyny. Open contempt for "girlie men" would have raised fewer eyebrows in the past. Reactions to Arnold Schwarzenegger's put-down of Democrats in the state legislature -- "if they don't have the guts, I call them girlie men" -- tell us a lot about how far we've come. The good news is the media outcry; the bad news is that the outcry hasn't been stronger.

As a rough gauge of media progress on gender-related issues, consider two editorials that appeared -- 88 years apart -- in the same newspaper.

About 10 months before the United States entered World War I, the writer Upton Sinclair aimed some barbs at flag-waving militarism...

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Terrorism and the Election: Trial Balloons and Spin

Tom Ridge, the federal official in charge of defending the United States against terrorism, was on message when he told a July 14 news conference: "We don't do politics at Homeland Security." Such high-level claims of patriotic purity have been routine since 9/11. But in this election year, they're more ludicrous than ever.

Days earlier, alongside a photo of Ridge, a headline on USA Today's front page had declared: "Election Terror Threat Intensifies." There was unintended irony in the headline.

While a real threat of terrorism exists in the United States, we should also acknowledge that an intensifying "election terror threat" is coming from the Bush administration. With scarcely 100 days to go until Election Day, the White House is desperate to wring every ounce of advantage from the American Flag, patriotism, apple pie -- and the subject of "terrorism."

Newsweek reported a week after July Fourth that Ridge's agency "asked the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel to analyze what legal steps would be needed to permit the postponement of the election were an attack to take place." The media response was mostly negative, and the Bush administration proceeded with its intended dual message of portraying a postponement as far-fetched -- yet not quite unthinkable...

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Also, see the documentary Hijacking Catastrophe.

Media Class War: Firing Shots Across the Edwards Bow

The morning after John Kerry announced that John Edwards will be his running mate, powerful newspapers fired warning shots across the bow of the Kerry-Edwards campaign.

"It is likely that Mr. Edwards will be dispatched to critical industrial states like Ohio to talk about jobs, as he did with such force in the primary," the liberal New York Times editorialized. "We hope that he'll refrain from falling into protectionist rhetoric in the process."

Over at the Washington Post, an editorial that voiced less overall enthusiasm for Edwards underscored the same basic concern: "Mr. Edwards improved as a candidate during the primaries, but he also demonstrated, especially toward the end, an unfortunate tendency to cater to popular but irresponsible positions. Mr. Edwards was powerful, even moving, when he spoke about how the country was divided into two Americas, with one tax system, one school system, one health care system for the rich, and an inferior version for everyone else. Yet his lurch toward protectionism on trade was disappointing for a candidate who we thought knew better."

On the Times op-ed page, two columnists had their say. Conservative William Safire pooh-poohed the new V.P. candidate, calling him "the happy class warrior, the smoothest divisive force in politics today."

Meanwhile, liberal columnist Nicholas Kristof had a lot of favorable things to say about Edwards...

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Hijacking Catastrophe

Norman Solomon is interviewed in Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American Empire which is out on DVD & VHS. The new documentary, by Sut Jhally, also features interviews with Tariq Ali, Medea Benjamin, Noam Chomsky, Michael Eric Dyson, Daniel Ellsberg, Michael Franti, Stan Goff, Chalmers Johnson, Norman Mailer, Mark Crispin Miller and others.

The Limits of Media Dream Machines

A recent Associated Press dispatch – headlined "Gadget May Help Sleepers Choose Dreams" – told the story of a new product that "can be programmed to help sleepers choose what to dream." Made in Japan, the 14-inch gizmo is called "Dream Workshop."

After so much progress has been made to ravage the natural environment all around us (fulfilling Francis Bacon's recommendation that we torture Mother Nature for her secrets), it stands to reason that technology should also besiege our inner nature. But like wild animals and flighty birds, our dreams are loath to be tamed.

"The dream reveals the reality which conception lags behind," Franz Kafka said. Yet overall, dreams are not very marketable. Experienced during sleep, they're one of the few human activities left that can't be bought or sold...

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Nader Adrift

Presidential candidate Ralph Nader is standing on a bar of soap in a political rainstorm. Midway through 2004, while his electoral base shrinks, one of the great American reformers of the 20th century is drifting out to sea.

When the Green Party's national convention refused to endorse Mr. Nader for president a few days ago, the delegates were not rejecting his strong anti-corporate and pro-democracy politics. On the contrary, the convention was acting on the basis of such principles. Greens from every region of the country recognized that Mr. Nader -- proudly unaccountable to any institution but himself -- has steered his campaign into a steadily worsening tangle of contradictions.

Activists struggling to build a viable Green Party with a truly democratic process found that Mr. Nader preferred to remain aloof. Four years ago, he was the party's presidential nominee but declined to become a member. This time, he ruled out accepting the Green nomination...

Read the full op-ed from the Baltimore Sun.