Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
When I was young I would religiously watch the Sunday morning news shows, especially NB
C’s Meet the Press. Beginning in 1947, MTP is the longest running show in television history. While the other networks had comparable shows, clearly MTP with its longevity was seen as the show of record.
“The show’s format consists of an extended one-on-one interview with the host and is sometimes followed by a roundtable discussion or one-on-two interview with figures in adversarial positions, either Congress members from opposite sides of the aisle or political commentators. The show expanded to 60 minutes starting with the September 20, 1992 broadcast” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meet_the_Press#Moderators
Face the Nation, premiering in 1954 is considered to be the other Sunday morning News show of record. FTN’s format is:
“The moderator interviews newsmakers on the latest issues and delivers a short topical commentary at the end of the broadcast. The program broadcasts from Washington, D.C. Guests include government leaders, politicians, and international figures in the news. CBS News correspondents and other contributors engage the guests in a roundtable discussion focusing on current topics.”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_the_Nation
What all of these shows have in common is that they are repeatedly populated by the same people, whether politicians, journalists, economists or political operators. This link gives the background of the truth of Sunday morning “journalism”. http://mediamatters.org/search/index?qstring=Sunday+Morning+Talk+Shows&x=9&y=6 The casts rarely change and in all but the rarest of cases these guests make up what could be called our nation’s “Pundit Class”. They are seen as the “Serious People”, who lead America’s national debate on vital issues. I’ve been a “political junkie” since the age of ten. For many years I was misled into believing that these “Serious People” were really my intellectual betters when it came to public affairs and that political discussion must only exist within the ground rules of debate established by our “Pundit Class”. Beginning with the murder of JFK and in the ensuing disillusionment of the Sixties I’ve come to see that not only is this “Pundit Class” inherently corrupt, but only a rare few can barely be called intellectually informative. This group is in reality the paid propagandists of the elite 1% that rule this country and their main task is to limit the scope of our national debate.
In the last two weeks one of the most heard and most esteemed members of the Pundit Class, Fareed Zakaria, has been suspended from Time Magazine and CNN due to the discovery of plagiarism in one of his columns. Zacharia is also a Yale University Trustee and there is talk that his removal from that august position is under consideration. I’ve never particularly cared for Mr. Zakaria, but I was surprised by his plagiarism, more so by the fact he admitted it so readily and so abjectly. An article in the Huffington Post provided an explanation of Mr. Zakaria’s actions with a surprising explanation that I hadn’t expected and yet one that in retrospect makes perfect sense.
On 8/12/12 Eric Zeusse, an investigative historian, posted an article titled: “Fareed Zakaria Is Bitten by His Own Tale: How He Helped Create the System That Bit Him Back”. He began the article in this manner and in doing so exposed me to an idea that frankly hadn’t occurred to me.
“When Fareed Zakaria was suspended on Friday from Time and CNN, for plagiarism, this wasn’t merely justice, it was poetic justice: it rhymed. What it rhymed with was his own lifelong devotion to the global economic star system that he, as a born aristocrat in India, who has always been loyal to the aristocracy, inherited and has always helped to advance, at the expense of the public in every nation. He was suspended because, as a born aristocrat, who is a long-time member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, and many other of the global aristocracy’s primary organizations, he is so well-connected that his writing-commissions are more than any one person can possibly handle, and he consequently cannot possibly actually write all that is attributed to him. He certainly cannot research it all.”
In my naivete it I never thought of the possibility that someone like Mr. Zacharia might not write all, or even most of his material. I wasn’t aware of his aristocratic background, nor of his close connection to some of the secretive groups that shape global policy. I always just saw him as a “middle-of-the-road” pundit, with whom I disagreed on many things. As Mr. Zeusse goes on to explain:
“Like many “writing” stars, he has a staff perform much of the research and maybe even actual writing for him, and many in his situation are actually more editors than they are writers; but, regardless, he cannot let the public know that this is the way things are, because this is simply the way that the star system works in the “writing” fields, and because the public is supposed to think that these stars in the writing fields are writers, more than editors.
And, it’s a very profitable system for such stars. As Paul Starobin said, headlining “Money Talks,” in the March 2012 Columbia Journalism Review, Zakaria’s speaking fee is $75,000, and “he has been retained for speeches by numerous financial firms, including Baker Capital, Catterton Partners, Dreihaus Capital Management, ING, Merrill Lynch, Oak Investment Partners, Charles Schwab, and T. Rowe Price.”
So, he’s clearly a very busy man, with a considerable staff; he can’t possibly do everything himself.
But he needs to appear as if he does. He needs to present everything “he” does, as “his.”
The last two sentences above ring true and explain why Zakaria is so willing to perform mea culpa, take his suspensions and hope that this will blow over quickly. To admit the possible truth that someone writing for him had actually plagiarized would expose the fact that this “World Class Pundit and Author”, was merely a “front man” representing his privileged class. If this is true of Zakaria, who else of these “serious journalistic stars” is also doing the same thing and more importantly how are they shaping the political debate?
“Fareed Zakaria knows the way it works. So, he cannot afford to admit when he is being credited with the work of his employees. Far less damaging to him is to admit that he has done plagiarism himself, as he has admitted in this particular case — regardless whether it’s true.
If Zakaria didn’t actually do this plagiarism, could he very well announce to the world “I didn’t do it; I didn’t even research or write the article”? No. Romney and the Republicans say that the “job creators” at the top are the engine of the economy, and the aristocracy need to maintain this myth. It’s very important to them — that they are the stars, and that the people who might be the actual creators who work for them are not.
Zakaria wouldn’t want to burst the bubble atop which he is floating. To people in his situation, it’s a bubble of money, and it’s theirs. They don’t want to share it any more than they absolutely have to. (They despise labor unions for that very reason.) And their employees are very dependent upon them, so no one will talk about it — not the stars, not their workers.”
To make Eric Zeusse’s premise even more interesting we have this report on 8/16/12, “Fareed Zakaria Cleared By Time, CNN In Plagiarism Investigation”. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/16/fareed-zakaria-time-columns-review_n_1792081.html .
“We have completed a thorough review of each of Fareed Zakaria’s columns for TIME, and we are entirely satisfied that the language in question in his recent column was an unintentional error and an isolated incident for which he has apologized. We look forward to having Fareed’s thoughtful and important voice back in the magazine with his next column in the issue that comes out on September 7.”
Since Zakaria originally admitted he had made “A terrible mistake” it is heartening to see that his “mistake” was only an isolated incident. I think back to graduate schools papers I’ve written and wonder how I would have fared if I had “made a terrible mistake” in them through plagiarism. Would an investigation of my “isolated incident” and remorse have allowed me to continue in school? However, protecting Mr. Zakaria, one of the chosen, is not only important for his sake, but for the sake of these “News Entities” that rely so heavily on the “connected” pundit class to provide their“cogent” analysis of major issues.
How many other “Pundits” acting as the “serious” people are setting the parameters of the national debate through their appearances on Sunday Morning talk shows, News Channels, the PBS News Hour and it appears as paid guest speakers at supposedly meaningful conferences and conventions? The person who first came to mind as I read this article on Zakaria was Thomas Friedman. Friedman is a son of privilege who married into a billionaire family. He has been a champion of “Globalization”, which to me has always meant unbridled support for the multinational Corporatocracy. He also seems to me to be a very childish writer in that his use of analogies to draw global conclusions is inept to the point of comedy. During my illness my daughter bought me a copy of “Friedman’s “The World is Flat” and in reading it I was blown away by how flimsy a narrative it was for someone so respected as a pundit, who gets so much air time and respect as a serious commentator on global issues. As it was put in his Wikipedia Article:
“A number of critics have taken issue with Friedman’s views, as well as aspects of his writing style. Critics deride his penchant for excessive optimism, a consistently flawed analytical approach, and a habit of trotting out unexamined truisms to support his opinions.”
“Some critics have derided Friedman’s idiosyncratic prose style, with its tendency to use mixed metaphors and analogies”.
“Similarly, journalist Matt Taibbi has said of Friedman’s writing that, “Friedman came up with lines so hilarious you couldn’t make them up even if you were trying – and when you tried to actually picture the ‘illustrative’ figures of speech he offered to explain himself, what you often ended up with was pure physical comedy of the Buster Keaton/Three Stooges school, with whole nations and peoples slipping and falling on the misplaced banana peels of his literary endeavors.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Friedman
While I have no proof of it, I would speculate that Friedman too has people writing much of his stuff and that his journalism is more of the editorial kind. However, what is obvious and known about Friedman is that he is a pundit star, ranking with, or possibly above Zakaria in the firmament of “Serious People” who frame our national debate and dominate our national media. This is really nothing new in our country. In the past the “serious people” were the likes of Walter Lippman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Lippmann Scotty Reston, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Reston . These past pundits and “cold warriors”, share a commonality with Zakaria and Friedman, in that they all serve(d) the interests of the Corporate and Monied Elite that run this country from behind the scenes. Indeed, I’m sure that you the reader could expand this very small list of those who are deemed acceptable to lead the “serious” discussion of our national/international issues.
I assert that the entire Liberal versus Conservative debate in this country is but a smokescreen that distracts us from the one most vital issue. Our nation and indeed the world is and has been controlled by an Elite representing those with most money and power. Their first allegiance is to themselves, their class and to the belief that they alone are fit to rule us all. Call it what you will, but to me it is the continuation of feudalism in modern guise. Just as in feudalism there were “Courtiers” who gladly did the bidding of their “Royal Masters”, in order to enrich their own lives. Most of the “Courtiers” were either born to, or became part of the elite, while maintaining the pretense of speaking for the benefit of all humanity.
If we the people are ever to cast off the control of those who would leash us for their benefit, we must learn to think for ourselves and critically examine the opinions of those who are represented to us as “serious people”. Unfortunately, this remains a highly individual task because we are surrounded by experts, who in reality are propagandists purveying non-existent mythology to keep us in the thrall of the Elite. Disdain the pundits for their message is false. Become your own pundit and most especially view the world through an iconoclastic perspective. Despite their degrees, their travels, experiences and accolades, few are really that perceptive since they have been co-opted and anointed as members of a Priesthood of Power, blinding them to what real life for most of us is about.
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
Elaine:
I guess Mike is right, the monied elite take care of their own. So I am curious as to why you think their laws are going to protect you? They havent so far.
So why not just give up the charade and let the market determine winners and losers? There really isnt much to left to lose, maybe if people had to really think about what they were doing and pay attention to the fine print or not even deal with companies who had fine print, there would be more transparency. The sunlight would help disinfect the financial institutions.
If the media was not representing the elite (for the most part) maybe we have our Woodward and Bernsteins, which we so desperately need.
(And not just elite they do not know what news is/have a conservative bias if these 2 anecdotes are any indication: When Romney did not go to a Wawa in Quakertown Pa, his announced destination, apparently because there were about 100 protestors, the news was that he did not go, the reporter asked 1 question, of one protestor. The rest of the story was dedicated to his deciding on a meatball sandwich and his apparent unease with the computer technology needed to order the sandwich. When the nuns on the bus came to Mike Fitzpsatrick’s office, a tea party republican, they showed him shaking hands with the nuns but no audio so it looked they were in agreement. Again, absent one protestor, there were many there that day, the news Fox and believe KYW, just showed the nuns and the bus in an about 1 minute story, and gave nothing about the reason the nuuns were there and about the protest, and the protestors,.)
Elaine,
I hear Fox News has been way to liberal of late……. 😉
Bron,
Those laws don’t seem to apply to the wizards of Wall Street.
Goldman Non-Prosecution: AG Eric Holder Has No Balls
By Matt Taibbi
August 15, 2012
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/ag-eric-holder-has-no-balls-20120815
Excerpt:
I’ve been on deadline in the past week or so, so I haven’t had a chance to weigh in on Eric Holder’s predictable decision to not pursue criminal charges against Goldman, Sachs for any of the activities in the report prepared by Senators Carl Levin and Tom Coburn two years ago.
Last year I spent a lot of time and energy jabbering and gesticulating in public about what seemed to me the most obviously prosecutable offenses detailed in the report – the seemingly blatant perjury before congress of Lloyd Blankfein and other Goldman executives, and the almost comically long list of frauds committed by the company in its desperate effort to unload its crappy “cats and dogs” mortgage-backed inventory.
In the notorious Hudson transaction, for instance, Goldman claimed, in writing, that it was fully “aligned” with the interests of its client, Morgan Stanley, because it owned a $6 million slice of the deal. What Goldman left out is that it had a $2 billion short position against the same deal.
If that isn’t fraud, Mr. Holder, just what exactly is fraud?
Still, it wasn’t surprising that Holder didn’t pursue criminal charges against Goldman. And that’s not just because Holder has repeatedly proven himself to be a spineless bureaucrat and obsequious political creature masquerading as a cop, and not just because rumors continue to circulate that the Obama administration – supposedly in the interests of staving off market panic – made a conscious decision sometime in early 2009 to give all of Wall Street a pass on pre-crisis offenses.
No, the real reason this wasn’t surprising is that Holder’s decision followed a general pattern that has been coming into focus for years in American law enforcement. Our prosecutors and regulators have basically admitted now that they only go after the most obvious and easily prosecutable cases.
If the offense committed doesn’t fit the exact description in the relevant section of the criminal code, they pass. The only white-collar cases they will bring are absolute slam-dunk situations where some arrogant rogue commits a blatant crime for individual profit in a manner thoroughly familiar to even the non-expert portion of the jury pool/citizenry.
In other words, they’ll take on somebody like Raj Rajaratnam, who stacked his illegal insider trades so brazenly and carelessly that his case almost reads like a finance version of Jeff Dahmer tripping over bodies in his Milwaukee apartment. Or they’ll pursue Bernie Madoff on the tenth or eleventh time he crosses their desk, after years of nonaction, and after he breaks down weeping and confessing. Basically, if someone backs a dump truck up to the DOJ and unloads the entire case, gift-wrapped, a contrite and confessing criminal included, a guy like Eric Holder might, after much agonizing deliberation, decide to prosecute.
But here’s the thing: most of the crimes Wall Street people commit involve highly specific, highly individualized transactions that won’t fit Eric Holder’s bag of cookie-cutter statutory definitions. That is not the same thing as saying they’re not crimes. They are: the crimes of the crisis period were and are very basic crimes like fraud, theft, perjury, and tax evasion, only they’re dressed up in millions of pages of camouflaging verbiage.
Or, even more often, the crimes have also been sanctified in advance by “reputable” law and accounting firms, who (for huge fees) offered their clients opinions that, if X and Y are signed in accordance with Z, and A and B are stipulated by the parties, and everyone’s sitting Indian-style and facing the moon when the deal is agreed to, then it’s not fucked up and illegal when Goldman Sachs tells you it’s a co-investor in your deal when it’s actually got $2 billion bet against you.
You know that look a dog gives you when you show it something confusing, like an electric razor or a lawn sprinkler? That’s the look federal prosecutors give when companies like Goldman wave their attorneys’ sanctifying opinions at them. They scratch their heads and say: “Oh, wow, well since this was signed in Australia by three millionaire lawyers wearing magic invisibility cloaks, it really isn’t fraud! They’re right!”
As one high-profile attorney currently working on a closely-watched case involving a Wall Street bank put it to me yesterday: “With these Justice guys, everything the Wall Street lawyers say makes perfect sense to them, no matter how dumb it is.”
two things tell you all you need to know about the Sunday jokeathons:
Boy Blunder’s campaign people are heard on a BBC film saying they wanted to deal with an uncomfortable question On Meet the Press because Tim Russert would allow them to spread their BS. Then, when they wanted to humiliate Joe Wilson by exposing his wife who was a super secret itel asset the first call they made was to Timmy. TImmy didn’t run with the story until after that slug Novak did his dirty work. But even then Timmy pretended he didn’t know who exposed the CIA agent and even allowed Cheney to lie to the American people on his show.
These shows are all about maintaining access to the beltway cocktail parties, they are nothing about discussing the state of the nation of informing the populous.
shano:
we have laws against stealing.
Oh, yea, Bron, I like my bankers to just take the money out of my account directly. And then say, oops! Just like MF Global! Sweet!
Shano:
I read an article that postulated the Glass Steagall Act was written for one set of bankers [the Rockefellers] to increase the cost of another group [the House of Morgan] to do business by limiting their ability to compete. It was a pretty good article.
Wake up Shano, the majority of regulations are for the sole purpose of making competition easier for one group of wealthy elite at the expense of another. It is all done in the name of main street, just like they told us the Wall St. bailout was to protect main street, that was bullshit too.
Do you like Frederic Bastiat? He would have been against banking regulations as well.
http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae5_3_6.pdf
@Bron: We already tried the elimination of all banking laws, it is what led to the greatest depression the world has ever known. The crash of 1929, runs on banks that went bankrupt, suicides of people that trusted banks and lost everything, all of it because banks had no restrictions, were not required to insure deposits in any way, and once the money was bet and lost, no outcome of any lawsuit can get ever get it back.
This is just one of the central failures of all free marketeering, really. Without regulation, people always find ways to take risks they cannot cover, and “liability” or “responsibility” does not make any difference; it is no good to the victims if some guy is held liable for millions or billions he cannot ever repay. It does them no good if that guy is put in debtors prison for life. Without regulation it always happens, and the person risking more than they can ever repay is playing perfectly valid odds, because his expected payout can be far more than he can ever earn taking only risks he could cover.
This is just one of the central failure of free markets: The downside of financial risk is naturally limited to just what you have; the upside is unlimited, and without regulation that imbalance produces instability.
That is what caused the market crash of 1929, recognizing that is why Glass Steagal was passed, and when it was repealed in 1999, the result was pretty much the same, but this time they got bailed out with a few trillion to prevent another Great Depression.
you know Bron, sometimes I am agreeing with you and then you blast into space with some Ayn Rand hackery: “an elimination of all banking laws, most of which I think you will find benefit the bankers”
Please, there is another step besides wiping out all the laws that the bankers themselves wrote and paid politicians to pass into law.
Something we know that kept the banks stable for over 50 years. oh, what could that be? Glass seagull? something like that…….
Mike Spindell:
“you see we do agree on some things.”
Why wouldnt we? My main disagreement with most people here is economics. Forced vaginal ultrasounds arent my cup of tea but neither is cash for clunkers.
Your article identifies the problem as monied elites, I would say that most of those monied elites are either fascists or socialists. Warren Buffet is a statist, and so are many of the monied elite. They use the power of the state to protect their wealth, as I have said many times before; the state is the best protector of wealth because they make the rules and have the large guns. It is in the interest of wealthy statists to use their wealth to coerce government to make rules which protect and grow their fortunes. Having to compete legitimately is so passe when you can own a congressman and have him do your dirty work.
That is why I believe in limited/small government. If you had a revolution in this country the only people hurt would be the poor and the middle class. The wealthy would just leave and take their wealth with them. What we need is to take back government from the statist monied/”intellectual” elite class and start living up to our charter as a Constitutional Republic.
A good start would be the destruction of the Federal Reserve and an elimination of all banking laws, most of which I think you will find benefit the bankers.
Darren,
One can always get “fair and balanced” news on Fox!
😉
Again, thank you Mike as we appreciate your insight and efforts.
I suppose it might be a difficult a task for someone to have a staff, have such demands and still be able to maintain credibility through the accuracy of what was proffered, perhaps therein lies the problem.
Walter Cronkite was an example for which I would offer to be a model for a young or new reporter to aspire to. A person who has a reputation for the truth and for honesty has more respect, even from those who disagree. One could achieve respect by creating a culture of accuracy and quality within the staff or organization, one where each individual contributor knows what is expected and collectively they are strong and not having a single point of failure as the Fareed example presents.
Sadly, much of the news programming is essentially subscriber based, that is, catering to those who subscribe to a particular political belief and their competition the opposition. It seems the search for the truth is now the responsibility of the viewer.
I will skip the punditry section, and move to the end of Mike’s commentary: assert that the entire Liberal versus Conservative debate in this country is but a smokescreen that distracts us from […] the continuation of feudalism in modern guise.
Precisely. There is only one party in the USA, and only one party in the world, and that is the party of the elite, the wealthy, the powerful, the famous, those people with the power to change other’s lives forever with a word. It is a necessarily small and exclusionary world.
I believe it is in our evolved human psychology as well. We are tribal animals as much as wolves are, we survive better as a group, with an alpha directing us, with a pecking order.
Much of the problem is that very few of us will admit this. Partially because, whatever the alpha-factor is, we all have it to some extent; it is not a factor that is there or missing, but has a degree of presence, like a percentage. In fact, one might define a person’s “alpha factor” as the percentage of people that will come to defer to that person in an extended social situation.
When we do not admit to this tendency to follow or defer, we fail to protect ourselves against the dangers of that tendency. Specifically, the dangers of creating an elite class. Those elite classes throughout history have been, first, military leaders that have spent lives of others to conquer others and make themselves royalty, the shamans, frauds and witch doctors that became priests and Mullahs and cult leaders, the business leaders that exploited workers to become wealthy, the village elders that became chiefs (or mayors), and when enough of them band together, it gives rise to governors, Presidents and Emperors.
The problem is within us. That does not mean it cannot be overcome, we have in large part overcome our native urge to kill our rivals. But this is a more subtle problem that will not be soon overcome, if ever, because the problem is letting our deference to those with high alpha-factors overcome us. Instead of limiting our deference to their leadership in organizing us and steering the ship of state, we extend our deference to let them claim the lion’s share of rewards, to use their power and fortune for selfish reasons, to put themselves above the law, and to forgive them for behavior we would see in others as high crimes.
That is the real problem within us all, that we can step so willingly across the line from a useful deference to leadership into blind reverence for a demigod cult leader.
Brooklin Bridge,
Watching that stuff will rot your brain, too!
Good post, Mike S. Watching that stuff will rot your teeth and mix your pinafores. You must have a hearty constitution.
BettyKath,
That’s why I included the Media Matters link. They’ve done extensive studies of the content of these Sunday shows.
Thank you Bill Clinton for media consolidation. it makes it so much easier to stay on message!
Great post Mike…..this is one of the foremost ways the media elite keep average people misinformed.
Elaine,
Thank you for the Taibbi pieces, since they so well complete the story I was trying to present. In addition they were just so damn funny, yet so sad, simultaneously.
Good article, Mike.
I used to love the Sunday morning shows until I realized that it’s basically just one opinion being presented every weekend. Some variations between center right and far right, with center right being claimed as “left”. All seemed to be Washington insiders. None represented “the people”.
One example is environmental issues being discussed from a business perspective, one more extreme than the other, but never included those who actually study environmental issues and see the lack of regulation or lax regulation oversight as being problematic.
They’re a waste of time.