Leave them alone

As police release more and more information on the decade-long captivity of the three women in Cleveland, the story has, as was feared, got uglier and uglier. I cannot bear to read the stories beyond the headlines, except to wonder yet again what it says about us that such a thing could happen for so long under our very noses. I am a believer of minding one’s own business but have we gone too far in that direction, and as a consequence now tend to ignore signs of trouble for fear of being seen as nosy and interfering in the lives of our neighbors? [Read more…]

New book on Washington insider behaviors

Today is when the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner is held, when the cozy and incestuous relationship between the political and media class is on public display. The curtain that normally hides this and enables the media to portray itself as watchdogs of politicians is stripped away and we see that they are actually lap dogs, eager to be on good terms with those whom they are supposedly antagonistic towards. [Read more…]

Parallel news worlds

I had to eat alone at a restaurant on Monday and so took along something to read while waiting for my food. But as is the annoying custom these days, they had a TV on in a corner of the room, which can be a huge distraction. Fortunately the TV was far enough away that I could not hear it but I noticed that they seemed to be showing live coverage of a trial. I was puzzled because I follow the news fairly closely and could not recall reading about any major court case that would warrant gavel-to-gavel live coverage. [Read more…]

If the obituaries of male scientists were like those of female scientists …

Yvonne Brill died recently. She was a highly respected rocket scientist who received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2011 from president Obama and was noteworthy enough to merit an obituary in the New York Times. Also noteworthy was the fact that the obituary also focused on her sterling qualities as a mother, wife, and cook, as if her ability to combine the mundane duties of everyday life with her scientific work was her main achievement. [Read more…]

The attempted silencing of Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky is one of the world’s great public intellectuals.

Growing up in Sri Lanka, I would find his articles and essays in the mainstream media quite regularly. But when I first came to the US in 1975, I found him completely absent from the major print and TV media and discovered that his writings were confined to niche publications. This is of course because the Vietnam war galvanized Chomsky from being a towering figure in the field of linguistics into also being a severe critic of injustices everywhere, especially of his own government. In addition, he has shown how the mainstream media in the US has been complicit in the crimes committed by the US government and those of its client states. [Read more…]

‘Supermarket gallon smashers’ being charged

Readers may recall that about a month or so ago I expressed my extreme annoyance with those who pretended to have a spectacular fall in supermarkets, breaking gallon jugs of milk and juice and other things, creating a mess, spattering people nearby, and making fools of the people who expressed concern that they might be hurt and tried to help them. They would have an accomplice who recorded the events and posted it on YouTube. [Read more…]

Political language today

George Orwell’s classic 1946 essay Politics and the English Language makes the case that politics degrades language because when politicians want to look truthful while telling lies they do so by making their language convoluted and using big words so that the listener is not aware of what the speaker is actually saying. Orwell says that users of such language should be viewed warily and recommends that people who want to communicate truthfully and accurately would do well to adopt a straightforward style using simple and common words and vivid and accurate metaphors. [Read more…]

Krugman lets loose

Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is clearly so fed up with the quality of public discourse on budget issues and the kinds of people the media hold up as being authorities that he departs from his usual measured language. This time he unloads on the execrable Alan Simpson, the former senator and co-chair of the Simpson-Bowles deficit cutting commission created by president Obama. [Read more…]

The servile White House press corps

There is perhaps no body of journalists in the US more useless than the White House press corps. These are the people who spend their days in the White House or follow the president on his travels, hoping for some morsel of news to be dropped or to overhear a gaffe or get a deliberate ‘leak’ from an important source. This seems like a soul-killing job to me but apparently these are much sought-after gigs by some reporters because they are high profile. [Read more…]