Faced with a growing movement of communities demanding that CNN drop his program, Lou Dobbs responded Friday
with one of his favorite postures: the victimized defender of American
virtue. "They ask CNN to fire me because I oppose illegal immigration"
said Dobbs, who added, "The last thing they want is a first amendment,
where people can express themselves... These are the most un-American,
frightened people in the world because they won't compete in the
marketplace of ideas and facts."
Acorn is a poor people's grassroots organization.
Earlier this month, some of it's employees were caught on tape giving advice to two young right-wing activists posing as pimp and prostitute.
Pfizer is a wealthy and powerful multinational corporation.
Earlier this month, a Pfizer unit pled guilty to a felony in connection with a major health care fraud and paid $2.3 billion in fines.
So, if the Democratically controlled Congress were to vote to either:
a) strip federal funding from the grassroots group Acorn, or
"Businesses
exist to serve the general welfare. Profit is the means, not the end.
It is the reward a business receives for serving the general welfare.
When a business fails to serve the general welfare, it forfeits its
right to exist."
Do Adam
Smith's famously forgotten words of caution for capitalists apply to
journalism? Is this why, when I go to the newsstand these days, I see
my city's two great newspapers sitting there like twin anorexics,
panhandling (I mean pandering) for quarters?
Journalism schools have much in common with the mainstream news media they traditionally serve. As the business model for conventional corporate journalism collapses and digital technologies reshape the media landscape, journalism schools struggle with parallel problems around curricula and personnel.
There
was a certain ironic and painful symmetry at work last month. As one
iconic image of war was called into doubt, another was being created, a
new photograph of combat's grim reality that already has generated
controversy and anger.
The marketing executive at the center of a controversial series of Washington Post-sponsored dinner "salons" has resigned from the newspaper some 10 weeks after the events were canceled, The Post said Friday.
The Obama administration's freak out, as expressed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, over the Associated Press Agency's belated circulation of a photograph of a dying US soldier in Afghanistan, Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard, is the latest of example of the hypocrisy of US authorities who claim to be concerned about the feelings of American military families, while really simply desiring to censor the war's horrors from the eyes of the American people.
On Sunday, Meet the Press hosted a panel discussion
to debate two primary issues: (1) foreign policy -- specifically, the
war in Afghanistan, and (2) health care. The panel: Rudy Giuliani,
Tom Friedman, Harold Ford, Jr., and Tom Brokaw (as Jay Rosen often notes, Meet the Press is doing a fantastic job of fulfilling its pledge to present "fresh voices" in its discussions).
