Since I'm supposed to be a liberal (and no one else has posted anything about these two), I thought I'd try a little 'Dogpiling.'
I'd never heard of Katha Pollit. Here are a couple of articles by her in "The Nation" (which I'm presuming is a liberal publication?); the first is on the current administration stance on the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), an issue which has been brought up on-list. It strikes me as a little shrill, but the basic premise is solid - when women are devalued and kept "in their place," i.e. not allowed to vote or participate in public society, to own land or even their own bodies, etc. - the US ought to be at the forefront of empowering women, not ranked with Somalia and Syria. I didn't know that Bush apparently initially said he would sign it; apparently the religious right is firmly opposed to it. She mentions some of the facts I brought up in a thread about AIDS: the inability of many developing nations' women to protect themselves against it, as they don't even have control over their bodies. http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020708&s=pollitt This one is about 'the disgraceful state of journalism' WRT plagiarism, lack of fact-checking, and underhanded racism; I recognised the NYTimes reporter's name, but not the others. I think she indicts both liberal and conservative papers, but *is* kinder to the Times. http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030616&s=pollitt And this bashes William Bennett for being a hypocrite WRT gambling and having only 2 children instead of '6 or 7.' She sarcastically notes that "_The Book of Virtues_ evoked the old Aristotelian/ Stoic/Christian/Early American civic values: piety, sobriety, temperance, honesty, prudence, self-control, setting an example" - but later calls for "kindness and tolerance and looking into your own heart and cutting other people some slack because you never really know what demons they're contending with." <wry> Which she doesn't do for WB... http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030602&s=pollitt OK, so she's got a left-liberal agenda and her columns on the war are too-eager to jump on 'facts' (museum looting) that are not. She doesn't seem to be a "femiNazi" although she's clearly biased - in her column about the Lysistrata Project, noting frex "But for the long haul, gender-based appeals to women trouble me, even when they're funny" and that "many fathers are as deeply invested in hands-on parenting as mothers." She decries the way this administration sees the world in black&white, and prefers multilateralism to unilateralism; she wasn't one of the 'Left who ignore Saddam Hussein's evil.' http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030519&s=pollitt http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030519&s=pollitt http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021014&s=pollitt If this is representative of her views, I see little to get worked up about - her agenda and spin are clear, but she seems to have at least some awareness of her bias - heck, she even swipes at Hilary for "the rightward tilt of her politics--her support for welfare reform, capital punishment, "family values" and so on." <grin> Calling *Hillary* 'Right'?!! ;) http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030630&s=pollitt If someone has a link to an article in which she flat-out lies (I noted the snide swipe at Bennett WRT 'other things that might have gone on during his gambling forays' - definite cheap shot!) or foams at the mouth, I'll certainly read it. But I won't be buying her book at the store... ;) I have heard the name of Noam Chomsky - um, I thought he was a poet... "Book Description: The Minimalist Program consists of four recent essays that attempt to situate linguistic theory in the broader cognitive sciences. In these essays the minimalist approach to linguistic theory is formulated and progressively developed. Building on the theory of principles and parameters and, in particular, on principles of economy of derivation and representation, the minimalist framework takes Universal Grammar as providing a unique computational system, with derivations driven by morphological properties, to which the syntactic variation of languages is also restricted. Within this theoretical framework, linguistic expressions are generated by optimally efficient derivations that must satisfy the conditions that hold on interface levels, the only levels of linguistic representation... http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0262531283/104-7650737-8541513 <head jerks up from obfuscationist-babble-induced near-coma> Oh, now here is ugliness...defending a denier of the Holocaust? And minimizing the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge? <curls lip in disgust> http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Lofts/6072/chomsky.html This extremely long article (which I did not read through) condemns US presidents, who most would perceive as fairly liberal, such as JFK and Clinton, as - well, rather heinous (not that they all didn't have glaring faults, including misrepresenting or outright lying - but evil? I don't think so.): http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/index.cfm A few excepts from a 1995 interview: http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/rbr/noamrbr2.html "...I haven't actually equated the doctrines of the liberal intellectuals of the Kennedy administration with Leninists, but I have noted striking points of similarity - rather as predicted by Bakunin a century earlier in his perceptive commentary on the new class. For example, I quoted passages from McNamara on the need to enhance managerial control if we are to be truly free, and about how the undermanagement that is the real threat to democracy is an assault against reason itself. Change a few words in these passages, and we have standard Leninist doctrine. I've argued that the roots are rather deep, in both cases..." "...I was attracted to anarchism as a young teenager, as soon as I began to think about the world beyond a pretty narrow range, and haven't seen much reason to revise those early attitudes since. I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom. That includes political power, ownership and management, relations among men and women, parents and children, our control over the fate of future generations (the basic moral imperative behind the environmental movement, in my view), and much else. Naturally this means a challenge to the huge institutions of coercion and control: the state, the unaccountable private tyrannies that control most of the domestic and international economy, and so on. But not only these. That is what I have always understood to be the essence of anarchism: the conviction that the burden of proof has to be placed on authority, and that it should be dismantled if that burden cannot be met. Sometimes the burden can be met. If I'm taking a walk with my grandchildren and they dart out into a busy street, I will use not only authority but also physical coercion to stop them. The act should be challenged, but I think it can readily meet the challenge. And there are other cases; life is a complex affair, we understand very little about humans and society, and grand pronouncements are generally more a source of harm than of benefit. But the perspective is a valid one, I think, and can lead us quite a long way..." "...A third reason has to do with what the business press calls the pampered Western workers with their luxurious lifestyles. With much of Eastern Europe returning to the fold, owners and managers have powerful new weapons against the working classes and the poor at home. GM and VW can not only transfer production to Mexico and Brazil (or at least threaten to, which often amounts to the same thing), but also to Poland and Hungary, where they can find skilled and trained workers at a fraction of the cost. They are gloating about it, understandably, given the guiding values..." "...What is called 'capitalism' is basically a system of corporate mercantilism, with huge and largely unaccountable private tyrannies exercising vast control over the economy, political systems, and social and cultural life, operating in close co-operation with powerful states that intervene massively in the domestic economy and international society. That is dramatically true of the United States, contrary to much illusion. The rich and privileged are no more willing to face market discipline than they have been in the past, though they consider it just fine for the general population. Merely to cite a few illustrations, the Reagan administration, which revelled in free market rhetoric, also boasted to the business community that it was the most protectionist in post-war US history - actually more than all others combined. Newt Gingrich, who leads the current crusade, represents a superrich district that receives more federal subsidies than any other suburban region in the country, outside of the federal system itself. The 'conservatives' who are calling for an end to school lunches for hungry children are also demanding an increase in the budget for the Pentagon, which was established in the late 1940s in its current form because - as the business press was kind enough to tell us - high tech industry cannot survive in a pure, competitive, unsubsidized, 'free enterprise' economy, and the government must be its saviour. Without the saviour, Gingrich's constituents would be poor working people (if they were lucky). There would be no computers, electronics generally, aviation industry, metallurgy, automation, etc., etc., right down the list. Anarchists, of all people, should not be taken in by these traditional frauds..." Well, some of what he says about corporations is certainly true, and the military-industrial complex too - although as a science fiction afectionado, I can only applaud the civilian applications of advanced technology. I think true anarchy would be disastrous, with warlords slaughtering indiscriminantly - a descent into living hell. Challenging authority prevents totalitarianism, but without some structure to society, you get chaos - and that means death, disease, and little-to-no freedom unless you can defend it with superior weapons. Not a life I'd want to live! So, while I agree with some of the points of both, as noted above, by their definitions I'm 'rightward-leaning!' But to over-glorify women as Pollit seems to do is silly and reactionary (we're quite capable of genuine meanness and seeing things in black&white), while promoting 'anarchy' as a viable mode for society shows a complete lack of understanding of the human animal, and essentially calling the United States 'evil to the core' is just ludicrous. My prescription for KP: work at a soup kitchen and live in the neighborhood for a month. For NC: go live in Monrovia for a week, and if you survive, write about your experience of real anarchy Debbi My 'Piece' Is *Not* Pink Maru __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
