Note, I believe I have been somewhat intemperate in some of what
follows, but Miller's posts are immense provocations. The *Nation* (as
detailed below) has become increasingly boring and offensive. Miller's
posts and articles exhibit both qualities.
Nation articles such as Mark Miller's are one of the reasons I am
allowing my Nation subscription to lapse. It all began with their
infamous decision to suppress the columns of Alec Cockburn, rather a
more serious infringement on our need to know than the vapidities of the
"concentrations" Miller rants on and on about. Then they add low life
(Alterman) who can barely conceal their dislike of women, blacks,
homosexuals. It is becoming a very messy operation over there.
But these are mere epiphonomena. Miller manifests the core of the evil:
the happy rush by the *Nation* into what is probably the most
serious "cover-up" of the late 20th century, compared to which
Watergate and Contragate were mere sideshows: the pretense that those
bloodless entities known as "corporations" make decisions, that except
for the usual suspects who apparently can be safely named -- Murdock,
Newhouse I guess, a small sampling of billionaire adventurers who, at
least from my position at the margin, seem rather more marginal to the
ruling class than many (never named in the *Nation*) who presumably
either make or approve of the decisions the *Nation* ascribes to
abstract corporate "entities." ("Entity": almost as good as "Your
president is not a crook.")
Who are the actual people (names please) who either make or hire the
people who make the corporate decisions that influence our lives so
deeply? And is the *Nation* going to review the new edition of Domhoff,
or ever going to review any of Chomsky's works? Which are the main
persons or groups of persons who let (actually, I would presume,
*order*) Jack Welch and other predators break the law with impunity.
Someone pointed out recently that GE has been convicted of more felonies
than a Hoffa could ever aspire to in his dreams: But raving at GE is a
sham, a cover up. Some limited number of people are the ones who murder
workers and pervert the public mind. Even a cold warrior and war
criminal like Harry Truman at least acknowledged that the buck had to
stop somewhere.
The *Nation* has been plunging rightward in indecent haste for many
years now, stretching back to the editorship of Navasky, but that haste
has certainly increased under the current editor. Why doesn't Miller
explore the malign influence of the "liberal big bourgeoisie" over
liberal thinktanks, liberal magazines, liberal foundations. The Nation
sank to new lows last winter in the article on Foundations. What is the
connection between the politics of the Nation and the fact that its
editor is heir to the fortune of one of the founders of a large media
corporation? Does she still own stock in that corporation? If not, into
what corportions was that capital shifted? Who runs MCA now? Who runs
whatever corportions in which that capital now rests? (It would be
lovely if the *Nation* would allow Cockburn 3 or 4 pages a month, in
addition to his regular columns, to report on the doings of hollywood
liberals.)
Why doesn't the *Nation* give a leftist analogue to Forbes' 400: Let
each issue have brief articles on the people who belong to such malign
institutions as the Council on Foreign Relations (1917 or so I believe)
-- certainly that Council has more to do with the present murderous
attack by the U.S. on people around the world than either Clinton's
sexual adventures or the vapidities of NBC or CNN. The Business Round
Table. Other groups (and not, again, only the usual suspects on the
"extremist right") whose existence I either have never heard of or have
forgotten since reading Domhoff many years ago.
I subscribed to the *Nation* for almost 20 years because it provided
information, even immense amounts of information, almost every week.
Month by month now for many years its contents have become steadily more
vapid, and while some (e.g., its pitiful efforts to find some good in
Clinton or Gore) are worse than Miller, he is quite representative of
the Cover-Up of actual Capitalists which is the substance of most
attacks on "The Corporations" (media, banking, industrial,
what-have-you).
Miller's articles, and his posts to this list, exhibit him deep into
that other important form of apologetics: nostalgia. Has anyone on this
list ever read Upton Sinclair's *The Brass Check*? An elementary school
teacher I happened to meet when I was in high school (this would have
been the spring of 1947) loaned me her copy of the book. Could Miller
empirically establish that the state of the media in 1904, as revealed
in that work, was in any way better than the situation he describes. If
anything, the public access to knowledge has rather increased than
decreased in the last 90 years. What Miller is arguing (what all
nostalgists necessarily argue) is an empirical AND COMPARATIVE set of
facts. Here are the particular facts of 1920. Here are the particular
facts of 1998. Here is how they resemble each other. Here is how they
differ. Miller offers nothing of any use to such an inquiry.
Upton Sinclair was an unbelievably bad novelist, and ended his life as a
third-rate red-baiter, but in his early days was really quite fine as a
pamphleteer. Miller, on the other hand, seems content to provide us with
bad journalism masquerading as even worse analytic scholarship.
Carrol Cox
