Norman Solomon's blog

Obama's Clarifying Win: The Fly on the Wall Is the Wall

Norman Solomon — Wed, 07 May 2008 09:03:15 -0400

Barack Obama's triumph on Tuesday night was a victory over a wall that pretends to be a fly on the wall.

For a long time, the nation's body politic has been shoved up against that wall -- known as the news media.

Despite all its cracks and gaps, what cements the wall is mostly a series of repetition compulsion disorders. Whether the media perseveration is on Pastor Wright, the words "bitter" and "cling," or an absent flag lapel-pin, the wall's surfaces are more rigid when they're less relevant to common human needs and shared dreams.

"We've already seen it," Obama said during his victory speech in North Carolina, "the same names and labels they always pin on everyone who doesn't agree with all their ideas, the same efforts to distract us from the issues that affect our lives, by pouncing on every gaffe and association and fake controversy, in the hopes that the media will play along."

Party Like It’s 1932: The Obama Option

Norman Solomon — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 08:46:53 -0400

Seventy-six years ago, to many ears on the left, Franklin D. Roosevelt sounded way too much like a centrist. True, he was eloquent, and he’d generated enthusiasm in a Democratic base eager to evict Republicans from the White House. But his campaign was moderate -- with policy proposals that didn’t indicate he would try to take the country in bold new directions if he won the presidency.

Yet FDR’s triumph in 1932 opened the door for progressives. After several years of hitting the Hoover administration’s immovable walls, the organizing capacities of labor and other downtrodden constituencies could have major impacts on policy decisions in Washington.

NPR News: National Pentagon Radio?

Norman Solomon — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 21:27:22 -0400

While the Iraqi government continued its large-scale military assault in
Basra, the NPR reporter’s voice from Iraq was unequivocal on the morning of
March 27: "There is no doubt that this operation needed to happen."

Such flat-out statements, uttered with journalistic tones and without
attribution, are routine for the U.S. media establishment. In the "War Made
Easy" documentary film, I put it this way: "If you’re pro-war, you’re
objective. But if you’re anti-war, you’re biased. And often, a news anchor
will get no flak at all for making statements that are supportive of a war

Warfare and Healthcare

Norman Solomon — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 00:17:48 -0400

It's kind of logical. In a pathological way.

A country that devotes a vast array of resources to killing capabilities
will steadily undermine its potential for healing. For social justice. For
healthcare as a human right.

Martin Luther King Jr. described the horrific trendline four decades ago: "A
nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military
defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

If a society keeps approaching spiritual death, it's apt to arrive. Here's
an indicator: Nearly one in six Americans has no health insurance, and tens

The War Election

Norman Solomon — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 00:40:03 -0500

Maybe it sounded good when politicians, pundits and online fundraisers talked about American deaths as though they were the deaths that mattered most.

Maybe it sounded good to taunt the Bush administration as a bunch of screw-ups who didn't know how to run a proper occupation.

And maybe it sounded good to condemn Donald Rumsfeld and George Bush for ignoring predictions that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to effectively occupy Iraq after an invasion.

But when a war based on lies is opposed because too many Americans are dying, the implication is that it can be made right by reducing the American death toll.

In Honor of My Mother and the Power of Love

Norman Solomon — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 02:40:40 -0500

The last time my mother was in a hospital, an essay by Thich Nhat Hanh moved in front of my eyes. "Our mother is the teacher who first teaches us love, the most important subject in life," he wrote. "Without my mother I could never have known how to love. Thanks to her I can love my neighbors. Thanks to her I can love all living beings. Through her I acquired my first notions of understanding and compassion."

My mother, Miriam A. Solomon, died on January 20, which happened to be the seventh anniversary of the inauguration of a man and a presidential regime that she loathed. Once, several years ago, when I referred to George W. Bush as "an idiot," she made a correction by pointing out he's much worse than that; she used the adjective "evil."

Edwards Reconsidered

Norman Solomon — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 06:28:35 -0500

There have been good reasons not to support John Edwards for president. For years, his foreign-policy outlook has been a hodgepodge of insights and dangerous conventional wisdom; his health-care prescriptions have not taken the leap to single payer; and all told, from a progressive standpoint, his positions have been inferior to those of Dennis Kucinich.

But Edwards was the most improved presidential candidate of 2007. He sharpened his attacks on corporate power and honed his calls for economic justice. He laid down a clear position against nuclear power. He explicitly challenged the power of the insurance industry and the pharmaceutical giants.

Channeling Suze Orman

Norman Solomon — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 06:56:15 -0500

I was near the deadline for a column when I glanced at a TV screen. "The Suze Orman Show," airing on CNBC at prime time, exerted a powerful force in my hotel room. And the fate of this column was sealed.

Orman made a big splash many years ago on public television -- the incubating environment for her as a national phenom. With articulate calls for intelligent self-determination of one's own financial future, she is a master of the long form. Humor and dramatic cadences punch up the impacts of her performances.

Seeing her the other night, within a matter of seconds, I realized that the jig was up. How could a mere underachieving syndicated columnist hope to withstand the blandishments and certainties of Suze Orman, bestselling author and revered eminence from the erudite bastions of PBS to the hard-boiled financial realms of General Electric's CNBC?

Announcing the P.U.-litzer Prizes for 2007

Norman Solomon — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 09:15:05 -0500

By Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon

Many journalists qualified for the sixteenth annual P.U.-litzer Prizes, but only a few were able to win recognition for turning in one of the truly stinkiest media performances of the year. As the judges for this un-coveted award, we have done our best to confer this honor on the most deserving.

And now, the winners of the P.U.-litzers for 2007:

SPINNING FOR ANOTHER WAR AWARD -- Michael Gordon of The New York Times

Continuing where he left off before the Iraq invasion, when he used unnamed official sources to produce wildly inaccurate page-one articles on Iraq's alleged weapons threat, Gordon in February wrote a front-page story with the stunning claim that Iran's Supreme Leader had approved sending lethal explosives into Iraq to attack U.S. soldiers. (Even President Bush soon backed away from the claim.) Readers might have had trouble assessing Gordon's charges -- which were, as usual, almost entirely based on anonymous sources: "United States intelligence asserts ... Administration officials said ... Some American intelligence experts believe ..." After analyzing the article, blogger Jonathan Schwarz speculated that "Gordon is not an actual person, but rather a voice-activated tape recorder."

The Mad Corporate World of Glenn Beck

Norman Solomon — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 08:23:13 -0500

When I picked up a ringing phone one morning in mid-December, the next thing I knew a producer was inviting me to appear on Glenn Beck's TV show.

Beck has become a national phenom with his nightly hour of polemics on CNN Headline News -- urging war on Iran, denouncing "political correctness" at home, trashing immigrants who don't speak English, mocking environmentalists as repressive zealots, and generally trying to denigrate progressive outlooks.

Our segment, the producer said, would focus on a recent NBC news report praising the virtues of energy-efficient LED light bulbs without acknowledging that the network's parent company, General Electric, sells them. I figured it was a safe bet that Beck's enthusiasm for full disclosure from media would be selective.

The USA's Human Rights Daze

Norman Solomon — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 08:57:00 -0500

The chances are slim that you saw much news coverage of Human Rights Day when it blew past the media radar -- as usual -- on Dec. 10. Human rights may be touted as a treasured principle in the United States, but the assessed value in medialand is apt to fluctuate widely on the basis of double standards and narrow definitions.

Every political system, no matter how repressive or democratic, is able to amp up public outrage over real or imagined violations of human rights. News media can easily fixate on stories of faraway injustice and cruelty. But the lofty stances end up as posturing to the extent that a single standard is not applied.

The Media and Class Warfare

Norman Solomon — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 10:03:59 -0500

A few decades ago, upwards of one-third of the American workforce was unionized. Now the figure is down around 10 percent. And news media are central to the downward spiral.

As unions wither, the journalistic establishment has a rationale for giving them less ink and air time. As the media coverage diminishes, fewer Americans find much reason to believe that unions are relevant to their working lives.

But the media problem for labor goes far beyond the fading of unions from newsprint, television and radio. Media outlets aren't just giving short shrift to organized labor. The avoidance extends to unorganized labor, too.

Good News for Americans - Your Wages Are Flat!

Norman Solomon — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 12:03:48 -0500

The economic coverage was fairly typical on a recent broadcast of the radio program "Day to Day," airing nationwide from NPR News.

"There's actually some good news out today about the American economy," host Madeleine Brand announced. Then she introduced a reporter from the widely heard "Marketplace" show, Jill Barshay, who proceeded to offer the type of explanation that's all too common in media accounts of economic trends.

"Well, just to be clear, we're talking about worker productivity, which is how much stuff we make every hour," Barshay replied. "And the Labor Department reported this morning that the hourly output per worker increased 4.9 percent in the third quarter. That's the biggest jump in labor productivity we've seen since 2003. Another part of the report also says that labor costs fell a bit, so we've got employees being more productive and costing companies less. And this is important because it shows that the economy might be able to grow without generating inflation."

The United States of Violence

Norman Solomon — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 11:28:20 -0400

This article is adapted from Norman Solomon's new book "Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State."

We keep hearing that Iraq is not Vietnam. And surely any competent geographer would agree. But the United States is the United States -- still a country run by leaders who brandish, celebrate and use the massive violent capabilities of the Pentagon as a matter of course.

********************

Almost fifty years ago, during the same autumn JFK won the presidency, John Hersey came out with "The Child Buyer," a novel written in the form of a hearing before a state senate committee. "Excuse me, Mrs., but I wonder if you know what's at stake in this situation," a senator says to the mother of a ten-year-old genius being sought for purchase by the United Lymphomilloid corporation. "You realize the national defense is involved here."

The Pro-War Undertow of the Blackwater Scandal

Norman Solomon — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 10:26:44 -0400

The Blackwater scandal has gotten plenty of media coverage, and it deserves a lot more. Taxpayer subsidies for private mercenaries are antithetical to democracy, and Blackwater's actions in Iraq have often been murderous. But the scandal is unfolding in a U.S. media context that routinely turns criticisms of the war into demands for a better war.

Many politicians are aiding this alchemy. Rhetoric from a House committee early this month audibly yearned for a better war at a highly publicized hearing that featured Erik Prince, the odious CEO of Blackwater USA.

A congressman from New Hampshire, Paul Hodes, insisted on the importance of knowing "whether failures to hold Blackwater personnel accountable for misconduct undermine our efforts in Iraq." Another Democrat on the panel, Carolyn Maloney of New York, told Blackwater's top exec that "your actions may be undermining our mission in Iraq and really hurting the relationship and trust between the Iraqi people and the American military."

Sputnik, 50 Years Later: The Launch of Techno-Power

Norman Solomon — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 09:45:42 -0400

This is an excerpt from Norman Solomon's new book "Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State."

A story could start almost anywhere. This one begins at a moment startled by a rocket.

In the autumn of 1957, America was not at war ... or at peace. The threat of nuclear annihilation shadowed every day, flickering with visions of the apocalyptic. In classrooms, "duck and cover" drills were part of the curricula. Underneath any Norman Rockwell painting, the grim reaper had attained the power of an ultimate monster.

Dwight Eisenhower was most of the way through his fifth year in the White House. He liked to speak reassuring words of patriotic faith, with presidential statements like: "America is the greatest force that God has ever allowed to exist on His footstool." Such pronouncements drew a sharp distinction between the United States and the Godless Communist foe.

Political "Science" and Truth of Consequences

Norman Solomon — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 10:14:36 -0400

This article is excerpted from Norman Solomon's new book "Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State."

Contempt for the empirical that can't be readily jiggered or spun is evident at the top of the executive branch in Washington. The country is mired in a discourse that echoes the Scopes trial dramatized in "Inherit the Wind." Mere rationality would mean lining up on the side of "science" against the modern yahoos and political panderers waving the flag of social conservatism. (At the same time that scientific Darwinism is under renewed assault, a de facto alliance between religious fundamentalists and profit-devout corporatists has moved the country further into social Darwinism that aims to disassemble the welfare state.) Entrenched opposition to stem-cell research is part of a grim pattern that includes complacency about severe pollution and global warming -- disastrous trends already dragging one species after another to the brink of extinction and beyond.

Here's the Smell of the Blood Still

Norman Solomon — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 09:54:08 -0400

The following essay is adapted from Norman Solomon's new book "Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State."

When Martin Luther King Jr. publicly referred to "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government," he had no way of knowing that his description would ring so true 40 years later. As the autumn of 2007 begins, the reality of Uncle Sam as an unhinged mega-killer haunts a large minority of Americans. Many who can remember the horrific era of the Vietnam War are nearly incredulous that we could now be living in a time of similarly deranged official policy.

Despite all the differences, the deep parallels between the two war efforts inform us that the basic madness of entrenched power in our midst is not about miscalculations or bad management or quagmires. The continuity tells us much more than we would probably like to know about the obstacles to decency that confront us every day.

Six Years of 9/11 as a License to Kill

Norman Solomon — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 10:38:49 -0400

It evokes a tragedy that marks an epoch. From the outset, the warfare state has exploited "9/11," a label at once too facile and too laden with historic weight -- giving further power to the tacit political axiom that perception is reality.

Often it seems that media coverage is all about perception, especially when the underlying agendas are wired into huge profits and geopolitical leverage. If you associate a Big Mac or a Whopper with a happy meal or some other kind of great time, you're more likely to buy it. If you connect 9/11 with a need for taking military action and curtailing civil liberties, you're more likely to buy what the purveyors of war and authoritarian government have been selling for the past half-dozen years.

Thomas Friedman: Hooked on War

Norman Solomon — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 10:07:41 -0400

Reading his "Letter From Baghdad" column in the New York Times on Sept. 5, you'd never know that Thomas Friedman has a history of enthusiasm for war. Now he laments that Iraq is bad for the United States -- "everyone loves seeing us tied down here" -- stuck in the "madness that is Iraq." And he concludes that the good Americans who have been sent to Iraq will not be deserved by Iraqis "if they continue to hate each other more than they love their own kids."

The column, under a Baghdad dateline, is boilerplate Friedman: sprinkled with I-am-here anecdotes and breezy geopolitical nostrums. For years now, the man widely touted as America's most influential journalist has indicated that his patience with the war in Iraq might soon run out. But, like the media establishment he embodies, Friedman can't bring himself to renounce a war that he helped to launch and then blessed as the incarnation of virtue.

Let's Face It: The Warfare State Is Part of Us

Norman Solomon — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 10:19:27 -0400

The USA's military spending is now close to $2 billion a day. This fall, the country will begin its seventh year of continuous war, with no end in sight. On the horizon is the very real threat of a massive air assault on Iran. And few in Congress seem willing or able to articulate a rejection of the warfare state.

While the Bush-Cheney administration is the most dangerous of our lifetimes -- and ousting Republicans from the White House is imperative -- such truths are apt to smooth the way for progressive evasions. We hear that "the people must take back the government," but how can "the people" take back what they never really had? And when rhetoric calls for "returning to a foreign policy based on human rights and democracy," we're encouraged to be nostalgic for good old days that never existed.

Backspin for War: The Convenience of Denial

Norman Solomon — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 10:04:02 -0400

The man who ran CNN's news operation during the invasion of Iraq is now doing damage control in response to a new documentary's evidence that he kowtowed to the Pentagon on behalf of the cable network. His current denial says a lot about how "liberal media" outlets remain deeply embedded in the mindsets of pro-military conformity.

In mid-August, the former CNN executive publicly defended himself against a portion of the "War Made Easy" film (based on my book of the same name) that has drawn much comment from viewers since the documentary's release earlier this summer. As Inter Press Service reported, the movie shows "a news clip of Eason Jordan, a CNN News chief executive who, in an interview with CNN, boasts of the network's cadre of professional 'military experts.' In fact, CNN's retired military generals turned war analysts were so good, Eason said, that they had all been vetted and approved by the U.S. government."

Let Us Now Praise an Infamous Woman - and Our Own Possibilities

Norman Solomon — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 09:47:38 -0400

The problem with letting history judge is that so many officials get away with murder in the meantime -- while precious few choose to face protracted vilification for pursuing truth and peace.

A grand total of two people in the entire Congress were able to resist a blood-drenched blank check for the Vietnam War. Standing alone on Aug. 7, 1964, senators Ernest Gruening and Wayne Morse voted against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

Forty-three years later, we don't need to go back decades to find a lopsided instance of a lone voice on Capitol Hill standing against war hysteria and the expediency of violent fear. Days after 9/11, at the launch of the so-called "war on terrorism," just one lawmaker -- out of 535 -- cast a vote against the gathering madness.

Media Blitz for War: The Big Guns of August

Norman Solomon — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 10:05:06 -0400

The U.S. media establishment is mainlining another fix for the Iraq war: It isn't so bad after all, American military power could turn wrong into right, chronic misleaders now serve as truth-tellers. The hit is that the war must go on.

When the White House chief of staff Andrew Card said five years ago that "you don't introduce new products in August," he was explaining the need to defer an all-out PR campaign for invading Iraq until early fall. But this year, August isn't a bad month to launch a sales pitch for a new and improved Iraq war. Bad products must be re-marketed to counteract buyers' remorse.

Media Spin on Iraq: We're Leaving (Sort of)

Norman Solomon — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 09:52:25 -0400

In mid-July, a media advisory from "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" announced a new series of interviews on the PBS show that will address "what Iraq might look like when the U.S. military leaves."

A few days later, Time magazine published a cover story titled "Iraq: What will happen when we leave."

But it turns out, what will happen when we leave is that we won't leave.

Urging a course of action that's now supported by "the best strategic minds in both parties," the Time story calls for "an orderly withdrawal of about half the 160,000 troops currently in Iraq by the middle of 2008." And: "A force of 50,000 to 100,000 troops would dig in for a longer stay to protect America's most vital interests..."