"If you don't like what's being said, change the conversation."

[thewayoftheid]

Don Draper sounds so...republican.

History always repeats.

Whenever a black leader emerges--one who tilts a little too far to the left--the Red Scare Brigade™ comes a-knockin'. When Ida Wells-Barnett dared to fight the wholesale lynching of black men, her reputation was attacked not only by the mainstream press (Hi, NY Times!) but by her own

Comments

[argentla]

I think it's symptomatic of corporate control of everything. In McCormick's day, he had great power and influence, but he also had a lot of enemies. If you were a reporter or editor who got canned for offending his prejudices, there were people who would hire you after that just because they hated McCormick's guts, or opposed everything he stood for. All of the major new outlets today are owned by conglomerates that, while separate, tend to have very similar corporate values. If you get fired by Fox News for saying the Earth goes around the sun, Disney/ABC or NBC-Universal is likely to be wary of you because you've proven you're not a loyal corporate employee, regardless of the actual issues. And, maybe more to the point, they all have their fingers in the same pies.

There are moments -- very depressing ones -- when I start thinking that the idea of political allegiance is really obsolete, and that all political discourse can be expressed in terms of cui bon: what business interests are paying to promote or ridicule a particular point of view, and what's at stake for them. Even more cynically, the only thing that makes me doubt the verity of that is that it wouldn't account for the stubbornness with which America clings to the idea that being brown and/or female is an intrinsically radical action.