All the News Fit to Print
The New York Times likes to get on its high horse about the recent wave of book banning in America. And it IS outrageous that classic books like Toni Morrison's Beloved, Margaret Atwood's A Handmaid's Tale, and Art Spiegelman's Maus -- as well as many books about black empowerment, women's rights and LGBTQ liberation -- have been banned by school officials and other censors. But the growing reign of liberal PC orthodoxy in the media and publishing industries is also a major problem. The NYT -- heal thyself.
As I've pointed out before, one of the worst liberal censors at the Times is columnist Pamela Paul, who regularly inveighs against the "woke" clampdown. But when Paul was the editor of the NYT Sunday Book Review, she regularly ghosted books that were deemed too radical or outside of the newspaper of record's safe political margins. Among the books that Paul and the Times have refused to even acknowledge are those by authors Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges and yours truly.
Similarly, the NYT and the liberal corporate media in general won't offer a platform to critique the fundamental tenets of War Inc. -- the national security regime that produces constant wars and obscene profits for the military-industrial complex. The Pentagon was the only financial beneficiary of the recent debt agreement, which cuts funding for poverty programs and other essential domestic priorities. To keep War Inc. bloated and happy, the U.S. has chosen to crush what's left of the middle class with huge debts.
War and peace have not been seriously debated in this country since the Vietnam War. Meanwhile, the NYT rattles its sabers about Ukraine, Taiwan and other hot spots. The Democrats have become the war party. And MSNBC and CNN feature a parade of national security talking heads each night.
It's past time to debate the militarization of America. And it's past time for the New York Times and other corporate media gatekeepers to air voices that they themselves have marginalized.
Oh, fuck it -- as Robert F. Kennedy said to his Senate staff after another frustrating White House meeting with President Lyndon Johnson about Vietnam, "Let's go start a country of our own."
PS Speaking of corporate media cluelessness, let's hear it for the Netflix shareholders who just voted to reject the grotesque $40 million annual compensation package for CEO Ted Sarandos. Sarandos is trying to award himself a huge raise at the same time Writers Guild members are striking for a total of about $20 million more than Netflix wants to pay Sarandos each year.
And what is Sarandos being rewarded so lavishly for? Netflix subscribers are fleeing the streaming giant, the service offers a flood of pabulum, and now the badly treated writers are finally crying "Enough"!
There is something seriously out of whack in corporate America.
