Personal Account of Journalist or Professor – education and deconstruction.com

To Jerusalem and Back – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “To Jerusalem and Back, A Personal Account” by Saul Bellow, published in 1976. This slim volume contains a series of essays on the content of discussions Bellow had with individuals of various walks of life during his and his wife’s visit to Israel in late 1975.

In late 1975, Israel’s right to exist was still being contested by the Palestinians. The PLO was the major terrorist group endangering Israelis then. The United States was providing ample support to Israel– financially, militarily and ideologically.

In October 1973, President Richard Nixon sent weaponry to Israel when it was having trouble fending off Egypt, and the Soviets supplied other nations with arms.

As is well known, less than two years later, Nixon resigned in disgrace for his various illegal domestic activities. The author characterized America as a nation of rationalizers. Nixon contended that he had led a virtuous life– “…He worked his way through school, served his country, uncovered Communist plots. It is impossible that he should be impure… Anyway, nothing makes us happier than to talk about ourselves.”

Bellow lamented that experiencing beauty reminded one of the constant psychological burdens suffered by people associated with Israel: “…nothing but aggression and defense, superpowers, diplomacy, terrorism, war.”

The author and his wife had lunch at the home of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. “If it weren’t for the men with machine guns at the door, you would think yourself in a comfortable house in Washington or Philadelphia.”

In May 1976, a Chicago newspaper reported that Israel’s peace proposals were getting scant attention. Too bad, but a more important story was displacing them– an Ohio Congressman confessed to giving his sexy girlfriend a patronage job.

It is cringeworthy how, in America, in recent decades, not just this year or last year, one attention whore, undeserving of the world’s attention– being used as a political pawn for the purpose of retaliation– can dominate the headlines and crowd out the reporting of really important events and issues, like disasters, deaths and proposals to improve the world.

But — contrary to what a few ignorant people in the media have said, these political shenanigans have NOT sunk to the level of Joe McCarthy’s extremely evil political machinations. Neither accused nor accuser committed the crime of the century. Hundreds of lives were NOT ruined. NO ONE died in the daily tabloid garbage spewed by the media.

Anyway, instead of wasting time, read this book to learn many more of the author’s observations, insights and the opinions he heard as a result of his social activities in Jerusalem.

Parting With Illusions

The Book of the Week is “Parting With Illusions” by Vladimir Pozner, published in 1990. This is the autobiography of an American Soviet, and vice versa.

Born in April 1934 in Paris, Pozner lived most of his life in the former Soviet Union but spent his early childhood in the United States. He attended City and Country grammar school in New York City. In the 1940’s, the school’s caring teachers taught hands-on trades such as printing, woodworking, ceramics, retailing and post-office management– and their history. At Stuyvesant high school, indifferent teachers marginalized Pozner in his forty-student classes.

Both Pozner’s parents were film-industry workers. His father was a high executive, and Soviet citizen. His mother was French. His much younger brother was born in the United States. In 1948, the family was faced with the option of moving to France without the father, or moving all together to the USSR, or staying in America, where they would be harassed unmercifully because their head of household was a Communist. A job was supposedly waiting in Moscow for him, but they ended up staying in Berlin for four years first.

In the immediate postwar years, there was extensive capital flight and brain drain going from East Germany to West Germany. Pozner attended a school that taught him the Russian language. Writing exercises consisted of robotic transcribing of verbatim material from a textbook or teacher; he was supposed to “…walk the mental straight and narrow, never digressing, never introducing any of your own ideas.”

In his career in the 1950’s through the 1980’s as a print and radio journalist in the USSR, because he was speaking to foreign audiences, Pozner was allowed to cover whichever topics he wanted to– but he still refrained from discussing certain subjects for fear of rocking the boat. However, when it is one’s daily job to be a propagandist, sooner or later, he is going to say what he really feels and get in trouble. Unless he’s a pathological liar. Even in the United States.

Read the book to learn of the author’s experiences as a pro-Soviet, pro-Communist, pro-Socialist journalist, translator, and Jew, radio commentator, etc.

No Is NOT Enough

The Book of the Week is “No is NOT Enough, RESISTING Trump’s Shock Politics AND WINNING THE WORLD WE NEED” By Naomi Klein, published in 2017.

The author explained that a tribal-unity mentality took hold of consumerism starting in the 1980’s. Attaching oneself to a big brand name to feel accepted by a group became the new normal. Donald Trump has latched onto that trend, by generating investments in properties that have borne his brand name in places like New York City, Florida, Dubai, India, Canada, Brazil, and South Korea.

According to the author, at the book’s writing, sweatshops in China made his and his daughter’s clothing lines. The Trump family sees public office “…as a short-term investment to enormously swell the value of your [sic– Trump’s, not your] commercial brand in the long run… It’s the U.S. government as a for-profit family business.”

Despite Trump’s extensive deregulation of the oil industry, one really fortunate factor– currently slowing the rate of occurrence of environmental and historically redundant catastrophes (that have been decades in the making)– is that low oil prices have deterred oil companies from engaging in super-expensive, super-damaging, super-risky fracking and deep-sea drilling.

The author also discussed the ideology of the extreme Right– neoliberalism– in which the free market should always dominate, “… regulation is always wrong, private is good and public is bad, and taxes that support public services are the worst of all.”

Leaders with sociopathic tendencies are setting bad examples of how to treat people and how to behave. This is disturbing because the fish rots from the head down. The author’s description of the moral characters of many of Trump’s appointees in particular, are reminiscent of the people in the “boardroom scene” of the movie “Dogma” starring Matt Damon and Ben Affleck (Watch the clip on YouTube, of course.)

Every day he has been in office, all Trump has done is attack, lash out, threaten or criticize. He has been a regular Don Rickles, without the comedy. A great New Year’s gift would be a Trump “Hissy-Fit-of-the-Day Calendar.” Here are just a few of the ideals, organizations and people with which or with whom he has expressed his displeasure, verbally and textually: the Constitutional right of due process, NFL players, wildlife, federal unions, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, liberal world order, the Federal Reserve Bank, Iranian leader Hassan Rouhani, Amazon.com, Red Hen, the European Union, GOP Senator Jennifer Hansler, the preexisting-conditions-provision of heath insurance, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Harley Davidson, transgender inmates, Syria, salmon recovery, late-night TV show hosts, Palestinians, counsel Robert Mueller, NATO, Representative Mark Sanford, women’s health care, national monuments, breastfeeding, the global trade system, wind power, Theresa May…

The world is moving closer to another bout of systematic brainwashing, blaming, and genocide of late because market economies are failing to give sufficient dignity to the downtrodden through affordable housing, healthcare and education. Most employers no longer provide affordable health insurance, and retirement plans– as they automatically did decades ago. Education costs have soared. So new graduates start their careers with crushing debt load.

Read the book to learn of the kinds of situations toward which the Trump administration is heading (besides those mentioned in the above paragraph)– needless deaths and preventable damage, like from Hurricane Katrina (and why other similar disasters stemming from disasters are likely to occur again– due to opportunists); why Hillary Clinton lost her bid for president; how certain European countries are taking steps to save the environment; and the scary, depressing consequences of not challenging the status quo, and how to do it.

Iron and Silk

The Book of the Week is “Iron and Silk” by Mark Salzman, published in 1986. This short paperback reveals the culture of Changsha, capital of Hunan province in China, in the early 1980’s through the eyes of the then-22 year old American author.

Salzman traveled to the city of Changsha, population approximately one million, to teach English for two years, beginning in the summer of 1982. Living conditions were primitive, as were the educational resources for the author’s students (aspiring doctors) where he taught– Hunan Medical College.

The author’s boss, who roomed with her housekeeper, lived in a tiny, un-air-conditioned apartment with bare cement walls and floors, and one bare light bulb per room. She behaved like a mother-figure toward him, critiquing his behavior and clothing.

The school had only one copy machine and only one individual was empowered to use it; in his absence, documents were hand-written over again. The absence of telephones meant people visited each other personally anytime.

Read the book to learn more about the author’s adventures with Chinese bureaucracy, censorship, and how he sharpened his martial arts and calligraphy skills during his teaching stint.

Deadline

The Book of the Week is “Deadline” by James Reston, published in 1991. This is the career memoir of James “Scotty” Reston. Originally from Scotland, he became a highly respected employee at the New York Times for many years.

In 1928, the author began to attend the University of Illinois’ school of journalism, whose tuition was $28 per semester. In his senior year, the bank from which he wrote the check to pay such tuition, failed due to the Great Depression. Fortunately, the governor of Ohio, a friend of his, lent him the money to continue at the school.

When Reston was 25, the Associated Press hired him to be an urban columnist six days a week. Perks of the job included free restaurant meals, theater shows, opera, etc. with the understanding that there would be favorable coverage of the providing entities.

In the mid 1930’s, the New York Times was one of several newspapers in New York. It competed by sending seventy (!) reporters compared to the others’ twenty, to cover an important story.

Reston wrote about many of the twentieth century’s important political and economic issues– the scandals, wars and international incidents. He lamented over the fact that “The government accuses the press of threatening the national security by printing the truth but sees no such threat when the government itself tells lies.”

A large portion of the book was dedicated to Reston’s opinions on America’s foreign policy through the decades. He believed that the country remained dominant, rich and strong after World War II despite its political scandals and periods of disarray, because its democracy, although imperfect, was still way superior to the kinds fascism, socialism and communism practiced by other nations.

Read the book to learn the details.

Madness Under the Royal Palms

The Book of the Week is “Madness Under the Royal Palms” by Laurence Leamer, published in 2009. This book conveys the nature of the people who live on the island of Palm Beach, Florida.

The posh area surrounded by the Intracoastal Waterway is where social climbers show off their fancy, expensive residences, cars, boats and significant others. Some are pretenders, frauds or criminals, but most of them, even with all of their trappings of wealth, are unhappy. No flaunting would be necessary if they were truly secure with themselves.

The author described two deaths attributable to the haughty environment, plus a few “May-December” marriages that ended in divorce that: a) included litigation over the prenuptial agreement as a way of protecting one’s assets from a gold-digging spouse (and ex-spouses; who might buy a $12,500 red-ostrich pocketbook at Hermes on Newbury Street), and b) the traumatic impact on the children involved.

On another topic, “It was not just manners that were breaking down but a profound social code that had governed Palm Beach for a hundred years.” One example of disruption of the status quo was the approval of Jews and gays as members at a country club. Donald Trump’s club, Mar-A-Lago broke the exclusivity barrier in Palm Beach. It wasn’t that he necessarily favored civil rights, however; it was merely a happy side effect of his desperation for money when he started the club in the mid-1980’s. One example of desecration of the social code- rudeness unprecedented for the 1990’s– could be seen in the bribing of valet parking attendants so boors could cut the line of people waiting to have their cars fetched after attending a social event.

Read the book to learn what transpires annually at the hundreds of Palm Beach charity events, balls, celebratory meals, fashion shows and parties, etc.; the gossip sources, and the current distinguishing feature of the truly wealthy.

The Times of My Life

The Book of the Week is “The Times of My Life” by Max Frankel, published in 1999. This autobiography describes a journalist originally from Germany who came of age during WWII.

The author’s Jewish parents were citizens of alternately Polish or German territory, but their passports were Polish. So in October 1938, Hitler deported them and the author, then about ten years old, to Poland. But for the incredible survival skills of his parents, that led them to eventually flee to the United States after many hardships, the family would surely have perished during the war.

When he wrote of the their final destination, Frankel recounted two curious perceptions held by Europeans at that time: Three major New York institutions included Franklin Roosevelt, Fiorello LaGuardia and Columbia University, and “…millions of Jews live in New York and were unafraid to speak Yiddish, not just in the streets, but on the radio!”

Frankel caught the journalism bug in high school, thanks to an inspirational English teacher. In the early 1950’s, as a sophomore at Columbia University, he was afforded a unique opportunity to work as a journalist for the New York Times, covering campus news. His pay was almost double the school’s tuition. Newspapering was time-consuming and labor-intensive then, what with penciled-in headlines, carbon copies and pneumatic tubes to transport articles on paper to typesetters.

The author stayed with the New York Times for decades. The 1950’s found him reporting on the U.S. government. The McCarthy Era was Hitlerian for him. Senator Joe McCarthy and his partner in crime, Roy Cohn acquired presidential power when they were granted access to personnel records of government employees to spy on them– the kind of abuse of power that smacked of Germany’s dictatorship. News gatherers in those days merely conveyed information, practicing neither introspection nor analysis. However, Frankel described all journalists in history: “We enjoy disaster, murder, riot, revolution.”

The author covered Moscow in the late 1950’s, Cuba in the early 1960’s, and Washington again in the mid-1960’s. He wrote brilliant legal arguments for his employer’s case when it printed the Pentagon Papers. He recounted a 1980 political joke, whose concept will remain relevant for decades: In an alley, a voter is accosted at gunpoint by a pollster and asked, “Carter or Reagan?” After a momentary pause, the voter says, “Shoot.”

In the late 1980’s, the author achieved the position of executive editor. He spent a chapter on how he changed the hiring practices of the paper with affirmative-action type initiatives. A separate, longer chapter was spent on homosexuals. He lamented over the constant conflict all news organizations encounter between staying profitable and maintaining neutrality when conveying information about their financial supporters– advertisers, readers/viewers/listeners who purchase such information– and stockholders.

Read the book to learn the details of Frankel’s extreme and diverse experiences.

Rehnquist

The Book of the Week is “Rehnquist” by Herman J. Obermayer, published in 2009. This slim volume describes the author’s friendship with the late William Rehnquist, a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, appointed by Richard Nixon.

Rehnquist was born in 1924 in a suburb of Milwaukee, WI. During his decades as a justice, he wrote opinions favoring federalism, deregulation and stricter law enforcement. Read the book to learn about his career history, frugality, gambling habits, movie viewing tastes and his last illness.

All Too Human

The Book of the Week is “All Too Human” by George Stephanopoulos, published in 1999. This is a personal account of the author’s employment experiences with former president Bill Clinton beginning with Clinton’s 1992 campaign and ending with his own resignation at the end of Clinton’s first term.

The author was a close, trusted advisor of the president. In 1992, the press was engaging in negative, tabloid-like reporting on Clinton’s alleged extramarital affairs and 1969 draft-dodging of the Vietnam War.

Stephanopoulos– who started out in the position of press secretary, then became a consultant– described his 80-hour-a-week job thusly: “Every day was a dozen meetings, a hundred phone calls, a new crisis, another first.” He had to play nice with the press while at the same time, serving as an enabler of image management of the president. The author was continually advising his boss on how he should handle the infinite issues and problems that cropped up daily.

Beginning in 1994, an unwanted interloper by the name of Dick Morris imposed undue influence on the president, that created philosophical and workplace conflict. Morris was pressuring the president to balance the budget on a timetable that would result in broken campaign promises.

By the autumn of 1995, “… the evening news was a chorus of criticism from Democrats, Republicans and independent observers, who all agreed on one point: that the president would say anything to anyone to get his or her support.”

Read the book to learn about the author’s involvement with Clinton’s first-term actions, good and bad, and how Clinton got reelected in 1996.

Talking Back

The Book of the Week is “Talking Back” by Andrea Mitchell, published in 2005. This is the career memoir of a TV journalist at NBC.

Mitchell started her career in the mid-1960’s covering local politics in Philadelphia. Her desire to cover national politics necessitated a move to Washington, D.C. Through the decades, she witnessed and reported on various presidential campaigns and administrations– good, bad and ugly. She traveled the world extensively, and conveyed lessons on history and politics that the nation’s leaders failed to learn.

“In administrations that lack discipline, or are led by chiefs of staff short on character or judgment… underlings desperate to please the boss [president] start breaking rules.”

There were ironies, too. During the Iran-Contra scandal, the Iranians didn’t know they were paying for an anti-Communist operation whose money was laundered through Israel– a sworn enemy of Iran.

The author’s career had its ups and downs. In the late 1980’s, she was assigned to cover Capitol Hill rather than serve as Chief White House Correspondent. The former position conferred lesser status. However, she had more freedom of movement and topics on which to report, due to her distance from the president– who required an entourage and heavy security. She could pursue important stories on foreign policy, the budget, or energy legislation, rather than public relations events and sensationalism. In 1993, she was named to the latter position, but could no longer be a political analyst on the Today show, as at that time, it was considered a conflict of interest to have the same person both report and analyze political news.

Mitchell covered the Savings and Loan scandal, a common occurrence in American financial history. A pattern of abuse in the private sector, aided and abetted by government, was followed by a taxpayer bailout.

Prior to the First Gulf War, “Dick Cheney and Colin Powell told us that occupying Iraq would saddle America with the burden of running it.” It was difficult enough for people from the three major sects of Islam to live together peacefully in the same country without a foreign power’s attempting to supervise a transition to a different political system.

Controversy over gender and racial issues came to the fore after the Anita Hill – Clarence Thomas episode. The catch-22 for females trying to build their careers, especially in male-dominated fields (such as TV news) was that if they complained of sexual harassment, they’d be complaining to its very perpetrators. The times, they are a changin’.

In 1992, Mitchell, in reporting on Bill Clinton’s presidential run, pursued an unending series of campaign scandals. Two years later, she was present at a press conference at which Hillary Clinton was responding to Whitewater accusations. “It was a flawless performance, but the first lady still would not admit to any errors of law or judgment in her financial dealings. And behind her calm gaze, I saw a woman still enraged that people would even question her ethics.”

In the mid-90’s, the author was required to have two reputable news sources before she was allowed to go on the air with a big news scoop. Read the book to learn of other ways “news” gathering and reporting have changed through the decades, and Mitchell’s experiences dealing with the changes.