Publishing Industry – Page 2 – education and deconstruction.com

A Dedicated Life – BONUS POST

[Please note: The word “Featured” on the left side above was NOT inserted by this blogger, but apparently was inserted by WordPress, and it cannot be removed. NO post in this blog is sponsored.]

The Bonus Book of the Week is “A Dedicated Life, Journalism, Justice, and a Chance for Every Child” by David Lawrence, Jr., published in 2018.

“More money is almost never the right first response. Rather, we need to begin by figuring out how well we are doing with the money we already have.”

-the author, on embarking on a quest to improve the lives of preschool children, beginning in 1999 in Miami-Dade County, Florida.

Born in March 1942 in New York City, the author was raised Catholic in a wealthy family of eventually, nine children. His father was a journalist covering politics in New York. In 1948, the family moved to a residence that was a six-hour drive north of the city to tend to a farm that had animals and food-crops.

The author retired as a newspaper executive at the end of 1998, to take on a new career as an advocate for young children. There were two possible ways to institute “high quality” (the author never exactly defined what he meant by that) pre-kindergarten for all, regardless of need, in the entire state of Florida:

Lobbying the Florida state legislature to pass a bill, or
Propose a Constitutional amendment, voted on by the people, during an election for state officials.

The latter required: that hundreds of thousands of Floridians sign a petition; that an expensive campaign be launched in order to raise awareness and promote the initiative and get people to vote for the amendment. Unfortunately, the opposition always launches a campaign to smear such an initiative (or oppose it in order to smear a prospective candidate for office or an incumbent who would run for reelection– in planning for the next election; for example, currently– 2022 and 2024).

Anyway, read the book to learn whether the author and millions of others, in November 2002, actually achieved their ultimate goal (Hint: over the course of decades, through the cumbersome political process that is democracy– such radical, widespread change happens in baby steps; with the aid of the trick of telling voters that funding for the new program wouldn’t come from raising taxes!), and learn much more about his philosophy, careers, and fundraising successes for good causes (for which, it appears, he deserves bragging rights.)

Beneath the Tamarind Tree

The Book of the Week is “Beneath the Tamarind Tree, A Story of Courage, Family, and the Lost Schoolgirls of Boko Haram” by Isha Sesay, published in 2019.

In April 2014, Boko Haram members (Muslim extremists) abducted a few hundred female students from a boarding school in Chibok in Nigeria. For the attention whores of the world, a Twitter account was immediately started, inviting comments. The American news cycle ended quickly, but trauma for the victims and their families– even for the girls who were released (fewer than half at the book’s writing)– will never end.

Apparently, the trading relationship between the United States and Nigeria wasn’t a sufficient motivator to resolve the situation peacefully. In 2017, there occurred more than $9 billion worth of oil, cocoa, cashew nuts, minerals and animal feed exchanged between the two.

The author had a vested interest in seeing the girls’ safe release, as her mother’s family hailed from Sierra Leone on the continent of Africa, and her family had lived there. So her personal experience put her in a better position to get the story, more than other TV journalists. Even so, information-gathering through personal interviews could be life-threatening, as Boko Haram was a terrorist group comprised of sociopathic sadists with weaponry– child-soldiers– who had occasional episodes of sympathy but usually had no qualms about committing looting and arson, to boot.

The author felt that the 2016 U.S. presidential election eclipsed all media coverage of her Nigeria story– more media coverage would have swayed the world to take action on behalf of the abducted girls. Possibly. But– in the 1990’s, American media outlets covered Nigeria only insofar as to give it a reputation for fraudsters who got Americans to fall for inheritance scams via airmail or email.

So that is all that most people here know about Nigeria. They usually don’t actively seek news from the European media outlets, such as the BBC, the Guardian, Al Jazeera or Reuters. “Breaking News” coverage on their favorite celebrities, politicians and themselves, is much more of a priority. Sadly.

Read the book to learn many more details.

The Year I Was Peter the Great – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “The Year I was Peter the Great, 1956–Khrushchev, Stalin’s Ghost, and A Young American in Russia” by Marvin Kalb, published in 2017.

Born in 1930 in the Bronx, the nerdy author tutored Puerto Rican students for free at his high school, and in exchange, they became his bodyguards against the Irish kids who tried to bully him. The author attended City College and covered sports for its college newspaper. In the early 1950’s, a sting operation caught 32 basketball players from seven colleges across the country in a point-shaving (sports-betting) scandal.

Passionate about all things Soviet, after a two-year stint in the U.S. Army, the author was afforded the opportunity to do post-graduate, independent study in Moscow in 1956. He also became a translator of news articles for the American embassy there.

In February 1956, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, through delivering a famous speech, signaled that the political times were changing in the Soviet Union. The indoctrination of people born under the rule of his predecessor Josef Stalin, could be described thusly: “For much of their lives, they had been moored to rigid Communist dogma, trained to worship Stalin’s genius, dedicated to the Soviet system.”

At the time, the author was hopeful that Khrushchev’s speech was going to be ground-breaking, and reported to the American embassy, his personal observations of students’ rebellious behavior in Lenin Library and Historical Library. Unfortunately, it took about thirty-five (!) more years of the inhumane political system of pure Communism to collapse in a large portion of the world.

Read the book to learn much more about the author’s experiences during, and reminiscences of, a very exciting year in his life.

Lost On Planet China

The Book of the Week is “Lost on Planet China, The Strange and True Story of One Man’s Attempt to Understand the World’s Most Mystifying Nation” by J. Maarten Troost, published in 2008.

SIDENOTE: Just as there is hyper-awareness among foreigners of the opaque, dreadfully polluted air in China’s urban areas, there is hyper-awareness of the oppressive COVID political ideology SPOUTED 24/7 BY HYPOCRITES in the United States. The masking and “six-feet apart” rules are simply minor inconveniences piled on by ruling authorities to give the appearance that there are actions ordinary Americans can take to stop the spread of the disease.

However, the major inconveniences for everyone– cancelling big social events, or allowing sports with no fans, and closing schools– are meant to prevent people from gathering in large numbers in one place so that they will be less likely to die in terrorist attacks or shooting sprees. Violent political unrest has become more and more likely (in America!), given the nature of the most recent presidential administration.

Americans have been made hyper-aware of the fatal, contagious viral disease of COVID through scare-tactics that were NEVER used during previous epidemics of fatal, contagious, viral diseases. Take the flu epidemic in 1957. Incidentally, at that time, there were fewer viral treatments for patients, and patients then were just as ignorant about medicine as now: Rosalind Russell, a Broadway and movie actress, wrote, “That second Auntie Mame winter [in 1957 on Broadway] I had the flu three times myself, took antibiotics like popcorn, and kept going.”

Jim Croce caught the flu during what his wife wrote in her book, was an “epidemic” that caused a serious financial loss from his concert series on college campuses in 1972. Students were loath to attend cultural events (but there were no restrictions on doing so) for fear of catching the flu.

Croce recovered in a week, but his wife DIDN’T mention that: he was tested for “the flu,” he saw a doctor, or that he reported his illness to the local government. Along these lines, in the 1970’s, an indeterminate number of people WEREN’T COUNTED in flu-epidemic statistics even though they had flu symptoms– because they weren’t tested for it, didn’t see a doctor, or didn’t report it to the local government. In 2020, the vast majority of people who felt sick got tested for COVID, which led to an immediate reporting to medical or political authorities!

Thus, for the above and other reasons, then as now, statistics on fatal, contagious viral diseases, aren’t all that accurate. A book that makes this point in general, published in 1954, that also teaches readers about how to spot bias, spurious causation, and all manner of misleading nonsense in a range of topics including politics, medicine and economics, is: “How to Lie With Statistics” by Darrell Huff. The highlights include: pp. 28, 35, 39-41, 64, 83-85, 118-119 and 131.

Anyway, the author of the above Book of the Week traveled to various provinces and regions of China around 2005– he failed to specify how many months he was there– leaving his wife and two young sons, two and four years old, in the United States. He wrote he was looking for a livable part of China for his family for a year. While there, he met up with a friend fluent in Chinese, who showed him around Beijing.

The friend taught the author where to get pirated software and pornography, and how to bargain. For, the prices of all goods and services exchanged in the country are negotiable. He also got assistance in hiring a young female translator, whose schooling had taught her only positive aspects of China’s history in recent decades. She had no clue about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

When the author remarked on the air pollution in China, various Chinese people responded to his criticism by saying Los Angeles had smog. Another cultural aspect of life in China, aside from being forced to accept the pollution, was China’s government’s legal insistence that couples have only one child in their immediate families; preferably a boy. Parents of a child of marriageable age met in the local parks to find a spouse for their one child.

The author also conveyed his (unpleasant) experiences of riding on China’s railways, and seeing “…streetlamps decorated with swastikas, a sight that always succeeded in startling me. But, in fact, in Buddhism it is a symbol for love and mercy…”

Read the book to learn: the history of China of the 1400’s, and of the author’s adventures in China proper, Hong Kong and Macau. Through the eyes of the multi-racial author– who is Canadian, Czech and Dutch– the reader might get the impression that Chinese society is sociopathic.

But, when one thinks of the two-word phrase ending in “spree” the first words that spring to mind in AMERICAN English are: shopping, spending, shooting or killing. While it is bashing China, perhaps America ought to reflect on how the rest of the world views it, and “remove the plank from ITS OWN eye” first.

BONUS POST

“But, over time, I learned to hate as blindly and viciously as any of them.”

No, the above was not said by American viewers or listeners of political pundits in the last forty years. But it might as well have been.

At every opportunity, pundits bash their political enemies. Then they complain, “The nation is more divided than ever.”

It is the pundits who have made spewing hatred socially acceptable and perceived as even a good thing!

That is why hatred is still a “thing” in this country. Politicians too, pile on.

In addition, scapegoating is also all the childish rage these days. Pursuant to what they’ve heard, American viewers and listeners can feel free to blame any or all of the following for all of their troubles (in no particular order):

illegal immigrants, the Iranians, Robert Mueller, Hillary, James Comey, Obama, Lisa Page, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, red state governors, Democrats, police officers, Republicans, Donald J. Trump, Adam Schiff, Hunter Biden, the Chinese, conservatives, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, Peter Strzok, the North Koreans, blue state governors, the Squad, liberals, the ladies on “The View,” Joe Biden, teachers, Antifa, Jerrold Nadler, the NRA, and numerous lesser attention whores.

Renewing threats is apparently in vogue, too. A Google search reveals who, of the most recent three presidents, has renewed the most threats.

The following is all Google search results (duplicates of headlines were deleted for the same date) of actual headlines of news or information outlets with the exact phrase, “Trump renews threat to” (Warning: this might get a little tedious):

Dec 9, 2015 Trump renews threat to run as an Independent GOP presidential…

Mar 3, 2016 Trump Renews Indie Threat

Aug 8, 2016 Trump renews threat to leave NAFTA in speech on economy

Nov 28, 2016 Trump renews threat to prosecute Clinton for joining recount

Aug 2, 2017 Trump renews threat to scrap NAFTA

Aug 27, 2017 Donald Trump Renews Threat To Scrap NAFTA Amid Negotiations …

Aug 28, 2017 Trump renews threat to scrap NAFTA going into next round of talks …

May 23, 2018 Trump Renews Threat to Scrap North Korea Summit

May 29, 2018 Trump Renews Threat To Impose Tariffs On High-Tech Chinese Goods

Apr 23, 2018 Trump renews threat to tie border crossings to new NAFTA deal

Jul 29, 2018 Trump renews threat to shut down government over border wall

Jul 30, 2018 Trump renews threat to shut down government over border wall

Aug 2, 2018 President Trump renews threat to shut down the …

Nov 22, 2018 Trump renews threat to close Mexico border over migrants

Nov 23, 2018 Trump renews threat to close US border with Mexico

Nov 29, 2018 Trump Renews Threat To Impose Tariffs On Imported Cars

Dec 28, 2018 Trump renews threat to close southern border

Dec 29, 2018 Trump renews threat to close US-Mexico border

Jan 6, 2019 Trump Renews Threat to Declare National Emergency in Border Wall

Jan 7, 2019 Trump Renews Threat to Declare Emergency Over Border …

Jan 10, 2019 President Trump Renews Threat To Declare Emergency To Get Funds …

Jan 25, 2019 Trump renews threat to declare national emergency over border …

Mar 28, 2019 Trump renews threat to close the southern border, blasts Mexico on …

Mar 29, 2019 Trump renews threat to shut down US-Mexico border

Mar 31, 2019 Trump Renews Threat to Close Border, Cuts Aid to Central America

Apr 1, 2019 Trump renews threat to close southern border, calls on Congress to fix …

Apr 2, 2019 Trump renews threat to close border, possibly affecting commerce …

Apr 24, 2019 Trump renews threat to close Mexican border, send more troops …

Apr 25, 2019 Trump renews threat to close Mexico border

Apr 26, 2019 President Trump Renews Threat to Close U S Border with Mexico …

Jun 10, 2019 Trump renews threat to against French wine (sic)

Jun 11, 2019 US President Donald Trump renews threat to impose tariffs on Mexico

Jul 14, 2019 Trump renews threat to close Mexico border.

August 14, 2019 Trump renews threat to pull US out of WTO

Aug 21, 2019 Trump renews threat to end ‘ridiculous’ birthright citizenship

Sep 20, 2019 Trump Renews Threat to Dump IS Fighters at Europe’s Border

Nov 3, 2019 Trump renews threat to cut wildfire aid to California

Jan 5, 2020 Trump renews threat to Iran after rockets land in Baghdad’s Green Zone

Jun 18, 2020 Trump renews threat to cut ties with Beijing, a day after high-level U.S.-China talks

Jun 18, 2020 Trump renews threat to cut ties with China.

Jun 23, 2020 Trump renews threat to cut ties with Beijing

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The following is all Google search results (duplicates of headlines were deleted for the same date) of actual headlines of news or information outlets with the exact phrase, “Obama renews threat to”:

Jul 15, 2009 Obama Renews Threat to Veto Military Spending Bill Over F-22s

Jul 26, 2011 Obama Renews Threat to Veto Boehner Debt Plan

Jul 27, 2011 Obama Renews Threat to Veto Boehner Debt Plan

Jan 13, 2016 Obama Renews Threat to Suspend AGOA Benefits for South Africa

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The following is all Google search results (duplicates of headlines were deleted for the same date) of actual headlines of news or information outlets with the exact phrase, “Bush renews threat to”:

Aug 24, 2001 Bush renews threat to boycott racism conference over Zionism

Dec 5, 2001 Bush renews threat to Iraq

Dec 6, 2001 Bush renews threat to veto defense bill

May 25, 2005 Bush renews threat to veto stem cell …

Mar 28, 2007 President Bush Renews Threat to Veto Bill on Iraq Troop Withdrawal

Apr 25, 2007 Bush renews threat to veto war funding bill from Congress

May 2, 2007 Bush vetoes war spending bill with Iraq …

Jul 19, 2007 Bush renews threat to veto health bill

Aug 24, 2001 Bush renews threat to boycott racism conference over Zionism

Sep 21, 2007 Bush renews threat to veto children’s health legislation

Sep 25, 2007 Bush renews threat to veto spending bills

Oct 3, 2007 Bush renews threat to veto children’s health legislation

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It remains to be seen whether overpaid bashing, hating, scapegoating, threatening noisemakers and/or patronage pigs will triumph over:

the refinement of national healthcare (even the second draft of ANY extremely, extremely, extremely complex system such as this, is going to have numerous problems)

human teachers

the cleaning up of and future prevention of pollution in various places in the United States

freedoms of religion, speech, assembly, etc., and

reducing even a little– the usual corruption, incompetence and waste that is always present to some degree in even a democratic nation.

By the way, the Bonus Book of the Week is “Makes Me Wanna Holler, A Young Black Man in America” by Nathan McCall, published in 1994.

The line preceding the first line of this post is, “I wondered, ‘Where did those white people learn to hate so deeply at such a young age?‘ “

Born in 1955 in Portsmouth, Virginia, the author detailed how his life mirrored his ethnic group’s mentality (African American) in his generation. When he was an adolescent, the forces governing his behavior included: the need for a feeling of tribal unity, peer pressure, hating all white people, and vendetta against rival gangs. If those gangs had acquired the kinds of writing, speaking and debating skills valued by the ethnic group (Caucasian) politically dominant at the time, those gangs could have become pundits or politicians.

Instead, they wasted their time and talents on physical fighting against each other, sexual conquests, and committing street crime. Such activities were destructive to their own ethnic group. Read the book to learn how that worked out for the author.

Blinded By the Right

The Book of the Week is “Blinded By the Right, The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative” by David Brock, published in 2002.

Born in 1962 in Jersey City, New Jersey, the author was raised Catholic. His mother– who was embarrassed that he and his younger sister were adopted– forced them to behave dishonestly to keep that secret.

As is well known in the United States, people have been displaying childish fury at emotionally-charged political issues, it seems like, forever. In connection therewith, the author recounted an incident at his liberal arts college, the University of California at Berkeley in the autumn of 1982.

As a believer of Republican rhetoric, he attended an event featuring a speech by United Nations ambassador Jeanne Kirkpatrick. The United States was interfering with the politics of El Salvador. In protest, hecklers who had poor impulse control threw blood at the podium and their screaming drowned out the speaker. Security lifted nary a finger to dispel such rudeness. The takeaway was that the hecklers had more of a right to free speech than did the speaker whose views they opposed.

The author wrote that upon realizing his homosexuality, he channeled his self-loathing into writing petty, vengeful and mean-of-spirit articles that attacked his political enemies– liberal Democrats. Here is an illustration of how political influencers indoctrinate impressionable young people:

A man is walking past a mental institution and hears all the residents chanting, “Thirteen! Thirteen! Thirteen!” Being curious about all this, he finds a hole in the fence and looks in. Someone pokes him in the eyes. The residents start chanting, “Fourteen! Fourteen! Fourteen!”

Anyway, in 1986, the author completed a fellowship for the Heritage Foundation, a tax-exempt group that (illegally) fronted for conservative Republicans. By the 1990’s, writing for American Spectator magazine, he had gone off the deep end with his propaganda, viciously defaming liberals. He got really famous (a dubious distinction) after his book, The Real Anita Hill was published. As was becoming more and more common among political propagandists, he was highly compensated for his ability to spew hatred articulately, and rationalizing his hurting others by saying they were hurting him, or his party, or his country.

Long story short: for a long time, the author was living a lie, socializing with largely shallow, homophobic (ironically!), anti-feminist, anti-intellectual conservative social climbers like Arianna Huffington, Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter.

About his tenure at American Spectator, the author remarked, “In twelve years of right-wing journalism, my work had never been fact-checked.” That’s comforting.

The 1990’s saw the start of a trend (which is only getting worse) in which people who call themselves journalists, cobble together some hearsay and tabloid articles and call it a book. Gary Aldrich was one such author, who used a third-hand quote from Brock in his salacious tell-all about then-president Bill Clinton.

Read the book to learn when, how and why Brock’s political views changed.

Here at The New Yorker

The Book of the Week is “Here at The New Yorker” by Brendan Gill, published in 1975.

Born in 1914, Gill was the fourth of five children. His mother died when he was seven. His father was a successful surgeon in Hartford, Connecticut.

Gill went to work for The New Yorker magazine as a young adult. “Hard for young writers nowadays to realize how many magazines were vying for short stories in the thirties and forties; hard too to believe how much they were paid!” Sadly, propagandists who compose the words of political smear campaigns are highly compensated, but hardly any other kinds of present-day writers are. It is also interesting to note that most of the prominent writers of the twentieth century were alcoholics, but hardly any were in the nineteenth, and now, there are few of them in the twenty-first.

Harold Ross, founder and managing editor of The New Yorker, deliberately neither smeared nor promoted the subjects of nonfiction articles, and had no hidden agenda– neither financial nor ideological ulterior motives in putting out his magazine. Also, the magazine paid employees to do meticulous, honest, best-efforts fact-checking.

Gill, in his prolix prose describing his workplace’s culture, office space, and various quirky magazine-employees— mentioned James Thurber’s 1957 short story, “The Wonderful ‘O'” which can be read here:

https://www.bookscool.com/en/The-Wonderful-O-711417/1

The story covered various aspects of the human condition, and featured a greedy tyrant, herd mentality, and historical revisionism. One word was essential in the suspenseful plot. That word represents a concept that must actually be put into practice in order for a society to be democratic. Incidentally, the villain was named “Black” and the people he hurt were randomly victimized. Despite its now-controversially named villain, the story is obviously analogous to the United States’ buildup of political hostility in the most recent forty years.

The two major American political parties are engaged in a fight that resembles the Cold War between the former U.S. and the former U.S.S.R. It might be recalled that during the Cold War, there was a space race, an arms race, power-hungry posturing and the specter of the kickoff of world destruction if either side was to be the first to recklessly use a nuclear weapon.

For decades now, America’s own political parties have wreaked vicious, reputation-damaging, life-ruining vengeance against each other. This has resulted in the present situation, borne of childish political fury; in sum, the pretense of taking precautions to stem the spread of a pandemic, that has unduly oppressed all Americans, not just political targets. Shamefully, as well as shamelessly, the parties have exceeded the limits of healthy disagreement and civil discourse.

If one considers six different political systems (of course there can be combinations of more than one in the same nation): feudalism, fascism, communism, dictatorship, anarchy, and democracy, one can see that in general, democracy is the least unfair to the highest number of people because it strikes a balance more or less, between competition and cooperation in its operation.

The American brand of democracy, when it works properly, consists of representatives of the people– Congress, courts, elected officials, legislatures, assemblies, etc., who fluidly cooperate when creating or modifying laws, while members presumably cooperate within their political parties. Each party competes, or debates, when they disagree on policies, and during elections.

When in balance, both competition and cooperation bring out the best traits humans possess, and the best kind of society because there is the best chance for various capacities of improvement for all participants. However, significant imbalance inevitably causes a government to adopt traits of the first five aforementioned political systems.

The most fulfilled humans are those who have the best balance in their professional and personal lives. Therefore, those who serve the public in truly democratic governments ought to be fulfilled, as should people who partake of team sports (including the Olympics), science fairs, battle of the bands, group projects in business school, and competitive bidding in industry, among numerous other areas of American life.

Anyway, read the book to learn about Gill’s experiences at The New Yorker.

The Autobiography… / Kingfish

The subject of the First Book of the Week wrote:

“In fact there is no unemployed. We got one hundred and twenty million people working overtime just repeating rumors.”

“If we ever pass out as a great nation, we ought to put on our tombstone ‘America died from a delusion that she had moral leadership.’ “

“We are used to having everybody named as Presidential candidates, but the country hasn’t quite got to the professional comedian stage.”

The above quotes were published in September 1931, June 1931, and January 1928.

The First Book of the Week is “The Autobiography of Will Rogers” published in 1949. The author’s original writings were presented as is, unedited, with his atrocious spelling and (folksy) grammatical errors.

Born in November 1879 in Oklahoma, Rogers was the youngest of seven children. He was a quick-tempered rebellious child, but super-talented with a rodeo lasso.

At seventeen, Rogers quit the military school in Missouri to which he was sent by his father to find a ranching job. He traveled to Western states to enter roping and riding contests, and provided entertainment at state fairs in the Midwest.

He and his friends posed as musicians (but were really shills) in a sixty-man band who interrupted the shows to rope steers.

Rogers traveled the world via boat, seeking international ranching gigs. He eventually found that Rio de Janeiro was better for that than London. South Africa wasn’t bad, either. In Australia, he joined the Wirth Brothers circus in Sydney.

Along around WWI, Rogers began doing stand-up comedy for Ziegfeld Follies, and the Midnight Frolic. His Henry Ford jokes were getting old before the new shows were launched every four months. His wife suggested that he joke about what he read in the papers.

So from then on, the amusing content of Rogers’ newspaper columns came from Congress. In a December 1934 column, he commented that young people lack life experience. That is why they can’t help but look toward their futures. Older folks look back because their pasts are always with them. “But we are both standing on the same ground, and their feet is there as firmly as ours.”

Read the book to learn of Rogers’ movie-acting and public-speaking careers, too, and much more about his life.

The Second Book of the Week is “Kingfish, The Reign of Huey P. Long” by Richard D. White, Jr., published in 2006.

Not to be confused with Huey Newton (or Huey Lewis), Huey Long was a composite of every successful power-hungry American politician who ever lived, if success is measured by the amount of power he acquired, given the offices he held.

Born in August 1893 in Louisiana, Long grew up one of nine children in a farming and ranching family. He was an avid reader and control freak. Expelled from high school his senior year, he got a series of sales jobs before trying law school for the second time in the autumn of 1914. He failed most of the classes but passed the oral bar exam for Louisiana in 1915.

While struggling to make a living at practicing law, Long knew he was a born politician. So on his second attempt, he won the governorship of Louisiana for the Democratic party in early 1928. His then-techniques were innovative– mudslinging and delivering speeches on the radio to Shreveport, and driving trucks containing bullhorns that blared at rallies all around the state, where he met every voter and put up campaign posters everywhere he possibly could.

Long tailored his campaign promises to specific audiences such as drinkers, Catholics, businessmen, sugar-cane growers, etc. “Because each newspaper gave one-sided coverage to its own candidate and ignored the other two, citizens needed to buy different papers to keep up with the campaigns.”

Long acquired massive power because he was a master at manipulating legal loopholes and eliminating enemies. He collected lackeys through sweetheart contracts and patronage galore; not to mention through bribery, influence peddling, racketeering, and corruption. His underlings did his will because they themselves were desperate for money and/or power.

Long actually did some good until 1931. He built highways and a new state Capitol, repaired streets and sewers in New Orleans and refinanced its port. He made Louisiana State University a world-class school.

Long also dealt with the political issues of education, gambling and natural gas. He manipulated the system so that he was elected U.S. Senator in September 1930 but finished his Louisiana governorship before taking that office in January 1932.

Other outrageous acts for which he initially went unpunished included extensive election fraud. “In one New Orleans precinct, votes were tallied before the polls closed, while in another, voting began before they opened. Huey ordered state workers to contribute to the pro-Long campaign and if they didn’t, they lost their jobs. His machine spent huge sums to pay the one-dollar poll taxes for impoverished farmers.” But no empire lasts forever.

Read the book to learn of the steps Long took to counteract the results of his deficit spending (hint– he dictated tax hikes), of how he became an absolute ruler like no other in the history of Louisiana, and what became of him in 1935, among other details of this cautionary tale.

City Room – LONG BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “City Room” by Arthur Gelb, published in 2003. This large volume presented the highlights of the author’s 45-year New York Times career. There were two short passages that might cause confusion for the reader: when the author discussed health department and city infrastructure programs in 1947 or 1948, and also, “After covering Colombo’s murder during a rally in Columbus Circle on Columbus Day, June 28, 1971…”

In 1933, president Franklin Roosevelt insisted that the White House press corps get his permission to quote him directly. The journalists accepted that condition with nary a protest. Having grown up in East Harlem and the Bronx, New York City, Gelb began his career as a copy boy at the Times in May 1944. At the newspaper, writers and editors were always at odds over editorial control. Subjectively, the copy of each was ruined or improved by his counterpart.

In August 1956, the author described how he solicited enough money to keep Joseph Papp’s non-profit, Shakespearean theater organization alive by reviewing a partially rained-out production of the Taming of the Shrew. The following year, the Shakespeare Workshop won its lawsuit against New York City parks commissioner Robert Moses, obtaining a permit to have free shows in Central Park.

In 1966, the Times reported on the classic problems of education in the city. Mayor John Lindsay controlled the nine-member school board. Minority parents and civil rights groups thought he was indifferent to educating their children, as “… 85% of minority students in the city read far below grade level… The teachers’ union was perceived by some in the community as virtually a Jewish institution and racist as well.”

In spring 1970, a former law-enforcement official hired by the Times took six months to write a three-part series on extensive corruption in the New York City police department. It took that long to collect and verify all the information in the articles. “… we had numerous sources and stacks of documents and tape-recorded conversations corroborated what we had published.”

And the journalist assigned the series, David Burnham, declined to write a book on the whole sordid affair, “… ethical to the bone, [he] did not feel he should profit from having performed a public service.” Mayor Lindsay was furious that the Times exposed his poor record on corruption; he tried to pressure the paper not to print it.

In spring 1971, it took almost three months for numerous Times employees working around the clock, to prepare the Pentagon Papers for publication. Newspaper executive A.M. Rosenthal was pleasantly shocked that they were able to keep the project secret for that long!

There ensued prolonged, torturous and tortuous legal wrangling over how much the public has a right to know about the government’s nefarious activities. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually ruled in favor of free speech.

In a nutshell: old-school journalism used to be comprised of an alcohol-lubricated male-dominated field of workaholics, some of whom were investigative reporters– critical thinkers who asked intelligent, probing questions (like, ‘How’s the building of “the wall” coming along?’).

If this was fifty years ago, the Times would have a reporter personally go to “the wall” and have someone write a human-interest story about what they saw and heard. With their own eyes and ears. Maybe even a detailed, two-part series. And follow up every month or so.

Not now. Can’t afford to send anyone anywhere anymore to get a firsthand account, to write any fact-filled article, rather than an opinion-filled one. Neither can any other media outlet. This, for a host of reasons that have been accumulating for decades. Everywhere Americans try to get honest, factual information– TV (including cable), radio, newspapers, magazines, internet, rallies and political (junk) mail– they can’t. Trust is at an all-time low.

For years, readers, listeners and viewers have read, seen and heard contradictory stories, and video and audio clips. Sometimes fanciful ones. Additionally, quotes have been taken out of context, words have been deleted, and the rest, spliced together. Which ones? Only the editors know. Sure, some websites do fact-checking, but the audience gravitates toward the sites simply to confirm their beliefs, not really to get the truth.

Now it’s all unctuous political hacks with fertile imaginations, whose goal is to get a candidate elected, reelected or to cut down political enemies– not to educate the populace. Such nonsense comes from both sides of the aisle.

As is well known, one slogan of the 1992 presidential campaign was “It’s the economy, stupid.” The 2020 election might well say, “It’s the media, stupid.” Wait. That should be rephrased: “It’s the stupid media.”

Eventually, dissatisfaction with this sorry state of affairs will reach critical mass. There will be sufficient backlash to reverse the trend. Because the audience will stop paying attention until influential parties inspire value in honesty and fact-checking again.

Anyway, read the book to learn about the adventures of Gelb and his colleagues.

Reporter

The Book of the Week is “Reporter, a Memoir” by Seymour M. Hersh, published in 2018.

Born in 1937 in Chicago, Hersh took over his family’s dry-cleaning business for his mother when his father died in 1954. For, his twin brother was busy at college and his older twin sisters were elsewhere. Upon attending junior college, he met a professor who changed his life; who told him that the University of Chicago was a better place to develop his talent in writing.

When Hersh worked as a copyboy for City News in Chicago, “The cops were on the take and the mob ran the city… The guys [reporters] on the street who did not get their facts straight or were consistently being out-reported did not last long.” Apparently, times have changed. In 1959, Hersh became a full-fledged reporter.

In 1966, after having acquired experience in various places, Hersh began earning his reputation for exposing ugly truths, at once depressing and infuriating, mostly about the U.S. government. No lie about the Vietnam War was too extreme to cover up the Johnson administration’s embarrassing, unethical goings-on. He and I.F. Stone were two of the few journalists who ferreted out the truth, but, since they were against the war, were smeared as pinko at best, and couldn’t be believed.

In late 1967, Hersh sold out and became press secretary for Eugene McCarthy’s presidential campaign. He lasted three months, for various reasons; after which, he returned to informing the public via New York Times articles, and books, about controversial, big, dirty secrets that led to serious harm to animals and humans, being perpetrated by the U.S. government.

For instance, hundreds of thousands of animals were killed by anthrax and Q fever germs (among other toxins and biological substances) in experiments around the world, in research funded by the United States.

Dugway Proving Ground in Nevada was NOT an isolated incident. “It was the same old story: A local community financially dependent on the military had kept its collective mouth shut” in connection with the deaths of six thousand sheep due to a nerve gas mishap.

Nixon tried to do an end-run around pesky Geneva Convention provisions in connection with “legalizing” defoliants and herbicides in South Vietnam. As is well known, his presidency revolved around the war. Not fun and profit.

After the war, Hersh continued churning out books and articles on Watergate, and other scandals of which the public wouldn’t have been informed but for him. Two New Yorker magazine articles ran to 25 pages each. They “… were fact-checked line by line, by two experienced young women who essentially moved to Washington for weeks.” Again, apparently, times have changed.

Hersh was subjected to harsh criticism from people who admitted they hadn’t even read his (admittedly long) book on Kissinger. Some things never change.

Read this book to learn of Hersh’s investigations into: the My Lai Massacre (whose details were revealed thanks to him), the evil activities in which Nixon, Kissinger, Robert McNamara, CIA members and others engaged, Osama bin Laden’s murder, and much more.