One of my sister Abby’s favorite blogs is “A Commonplace Book,” written by the children’s book author Julius Lester. Recently, Abby alerted me to an excellent post by Lester about how few protests against the war in iraq that we’re seeing (link). Lester has a follow-up post, where he says that one of his readers says that much of the protest is now happening online (link).
Both posts are worth reading. But I’d also say that the news media are ignoring the few protests that do take place, e.g., the media ignored the March 16 protest at the White House that resulted in the arrest of 200 religious leaders including Jim Wallis (as I pointed out in a past post: link).
I don’t know what the answer is — more protests, get Congress moving — all I know is that we’re spending an awful lot of money in Iraq, with few positive results. Beyond that, any war carries a huge moral cost — and I think we’re already beginning to pay that moral price.
Dan,
There’s been no doubt for a while now that “the media” is and has been ignoring what’s really going on, and sadly, at times passes for little more than propaganda for the corporate world the funds it – if you’re talking about the mainstream media of television, radio, and print journals and newspapers.
There is a new media, and I hesitate to call it alternative any longer because so many people actually use it as a primary information source, made up of blogs, vlogs, alternative journals and newspapers, community cable access programming and things like college radio stations and podcasts. The March 16 protest you mention WAS covered in the media, but we should have stopped expecting it to appear on Fox news years ago. Here is but one story from DC Indymedia: http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/138322/index.php
And the mainstream media is scared poopless over the rise of the new media – see for example Bill O’Reilly’s recent attacks (irrational crusade against?) the Daily Kos website.
Just a bit of poking around or surfing about will turn up loads of coverage of the March 16 protest. The problem is that far too many people still think Fox News is their only outlet for information and that it actually IS the old fair and balanced information of yesteryear’s daily periodical and Cronkite (which we know still had their editorial slant). I keep telling my computer phobic 73-year old father he needs to get online just to get the news (frequently after listening to him complain about the lack of real news on the news).
Peace,
Tony (my mom’s family is originally from Mattapoisett) Lorenzen