Alas, poor Nader, now at nadir
Every hero becomes a bore at last.
--Emerson, essay on “Uses of Great Men”
Ralph Nader has become a national joke like Harold Stassen. Stassen sought the Republican nomination for president nine times from 1948 to 1992. Nader, announcing his fifth try for president as an independent or a third party candidate, reveals his utter lack of class.
As Katha Pollitt of The Nation says: he will go down in history “as the world’s most irritating vanity candidate.” Or, as Scott Stantis, cartoonist for the Birmingham (Ala.) News, draws it: Nader is a bug perched on Democratic Party headquarters with a staffer shouting: “The four-year locust is back!!!”
Nader got 0.36 percent of the vote in 2004. He doubtless will get even less this year. Nader cost Al Gore the election in 2000, getting 97,488 votes in Florida, most of which would have gone to Gore.
Result: Nader changed the world for the worst and set the country back for decades. Yet Nader is unapologetic and even defiant about giving the nation the horror of George W. Bush.
Sure. If the November election were between John McCain, the GOP nominee-in-waiting, and Nader, there would be no question for liberal-left voters. The leading candidates of both major parties represent the status quo.
And, sure, Nader would use the White House as a bully pulpit, citing needed progressive measures. Such as: quick withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, slashes in the bloated Pentagon budget and passage of universal health insurance. He would rightly denounce corporate welfare and restore the Constitution that Bush-eviscerated.
However, the race is not between McCain and Nader. It is between McCain and the Democratic nominee.
The saddest part of the Nader fall from grace is that he was a hero. He was one of the few great Americans of the 20th century. As a consumer crusader he was magnificent. He spearheaded so many reform drives.
Nader attacked the unsafe Corvair in 1965. He brought the nation seat belts and air bags. He attacked tainted meat, water and air pollution and dangerous food additives. He was behind creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the EPA. He pushed the Freedom of Information Act that is valuable to scholars and journalists. He founded and inspired institutions for social activism and research.
But now Nader is nothing more than a megalomaniacal bore.
Debasing American culture
Puritanical America has claimed another victim, destroying the political career of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer. Spitzer resigned because of a sex scandal involving high-class prostitutes.
But so what? Sex lives of political figures are no more important than the sex lives of ordinary citizens. Sex is not the public’s business. The only outrage is the hypocrisy of politicians who indulge in what they denounce or fervently prosecute like former prosecutor Spitzer.
This sexual obsession is one more example of the degradation of American mass culture. The real obscenity is the violence pervading society, not sex.
Movies and TV are full of gratuitous violence. Senseless killings on campuses or at work places occur with dismaying frequency. President Bush vetoes a bill banning the violence of
torture. Even worse: this outrageous warfare state will spend trillions of dollars in Iraq alone.
Bush remains in office despite his fraudulent wars and constant violation of laws. Most people don’t care. Spitzer is forced from office because of harmless sex. Everyone howled.
Media ignorance
One of the myriad problems of the media is ignorance of even recent events. USA Today reports that the high-profile caseload of the Supreme Court this term is “certain to help reveal the direction of the Roberts Court.” That direction was clearly established last term by the court’s reactionary rulings.
The Associated Press reports that 470 seats in Congress are “up for grabs” in November. Not so. Of the 435 House seats, most are “safe” because incumbents usually win. In the Senate, one-third of its seats are at stake but most are safe.
More incumbents may lose this fall because of anti-war fervor. But a congressional landslide is most unlikely.
Tribute to Pete Seeger
PBS presented a moving documentary on Pete Seeger last Sunday. This viewer reflected that Seeger, 88, has more soul in his little finger than Bush has in his whole body. Bush exemplifies the sick soul of America.
--Emerson, essay on “Uses of Great Men”
Ralph Nader has become a national joke like Harold Stassen. Stassen sought the Republican nomination for president nine times from 1948 to 1992. Nader, announcing his fifth try for president as an independent or a third party candidate, reveals his utter lack of class.
As Katha Pollitt of The Nation says: he will go down in history “as the world’s most irritating vanity candidate.” Or, as Scott Stantis, cartoonist for the Birmingham (Ala.) News, draws it: Nader is a bug perched on Democratic Party headquarters with a staffer shouting: “The four-year locust is back!!!”
Nader got 0.36 percent of the vote in 2004. He doubtless will get even less this year. Nader cost Al Gore the election in 2000, getting 97,488 votes in Florida, most of which would have gone to Gore.
Result: Nader changed the world for the worst and set the country back for decades. Yet Nader is unapologetic and even defiant about giving the nation the horror of George W. Bush.
Sure. If the November election were between John McCain, the GOP nominee-in-waiting, and Nader, there would be no question for liberal-left voters. The leading candidates of both major parties represent the status quo.
And, sure, Nader would use the White House as a bully pulpit, citing needed progressive measures. Such as: quick withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, slashes in the bloated Pentagon budget and passage of universal health insurance. He would rightly denounce corporate welfare and restore the Constitution that Bush-eviscerated.
However, the race is not between McCain and Nader. It is between McCain and the Democratic nominee.
The saddest part of the Nader fall from grace is that he was a hero. He was one of the few great Americans of the 20th century. As a consumer crusader he was magnificent. He spearheaded so many reform drives.
Nader attacked the unsafe Corvair in 1965. He brought the nation seat belts and air bags. He attacked tainted meat, water and air pollution and dangerous food additives. He was behind creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the EPA. He pushed the Freedom of Information Act that is valuable to scholars and journalists. He founded and inspired institutions for social activism and research.
But now Nader is nothing more than a megalomaniacal bore.
Debasing American culture
Puritanical America has claimed another victim, destroying the political career of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer. Spitzer resigned because of a sex scandal involving high-class prostitutes.
But so what? Sex lives of political figures are no more important than the sex lives of ordinary citizens. Sex is not the public’s business. The only outrage is the hypocrisy of politicians who indulge in what they denounce or fervently prosecute like former prosecutor Spitzer.
This sexual obsession is one more example of the degradation of American mass culture. The real obscenity is the violence pervading society, not sex.
Movies and TV are full of gratuitous violence. Senseless killings on campuses or at work places occur with dismaying frequency. President Bush vetoes a bill banning the violence of
torture. Even worse: this outrageous warfare state will spend trillions of dollars in Iraq alone.
Bush remains in office despite his fraudulent wars and constant violation of laws. Most people don’t care. Spitzer is forced from office because of harmless sex. Everyone howled.
Media ignorance
One of the myriad problems of the media is ignorance of even recent events. USA Today reports that the high-profile caseload of the Supreme Court this term is “certain to help reveal the direction of the Roberts Court.” That direction was clearly established last term by the court’s reactionary rulings.
The Associated Press reports that 470 seats in Congress are “up for grabs” in November. Not so. Of the 435 House seats, most are “safe” because incumbents usually win. In the Senate, one-third of its seats are at stake but most are safe.
More incumbents may lose this fall because of anti-war fervor. But a congressional landslide is most unlikely.
Tribute to Pete Seeger
PBS presented a moving documentary on Pete Seeger last Sunday. This viewer reflected that Seeger, 88, has more soul in his little finger than Bush has in his whole body. Bush exemplifies the sick soul of America.
posted by Jake Highton | 3:22 PM
2 Comments:
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sex had nothing to do with it.
Allegations are swirling in conspiracy circles that Eliot Spitzer acted as a firewall, preventing public disclosure of his friends’ roles in the anthrax attacks that occurred shortly after 9/11, in addition to facilitating his associates’ windfall from the bloated insurance pay-outs at the World Trade Center. There are even accussations that Spitzer covered up the real perpetrators of the 9/11 attack itself.
As you mentioned, his public reputation was that of a heroic fighter of white collar crime, the irony being that Spitzer was embroiled in corporate criminality to a possibly treasonous extent.
Prescient New York real estate baron Larry Silverstein became primary lease-holder on the World Trade Center a mere six weeks before 9/11. It had never changed hands before. For a down payment, Silverstein put up only $14 million of his own money, and his friends at the powerful investment bank Blackstone Group kicked in another $111 million. After 9/11, Silverstein demanded a whopping $7 billion insurance payout, in the form of two $3.5 billion payments. He argued the two different plane crashes were two separate “occurrences” of two separate attacks.
As attorney general, Spitzer got involved behind the scenes, and in the courts, filing a amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief on Silverstein’s behalf on Jan. 15, 2003. For years, this brief languished in the files of the public records room on the 17th floor of the Second Circuit Court in Manhattan, until it was discovered by NYC attorney and author Carl Person. The court ended up agreeing with Spitzer and Silverstein, over-turning the decision of a lower court. Spitzer helped mid-wife a fat compromise and an eventual $4.5 billion payout for Silverstein.
Attorney Carl Person said, “I was surprised to see that Spitzer had used his position as attorney general to support one private litigant over another. Normally, this is not done…Silverstein could well have been someone who destroyed evidence concerning the 9/11 events by apparently ordering or consenting to the tearing (pulling) down of 7 WTC and the removal of the debris from his multiple ground leased premises thereafter.”
Silverstein’s World Trade Center Building 7 collapsed at 5:20 p.m. on 9/11 without being hit by an airplane. Thirty seven eyewitnesses working on the ground as firefighters, EMTs, and reporters, recalled being warned in advance the tower was coming down. The official story however, claims a fire ignited a fuel tank in the building, hastening its sudden collapse.
WTC 7 was the NY headquarters of CIA and the SEC office investigating Enron. 9/11 skeptics believe the building was taken down by controlled demolition. Larry Silverstein himself said in a 2002 episode of PBS’s Frontline that on 9/11 he recalled remarking, "Maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it…they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse." Silverstein later claimed that by “pull,” he meant removing firefighters, not pulling the building down. However, all firefighters had been “pulled” from the building three hours earlier.
It simply had nothing at all to do with sex. Even if it did, as you opined, who cares?
It's reminiscent of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI using sexual blackmail as an excuse to accomplish sabotage of political figures deemed subversive.
Post a Comment
<< Home