I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
Frist
Frist kills cats.
Fuck you Bush
I'm not sure of the thrust of this. Is Rivenburg in bed with the Holocaust deniers, or did he have some other reason to write a defamatory story about a holocaust survivor?
It would be interesting to hear what Rivenburg has to say on this. I would particularly like to know if it is true that the LAT invoked anti-SLAPP statutes to get the lawsuit dismissed. If so, it would be ironic that a large corporation is using anti-SLAPP legislation to defend itself from an individual.
Google "Roy Rivenburg" and go to page 2, look for the Moot Court discussion for a review of the issues.
OT: Sorry if this is old news to some of you but I just saw that some of Kerry's FBI files have been stolen from here in Marin County:
http://tinyurl.com/2ewc5
"The man who uncovered evidence the FBI tailed presidential candidate John Kerry for months in 1971 said some of those files were stolen this week.
Author Gerald Nicosia reported to police Friday that three of the 14 boxes of once-secret FBI files he obtained under the Freedom of Information Act were taken from his Corte Madera home Thursday.
Particular files from the remaining 11 boxes were also taken, Nicosia said, including files containing documents about Kerry that hadn't been reviewed yet by others.
"The three files folders about John Kerry were taken," Nicosia said. "Those revelations are lost now, at least to me."
Nicosia, author of "Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac" and "Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans Movement," says he doesn't know who took his files, or why, but he's got some ideas..."
This is pretty OT, but Noam Chomsky has a new blog. I thought his take today on the Iraq invasion was interesting:
http://blog.zmag.org/ttt/
archive...00032.html#more
Rivenburg is the LA Time's token Gropenfuhrer pal. Ahnold hearts Waldheim. Rivenburg defames nazi hunter. Coincidence? Dunno.
He is very funny. He had a hilarious columm that ran on the same page as the comics and it was first rate. I was disappointed when the Times discontinued it.
Though he generally eschewed politics in the column, to the extent he did write about current events I don't remember ever the least bit of discomfort with anything he wrote. He was largely self-deprecating and generally innocuous when it came to others.
This is a mystery to me.
Clearly, the infiltration of right wing Christian fundamentalists in our press has caused a cancer on the journalism profession.
What is it about right wing fundie "journalists", and why do they persist in doing half-assed bogus hatchet jobs on honorable people that can never be substantiated by facts?
What I find mysterious about the whole thing is why a humor columnist would develop an abiding interest in the man. What the hell prompted Rivenburg to go after him? That's very strange, and leads me to wonder if WJI had anything to do with it.
Pandy -- Gerald Nicosia's the guy who Fox and CNN had stories about last week, claiming Kerry was at some kind of strategy meeting of Vietnam Vets Against the War in the early 70s where assasination of American leaders was discussed. He seemed like a crank with a grudge. Who the hell knows what this is all about? Did he ever really have the files? It seems kind of silly to steal copies of files he got under the FOIA.
OT.
Bush on 911
Most people still don't know this story.
http://www.takebackthemedia.com/...om/
true911.html
Getting a little obsessed here with Christians, huh?
Actually, I think the point is that christians have gotten obsessed with themselves and their mission from god to either convert, ruin or otherwise get rid of the rest of us.
not just christians..... fundamentalists nutballs in general, Troll.
I am SO confused.
What exactly are we supposed to be taking from this? Can somebody break it down for me? I am completely unfamiliar with these names; perhaps that explains my incomprehension?
Toonscribe -
He certainly had files of some sort, for the LA Times docustatted fifty pages of them, as did Kerry - this was all accounted for last week. It is very strange, but it appears that the robbers did indeed go for the files - which were received in a normal and uneventful, albeit excruciatingly tiresome process. Nothing to suggest that the chap who requisitioned the files is anything other than a straightforward scholar either.
It's mighty strange all right.
Clearly, the infiltration of right wing Christian fundamentalists in our press has caused a cancer on the journalism profession.
--Crunchy
Yeah, that seems to be the conclusion that is being projected from this blog, as of late.
To me it sounds a little hysterical.
These WJI posts are starting to sound a little too much like the wacko bigots who claim that there is some sort of Jewish media conspiracy.
I think a better way of fighting the so-called "culture war" is to simply not read journalism that is crap. Who cares if it is written by a fundie or not?
Tena,
Reading the Michel Thomas web page, my inner skeptic was aroused as well.
(I am like that. It had to do with Thomas's stories about his fight with Prince Rainer. And a few other things which bonged my "hey wait a minute" inner crabby person.)
Looking into Rivenberg, I found this explanation of his relationship with the offending group
A couple of years ago, I was approached by someone from the World Journalism Institute to see if I would teach a three-hour class on feature writing during one of their two-week training workshops for college students. The pay was generous and I wanted some experience teaching, but after looking into the group's theology and philosophy about journalism, I had serious reservations. I asked a journalist acquaintance about it who had taught there previously and also disagreed with their philsophy, and he thought I should give it a whirl, suggesting I could give the students a dose of mainstream journalism. So I did.
When I taught, I was asked to sign a statement of theological belief that I disagreed with almost completely (I'm Catholic). I refused to sign it. They let me teach anyway. I have taught feature writing for this group twice in the L.A. area and am scheduled to teach again in July. The content is straight journalism, and I would teach a secular class the exact same way. Although I disagree with WJI's philosophies, I see no problem with teaching good journalism methods to aspiring journalists. Most of the students strike me as typical college kids; they're just more conservative in their religious beliefs.
In short, he is doing it for the money. (the Times doesn't pay all that well.)
What I am saying is before we throw this Catholic to the lions, we should take a deep breath and look at the full and complete story.
Michel's case was thrown out of court, though he is appealing....
and in this particular case we should assume nothing...
Have to go with Tena: why is a minor Andy Rooney wishes-he-was suddenly doing a serious expose (holocaust fraud exposure is about as grim as you get)? We know nothing of this Thomas, and having an endorsement from the ADL could mean a couple of widely divergent things (no one has asked: where did they stand on Jerzy Kosinski, or on past exposed frauds?), but really, it makes no sense that the "awful truth" gets revealed by a schmuck who pens bourgeois jokes on a weekly basis. Thomas fooled them all, but this Rivenburg non-journalist saw through it? This is like when the Scientific Establishment of Planet Earth accepts that global warming or evolution is real, except for this one guy who happens to be funded by polluters or crossworshippers, but we're supposed to give "equal time" to the one guy.
We're reminded of Michael Weiner's anti-semitic rants; this might be some kind of weird self-loathing thing.
the Rivenburg case is also being discussed here.
http://www.laobserved.com/archiv...ive/
001643.html
I think a better way of fighting the so-called "culture war" is to simply not read journalism that is crap. Who cares if it is written by a fundie or not?
::SPRAYS ICED TEA ONTO MONTIOR::
Um...yeah.
I saw that "hat" in the other thread got angry at me and called me a fascist because I said mean, dirty things to Ricky Vandal. Sowwy, hat.
Didn't Mel Gibson drop this guys name in his nondenial of being a holocaust denier?
::SPRAYS ICED TEA ONTO MONTIOR::
--Old Hat
Good thing for you it is probably that awful unsweet crap.
Hey stupid fuck-it's not a "conspiracy theory" when you're talking about hundreds of millions of people, billions of dollars and several nation states (a lot of Central American dictatorships were either fundy or ostensibly Cath with fundy sympathies). The "conspiracy" thing was absurd when it was meant in regards to an illiterate milkman eking out a living in the Pale or a merchant who just wanted to maintain his shop. After the tenth helicopter gunship refueling base or the tenth publicly declared billion of American dollars it ain't "lunacy" anymore, or so much a "conspiracy" as a "national policy". Look up "Dominion", Rushdoony and the Shaeffers. These people honestly want to "take over" and they happen to have the skin color, language and religion of the super-wealthy nuts like Mellon-Scaife.
Uh oh, looks like Atrios just blew the whistle on RoyRivenburgSaxophone!
Where are you RoyRivenburgSaxophone?
not the christians...it's the liars...
it's the people that would stifle any
debate that questions their blind dogma...religion is superstition plain and simple...
So do you guys have a problem with the Christian Science Monitor?
I've thought, with the exception of a couple of stories that they have since issued corrections on, their coverage of issues in the Middle East and Central Asia has been pretty good, superior to either of the powerhouse dailies NYT and WaPo.
But there is a problem here. I think that Christian Scientists have a creepy, unrealistic, view of modern medicine. But you know what, those religious views never seem to get injected into their stories. In fact, the occasional bias you might sense in the journalism in that paper is one that the regulars on this blog would probably find desirable, an occasional hint of advocacy toward world peace.
Everyone just chill out.
I have known Saxophone for quite some time, and me and John Lott agree he is one of the best sock puppets on the Web today.
They're trying to suppress the truth and supplant it with religious dogma. It has no place in news reporting. If you want to do it, fine, but don't masquerade as journalists.
Come out and plaaaaaay, Roy Rivenburg!
I think the CSM is great. When I want to know where the dead political center is, that's where I go.
Thanks, Nancy.
Its website explains that "because we Christians did not stand-up for God in the newsrooms, these cultural institutions went into declension, like all our other cultural institutions...The mission of the World Journalism Institute is to overcome the culture's efforts to eclipse God by providing a counter-thrust to the secular media, as well as the tepid and non-discerning Christian media. To this end, WJI helps train aspiring Biblically-minded journalists."
Hey, biblically-minded journalists:
Then announce your leanings right from the get-go, guys.
Oh, this is all very interesting. Who's paying for this? Who's giving these *journalists* their incentives?
Don't tell me it's God. I'll have to get really angry if you tell me that.
How else would Gibson's violent R-rated movie have gotten so much publicity. He got his $$$$. How nice.
The Christian Scientists are not in league with the right in the drive to turn this country into a one party state ruled by biblical law. On the other hand, WJI is highly suspect, based on its own mission statement, which basically says that the intent is to put god into every media story that is printed or broadcast.
Anonymous you chilled-solid fuck CSM is consistently cited as a good example of a relatively objective religious organization. It is an exception. The majority of this group is made up by such informative and friendly souls as True Father's Own UPI/Wash Times. So this is like you name the one paper not only known for not being like the others but also, since you don't seem to have noticed, firmly divorced from the evan/southern baptist/Dominion bloc and expect us to accept this exception as representative of what it is unlike. Have we already called you a dishonest troll in this comment?
Look at these Easter gifts they're peddling:
http://
entertainment.news.com.au...255Enbv,00.html
CSM is the only religious newspaper worth reading -- because it's basically a secular newspaper. Good book reviews, too.
I enjoyed that series of pieces they did about PNAC when the rest of mass media was migratorially herding the country to war.
Biblically-minded journalists
Can anyone translate that from Newspeak to English for me?
Keep in mind with regard to the success of the movie version of anti-semite Emmerich's The Dolorous Passion of the Christ, a lot of its sales are from church groups buying bricks of tickets and then offering free showings as an "outreach".
Is anyone else scared by the grasp of English displayed in that mission statement? Culture went into declension? Is it culturae now? Why does unquestioning acceptance of generalized absurdities make one so consistently stupid?
Why does unquestioning acceptance of generalized absurdities make one so consistently stupid?
Chicken or the egg?
In either case, it's easier than thinking for yourself.
"Sock-puppets"
Incredibly apt.
"Biblically-minded" can mean either their mental framework relies more on Biblical memes than on say European History or the history of western "liberal" philosophies (which is absolutely terrifying, if you understand what choosing primeval animal sacrifice over Thomas Paine implies for one's values) or that they are "bible-believers" (literalists or inerrantists, meaning about the same thing).
An LA TIMES server?
Mmm, Are you attempting to out an anonymous commenter on your ananymous blog Atrios?
how amazingly hypocritical of you.
I will tell you personally at the next Hoeffel meet up.
TO: "Trombone" / "Saxophone":
As you know, Roy Rivenburg's membership on the faculty of the fundamentalist Christian World Journalism Institute --undisclosed to readers of the LA Times -- has created a small uproar recently, with a number of journalists expressing concern about this "submarine journalism" after Mr. Rivenburg's March 12th article suggesting that legalizing gay marriage may be a first step to legalizing polygamy.
This controversy has led to a number of posts regarding Mr. Rivenburg's phony expose' of Michel Thomas, shown below.,
Last night, at http://atrios.blogspot.com/, under the heading " WJI Update" you wrote:
In reference to the earlier post about Michel Thomas, there is a reason why, in this era of reporters going after the Jayson Blairs, Steven Glasses and Jack Kelleys of the business, no media have challenged Rivenburg's story about Thomas. Because anyone who looks into it soon realizes LAT editor John Carrol spoke the truth when he said Thomas' story is preposterous. Thomas claims the LAT falsely implied he was a civilian employee of the military instead of a fully credentialed Army officer, but he has never produced a military service identification number or discharge papers. Thomas biographer Christopher Robbins conceded to the LAT that his account of Thomas accompanying the very first troops who liberated Dachau was mistaken. But he hasn't explained how that story got into his book, given that the introduction says Thomas checked every fact for accuracy. And so on. Thomas claims he escaped from WWII concentration and slave labor camps about half a dozen times. In one case, he voluntarily returned when he found out his release had been granted because his girlfriend performed a sexual favor for a guard. Not wanting to be freed under such circumstances, he checked back into the camp and escaped again. Nothing preposterous about that!
Posted by: Trombone at March 26, 2004 06:15 PM
Also last night, at http://www.laobserved.com/archiv...ive/
001643.html, you put the above posting, and later posted:
In addition, you have made the following posts on http://atrios.blogspot.com:
postscript on Michel Thomas - In reference to Robert Wolfe's endorsement of the Nazi membership files story, dig up the New York Times and London Express articles on the discovery from 1945 and see if you think Wolfe needs a history lesson.
Saxophone | Email | Homepage | 03.26.04 - 9:28 pm | #
and, in reference to the posting of Robert Wolfe's scholarly evaluation of the evidence, concluding that Michel Thomas rescued the Nazi Party's Master File, you wrote:
In reference to Robert Wolfe's 500-part post above, you must have spent all night writing that one but you still haven't addressed my earlier points. Firstly, every fully credentialed member of the US military has two things - an ID number and discharge papers. Thomas hasn't produced either. Nuff said. Two, you still didn't explain how the admittedly bo
The one point being that it will be pretty obvious when some fundie religious dogma slips into the journalism, much like it would be if CS dogma appeared in articles in the CSM. It also reveals that members of an organization that are decidedly "fringe" are capable of producing unbiased journalism.
Another point needs to be stressed, however. Most of you are not customers of the Washington Times or the LA Times, so why do you think you should have a say over how these companies run their businesses?
I think the solution is that we need an American version of the BBC. I'd be willing to join that fight.
Finishing last post:
... Nuff said. Two, you still didn't explain how the admittedly bogus Dachau liberation story got into Robbins' book if Thomas checked every fact for accuracy. Three, Wolfe is writing 60 years after the fact. If you go back to sources from 1945, Bobby, like the NYT article I mentioned, and Stefan Heym's story, they all line up. The story in Robbins' book doesn't match.
Saxophone | Email | Homepage | 03.27.04 - 10:27 am | #
and:
Robert Wolfe, can you say "red herring"? Your diatribe about the LAT reporter doesn't address the issues in my prior posts.
Saxophone | Email | Homepage | 03.27.04 - 3:48 pm | #
In response to these posts, we have posted the following, which we are also addressing to you via this email:
The issues you've raised are thoroughly covered at http://www.michelthomas.org.
As to failing to address issues, why won't you answer these fair and reasonable questions:
1) Are you Roy Rivenburg?
2) If not, who are you?
3) If you are Roy, why have you been unwilling to defend your article in a public forum, such as the mock trial held at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall last April? We invited you, the attorneys for you and the Times, and anyone else the Times wanted to have participate. It was a neutral forum, sponsored by the Schools of Law and Journalism at Berkeley.
5) What is the source of your animus to a Jewish Holocaust survivor and WWII hero?
6) How can we get you to come out from the shadows for an honest and open debate of the facts?
7) Since we invited your participation in the mock trial months in advance by email, letter, fax, and oral communication between Michel Thomas's attorney and your own, why did you lie in response to the press inquiries you got just before the mock trial and claim you had never been invited to participate?
Your response to those press inquiries looked like more of the "purposeful avoidance of the truth" that the law professors at the mock trial said characterized your foray into 'investigative reporting.'
We have responded, in exhaustive detail, to your implications that Michel Thomas is a fraud. Why are you afraid to defend your reporting?
To me it sounds a little hysterical.
Anonymous | Email | Homepage | 03.27.04 - 7:23 pm | #
well since you cant bother to sign your post, your opnion doesn't carry much weight.
"Biblically-minded" means that you refuse to accept the universe for what it can be observed to be, and prefer instead to live in a make-believe mythological construct despite what your lying eyes are telling you.
The one point being that it will be pretty obvious when some fundie religious dogma slips into the journalism,
Dogma? Who said it had to be a matter of dogma slipping in? What Kelley wrote and advanced was extremely troubling and false.
Was he objectively serving his readers or was he trying to negatively influence them?
pie,
You didn't know before the Kelley story broke that USA Today sucked?
Look, if they report lies who cares why and to serve what purpose. At least if it is serving some fundie purpose it is a little more detectable than some commercial conflict of interest.
Biblically-minded journalists
Can anyone translate that from Newspeak to English for me?
Old Hat
Sure. Nutcases bent on foisting their goofy world view on the rest of us.
Any questions? 
Look, if they report lies who cares why and to serve what purpose.
Are you stupid or just dumb?
The one point being that it will be pretty obvious when some fundie religious dogma slips into the journalism
except that there is a solid history of bullshit "sounding right"-the stories about welfare mammies, the Palestinian nine-year-olds straight out of a Chick tract, the spilt coffee lawsuits. Journalists like Friedman, Brooks, that annoying Suskind and on TV people like Blitzer, Aaron Brown and all the punditheon have made a pseudojournalistc genre out of a sneering tone and "common knowledge" Heather jokes (viz Dean, Howard). Kelley's lies were all tailored to "sound right", to play to what we think we know, fooling people on both sides of the Israel/Palestine mess with stereotypes they expect. The sad thing is that the "mainstream" is already so close to the crossworshippers, given say the positively ignorant eagerness of all those Jewish columnists who write and write about how great "middle-amurca" Christians are and how good it is that we bomb people we don't tolerate, would we really notice if a defense of Yahweh the Destroyer slipped into a defense of the B-2 or the Abrams or carpet bombing? A lot of the "liberal" NYT sounds like the filthy Bible already. Fucking Time, Life, Newseek, and Reader's Digest all have a regular Jesus cover every couple of months!
quasi sez: Mmm, Are you attempting to out an anonymous commenter on your ananymous blog Atrios?
Translation: No one reads my crummy, unimportant blog.
OT: Clarke on NPR today wants everything declassified.
Does anyone seriously think that the problem with Kelley was that he was a Christian? The problem with Kelley is that he was a liar. Stephen Glass was a liar, Jayson Blair was a liar. All three are liars. Race and religion are not the cause.
I have no problem with the idea that a journalist is a Christian. To claim that it necessarily biases their work is as logically suspect as the right-wing claim that the media has a liberal bias because many journalists vote Democratic.
As to this particular situation, I'm afraid that I have to agree that the long litany of incredible accomplishments attributed to Thomas seems, well, incredible. At the very least, worth the attention of a good investigative journalist. I don't know that Rivenburg is the guy to do it, but the comparison to Jerzy Kosinski seems apt on face.
FOIX??? ooh, after reading what my 1903 encyclopedia said about that town, i wanna go there. but a concentration camp?
hmm, i still wanna go.
other anonymous,
The point is: if they report lies, they are unreliable, period.
kei and yuri,
Fu**ing Time, Life, Newseek, and Reader's Digest all have a regular Jesus cover every couple of months!
Yes. So apparently it sells. These are private corporations, with supposedly, a single motive, profits. You don't have to buy it and I'm not sure anything you say about it is going to do any good if you weren't the target audience in the first place.
Don't we all know that we should be very skeptical of the signals we get from mass media?
Is Judith Miller affilited with WJI?
If she isn't, do we really need an organization like WJI to exist to know that there are journalists who apparently try to propel an agenda in their writing?
You didn't know before the Kelley story broke that USA Today sucked?
Actually, for the past few months, I thought that USAToday was becoming more balanced. I don't know if the new editor had anything to do with that or with Kelley's fall from grace. Heh.
Nicely coincidental, however.
The point is: if they report lies, they are unreliable, period
There are big lies and small lies, as well as degrees of reliability.
For instance, I am much more worried about someone who lies because he is pushing an agenda than I am about someone who lies out of laziness. It makes a difference.
I have no problem with the idea that a journalist is a Christian. To claim that it necessarily biases their work is as logically suspect as the right-wing claim that the media has a liberal bias because many journalists vote Democratic.
Get a clue, Sherlock.
Rivenburg is a member of an organization that has a stated goal of putting Christian bias into reporting.
mg, did you read the thread down there about Kelley?
Biblical minded journalism = journalism with a Christian bias
This debate is a little obscure for me. So let me go quasi-OT on it:
I have two major fears for the future of human civilization:
1. Over population by humans. We are as bacteria spreading on a petri dish. Soon we will reach the edge of the nutrient broth agar and kill ourselves and everything else in this dish by our toxic death emisions.
2. Fundementalist religions of all types. There is nothing that humans do (other than overpopulate)that is worse for the long term survival hopes for our species than fervent belief in a concept that is absolutely contrary to the physical reality of the the universe that we exit in.
I say this as someone who sincerely attends a church fairly regularly and has problems ending sentences without prepositions.
and has problems ending sentences without prepositions.
No worries. Just call it an adverb.
Something I never in my life I thought I would ever see.
From the Interfaith Alliance Website.
http://www.interfaithalliance.org/
Paul M. Weyrich
America and Her Secular Blues
By Paul M. Weyrich
CNSNews.com Commentary
March 22, 2004
Every year I get asked to participate in various panel discussions. I must decline most of the invitations for one reason or another however, I am glad I accepted the invitation of the Interfaith Alliance for a panel on religion and politics at the National Press Club. I was the token conservative in a group that included Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes Jr., senior minister of the Riverside Church in New York; syndicated columnist Clarence Page; Diana Eck, professor of comparative religion and Indian studies at Harvard University; and pollster John Zogby.
Forbes is the most articulate and reasonable sounding religious liberal I have encountered in many years. His attack on the current occupant of the White House was subtle but devastating. It is a good thing for the President that he doesn't have Rev. Forbes for an opponent. Professor Eck is Director of the Pluralism Project and with due respect sounded like a Harvard Professor. Clarence Page, whose column I always read because he is not predictable, was reasonable and fair as usual.
But the man who stole the show was John Zogby. He made the case with living detail that we have two different nations, not just in terms of politics, but in terms of religion as well. The differences between the red states (those which voted for George Bush) and the blue states (which voted for Al Gore) are profound.
Zogby's survey research should be taken seriously. He was the only pollster who picked up the shift toward Gore in the waning hours of the 2000 elections. In 1996 he was closer in his prediction of the outcome than any national pollster has ever been.
The Zogby research indicates that the intensity of religious belief is far greater in the red states than the blue. Also, those whose votes in the upcoming elections will be influenced by their religious beliefs are far greater in the red states than the blue states.
Zogby says, despite a growing Moslem population in America, there is no Moslem vote. Moslems do not vote as a religious block but rather are influenced by economic, social and defense issues the way most other voters are motivated. Zogby also insists, and his data supports it, that there is no such thing as the Catholic vote. Yet how much ink and footage is devoted to "the Catholic vote" each election year.
There is an evangelical vote, however, according to Zogby. Although by no means monolithic, it does tend to be more politically cohesive and is the driving force behind most of the red states.
Zogby says we used to have a consensus in America, but that is now no longer the case. In fact, Zogby thinks the divide is so profound that he sees no possibility of reconciliation. Taking Zogby at his word, the question is what does
OOPS !
Change "exit in" to either "exist in" or maybe "exit into".
Maybe I shoulda ended it with a proverb?
*sigh*
Get through nameless head:
There is a difference between a "Christian" (which means pretty much anything, and so nothing) and a Dominion-minded evangelical bible-believer; similarly, there is a difference between a "Jew" (and even between a "Zionist") and Likud, and there is a difference between a moderate Muslim and Osama.
Kelley isn't scary because he was a "christian" or because he was a "liar": the guy is a member of a group of christian liars who are deliberately "getting the word out". That is different from him having a dashboard heavy with aluminum fetishes or just espousing xianity: we found the bastard out and your kind insists he was just crazy.
Anonymous, you are saying the smoking gun is actually relatively cold, compared to a volcano, and the smoke is really steam from some cold fusion process, and the bullet probably wasn't real anyway.
Zogby says we used to have a consensus in America, but that is now no longer the case. In fact, Zogby thinks the divide is so profound that he sees no possibility of reconciliation. Taking Zogby at his word, the question is what does this mean for a President who needs to govern the whole nation.
If a President is elected by an overwhelming vote of the red states, and thus owes his election to the more religious voters in the nation, how does he govern the increasingly secular blue states? If Zogby is correct, then as a President and perhaps a Congress pursues an agenda reflecting religious values, will they precipitate ever deeper divisions in the country by doing so? Drawing this out to its logical conclusion, could we have in decades to come a civil war - this time based almost exclusively on religion?
Americans have always treasured religious freedom. We have more religions functioning in this country than in any other country in the world. We have proved that despite our religious differences we can get along, primarily because our secularism was always in the forefront. But if those for whom secularism is their religion decide that religion itself is a threat, we could be in for very rough times.
All survey research is subject to interpretation and perhaps conclusions different than those served up by Zogby are possible. And circumstances could change us. Zogby said that right after 9/11 the whole nation became very spiritually focused. But it didn't last very long. Many years ago my high school journalism instructor had us all write a story about a time when life from another planet would land on earth. The remarkable thing about all of us who wrote those stories was that we universally depicted adversarial nations coming together to face a new reality.
If we are, as some suggest, in the end times then perhaps it won't just be America that experiences a religious/secular division. We may find that all over the world. Interestingly, in Russia that division is complicating its recovery.
President Putin says if Russia is to regain her status as a great nation, she must revive the Christian faith. But there is a substantial part of the population who have no religious beliefs and have absolutely no interest in being converted. They are resisting the re-introduction of a religious curriculum in the public schools, among other things.
That period right after 9/11 when the churches were packed and when all of us, regardless of our politics, celebrated that we were One Nation Under God had, despite our terrible tragedy, much to commend it. Must we have another terrible tragedy to bring us together again?
(Paul M. Weyrich is chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation.)
Weyrich, being a Jeebofascist pile of dogshit himself, of course misrepresents this the real conflict here.
The "seculars" frankly don't give a rat's ass which Invisible Sky Buddy Weyrich and his fellow totalitatian-minded choose to worship.
It's when they DEMAND that everyone must live according to their rules that the divide begins.
I don't care if Weyrich and his fellow dipsticks can't handle the reality of the universe. As long as they keep their superstitions to themselves, they are free to believe whatever it is they want to believe. But when they cross the line and seek to use the power of the state to force their witch doctor worship down my throat, they had better expect a reaction, and a violent one.
I'm not the one who insist there can be only one way. They are. They will be disabused of this notion.
If we are, as some suggest, in the end times then perhaps it won't just be America that experiences a religious/secular division.
The end times?
Puhleeze. This is disgusting.
Can we have some happy religious types around, please?
We're in what century? What degree of intellectual development? Why is this nonsense getting any publicity at all?
Who's putting out this crap?
There is actually nothing wrong with ending an English sentence with a preposition. This "rule" came from classicists like Dryden who decided that English should be like Latin and that Latin writers never ended with preposition (not completely true), so somehow thus we can't either. But it's not a real English rule so go ahead. (paraphrased from OEU)
I was surprised that Weyrich addressed the danger we face right now, that he drew exactly the wrong conclusions, is typical.
However, if he is troubled by the divide, then we know we are deep shit.
So if secular/religious division = eschaton, does that mean we've been in the Last Days for THREE HUNDRED FUCKING YEARS AND MORE? What, did Yahweh the Destroyer put us in the oven and fucking forget? What does that mean for the times from before the Patriarchal Revolution six or seven thousand years ago? Was that another time ending setting Time into a doughnut with the Modern Era?
I went to Zogby to see the report Weyrich details in his "piece" figuring like a good blogger, one should go straight to the source...
but the damn report costs 50 bucks.
http://www.zogby.com/features/fe...ures.dbm?
ID=210
This is Clarence Page's read on the same event.
President Putin says if Russia is to regain her status as a great nation, she must revive the Christian faith. But there is a substantial part of the population who have no religious beliefs and have absolutely no interest in being converted. They are resisting the re-introduction of a religious curriculum in the public schools, among other things.
Weyrich is seriously stupid if he belives for a nanosecond that Putin actually believes that Russia must become "Christian" again. The Russians who were freed from the tyranny first of the Orthodox Church, and then from the Church of Lenin, certainly don't want any more versions of idolatry or biblioatry around. They've just gotten one form of religious instruction (the dogma of Lenin) removed from their schools; they're not about to let a different version of it be introduced.
Jesus said the end days would be in his disciples' lifetimes.
They are dead aren't they?
We are in the months preceding the Rapture. I predict it will arrive in November 2004, and suddenly there will be no Republican fundamentalists at all and no trace of them either, except for some piles of deserted Victoria's Secret underwear. This means that there is really no point at all for these Republicans to vote. They could spend the time better by winding up their affairs on this earth.
They've just gotten one form of religious instruction (the dogma of Lenin) removed from their schools; they're not about to let a different version of it be introduced.
Except for the Dogma of Putin.
Putin, does feel that religion is the opiate of the people.
All the better to put them sleep and off the vodka.
These WJI posts are starting to sound a little too much like the wacko bigots who claim that there is some sort of Jewish media conspiracy.
The difference is that there are not Jewish websites which explicitly state their desires to bias and control the news media.
One ("Jewish media conspiracy") is a bunch of racist bullshit made up by anti-Semites. The other is something which is publicly talked about in Christian circles as they attempt to take over various parts of society -- and it is NOT a bogus conspiracy theory.
The same applies to conservative evangelical infiltration and control of liberal, mainline Christian denominations. There is an active movement among the fundamentalists to leave their fundie churches, join churches which are "too liberal" (meaning: they accept 21st century notions of science, gender, gays, etc), gain power in those churches, and institute fundamentalism.
I'm not making this up, either: it's openly discussed in conservative evangelical circles.
--Kynn
Kynn,
"Control the news media"? Can you site one source (ever) of evangelical Christians expressing a desire to "control the news media"? Doubt it.
Read me, Kid A.
Read the rest of the website, too.
And check out http://www.worldji.com
The "seculars" frankly don't give a rat's ass which Invisible Sky Buddy Weyrich and his fellow totalitatian-minded choose to worship.
It's when they DEMAND that everyone must live according to their rules that the divide begins.
I don't care if Weyrich and his fellow dipsticks can't handle the reality of the universe. As long as they keep their superstitions to themselves, they are free to believe whatever it is they want to believe. But when they cross the line and seek to use the power of the state to force their witch doctor worship down my throat, they had better expect a reaction, and a violent one.
I'm not the one who insist there can be only one way. They are. They will be disabused of this notion.
Gary Frazier | Email | Homepage
Well said! Cheers!
Echidne,
What a picture! Those will all be XXXLG size. Don't forget, these are some big people, what with all the addictions...
Can you site one source (ever) of evangelical Christians expressing a desire to "control the news media"?
Check out the next post, buddy boy.
"We're in what century? What degree of intellectual development? Why is this nonsense getting any publicity at all?
Who's putting out this crap?"
WJI among others, pie.
A lot of us spent the 90s getting ready for Star Trek in the 21st century.
Imagine our surprise when we woke up in November 2000 to find that a lot of people more comfortable in the 19th century had decided to turn the election into a $election.
Zogby is probably right that the xtian fundamentalists will eventually seek to precipitate a civil war if they can't figure out any other way to rule.
You are right on scoffing at this end time silliness. As any rational Catholic or Christian would say, according to traditional doctrine that's not anything mortals should worry about. Being the province of God and all.
Of course, that's a version of christianity that has worked quite well with secular rationality since the Renaissance and is probably ready for Star Trek. Not at all what the Franklin Grahams and the Pat Robertsons or the WJI would approve of.
The other secular non-xtians laugh off this end time nonsense as a matter of course.
Whether we're christian or secular, we should all attack the End Times belief whenever it is presented in the media: giving respect to this opinion gives tacit approval to the doctrine of a large rich group of fanatic fundamentalists who would ruin our economy, our environment, and our world to further their beliefs and line their pockets with money.
Gary Frazier - you got it.
Sounds to me like the typical right wing obfuscation...blame the opposition for just what you yourself are doing.
This story so does not make sense. This isn't Daniel Ganzfried going after Bruno Grosjean (aka "Binjamin Wilkomirski"); not by a long shot. It doesn't smell the same at all. (For one, Ganzfried has better credentials than Rivenburg.) It sounds like we're not getting the whole story. I'm going to take a wild-ass guess and hypothesize that if we knew the one or two salient facts about (I'm going to say probably) Rivenberg which would explain why he went after Thomas like his hair was on fire and his ass was catching (unusual vocation for a humourist, eh, wot?), everything would fall into place. For now, though, we're at present in the dark (and no laughing matter).
SteveO -- Even disregarding kei&yuri's stellar contribution, it's perfectly okay to end a sentence with a preposition if it's a phrasal verb. (Phrasal verbs are things like "put on" which means something completely different from "put"; or "knock off", "put down" etc.)
A hillbilly, bright but untutored, arrives on campus at Harvard. He encounters an uppperclassman and the following dialog ensues:
Hillbilly: 'scuse me sir, I'm new here, can you tell me where the libary's at?
Upperclassman: Excuse me. We don't end our sentences in prepositions here at Harvard.
Hillbilly: Ok then, can you tell me where the libary's at, asshole?
"Control the news media"? Can you site one source (ever) of evangelical Christians expressing a desire to "control the news media"? Doubt it.
Sun Myung Moon.
Seraphiel -- Owooh, zing! Nail. Hammer. Bang.
Sun Myung Moon an evangelical Christian? Guess again.
Sun Myung Moon an evangelical Christian? Guess again.
Though he is not what I would consider "Christ-like," he does claim to be a Christian. The purported goal of his "church" is to unify Christianity.
And if you think he's not evangelical, you haven't been paying attention.
What is it about right wing fundie "journalists", and why do they persist in doing half-assed bogus hatchet jobs on honorable people that can never be substantiated by facts?
Because they base their entire lives around a half-assed bogus belief system that can never be substantiated by facts?
And if you think [Sun Myung Moon is] not evangelical, you haven't been paying attention
Man, he was the bogeyman when I was growing up in DC. We were told that if anyone approached you in an airport with a flower, you should run away.
I moved to Nashville in the early '80s to go to school, and the Moonies were at every intersection selling flowers.
His ascent to legitimacy continues to boggle me.
Excuse me, Mr. Weyrich?
When the rapture comes, can I have your car?
What an interesting story. This and the original thread with "Saxophone" on it.
Just how bad does the LA Times have to get it wrong for them to retract? Don't they have any standards? What do the editors do with their time? Fact checkers?
As to Saxophone, if anyone doubts that the right monitors these threads and alerts its members to post here this should prove that they do.
It wouldn't surprise me, sounds like a Mary Rosh incident.
I am completely at sea here and I have no comment. OT: there's apparently another mg posting here so I am now mg_65. I'm the Episopalian who lives in NYC. Just sayin'.
TAKING THE SOCK OFF ONE OF THE PUPPETS:
I have been asked by Kevin Roderick over at www.laobserved.com to reveal my name. As I told him in an email, I am not particularly reluctant to reveal my identity in a forum where others reveal theirs,but I would like to see the policy of requiring names to be revealed to be applied consistently.
My name is Alex Kline, I am a private investigator who worked on Michel Thomas's legal team. I have appeared on several radio programs and appeared on-camera on Court TV, and in numerous other public forums, discussing this case, without hiding my identity or role in this matter.
The person posting as "Trombone" on LAObserved, or here as "Saxophone" -- who I suspect is Roy Rivenburg -- has not disclosed his identity, although atrios says he was making posts from the LA Times server.
I am one of several people who have assisted Michel Thomas in his battle with the LA Times and Roy Rivenburg, under the banner of the "Friends of Michel Thomas." For some time, I have done so pro bono, because I remain outraged that the Times and Rivenburg have gotten away with such a mean-spirited and false smear of an extraordinary man, whose family was murdered by the Nazis, and who fought with distinction to defeat them six decades ago.
I did not know Thomas when I began work on his case in 2001, but as I worked on the case, my outrage grew. I saw the evidence Rivenburg ignored prior to publishing his article, then found more evidence that proved beyond any doubt that what Rivenburg implied was false about Michel Thomas was in fact true.
I appreciate being given this forum to publicize this case, and hope that "Trombone / Saxophone" will reveal who he is. If it is Roy Rivenburg, I again reiterate my desire for an open and fair debate on the evidence. He has already declined to participate in such an event, when he refused to appear at the mock trial that was held of Michel Thomas v. Los Angeles Times and Roy Rivenburg. It was held at UC Berkeley's Law school last April.
If Mr. Rivenburg has the guts to step out and defend his reporting, I would be most interested in his answers to the following questions:
1) How did he come to write the profile of Michel Thomas in early 2001? Did someone put him up to it? Who?
2) Why did he ignore so much of the evidence he was presented about Michel Thomas's WWII experiences, such as the photos Michel Thomas took at the Dachau crematorium, for which he still retains the negatives? What about the original signed statements of the crematorium workers, in German, that Thomas showed him: did he assume these were fakes? If so, why?
3) Why did Rivenburg focus myopically on a technical detail such as Thomas's acknowledged lack of a US military ID number, and never mention in his article his interview of Ted Kraus, Thomas's still-living Army comrade who served with him in Germany during 1945-46 as a fellow Agent in the US Counter Intelligence Corps? Why did he ignore the many WWII-era letters from Thomas's superiors commending his superior perfomance in combat intelligence and with the Army's Counter Intelligence Corps?
4) In trying to portray Thomas as a phony Dachau liberator, Rivenburg quoted Felix Sparks, the Lt. Col. who led the first troops into Dachau, as saying that Thomas was not with his troops that day. Yet Sparks later signed a letter stating that Thomas could very easily have gone to the camp that day without his knowledge -- the letter is posted on our website. Sparks further stated that Rivenburg said to him, "This guy Thomas says he was with you when you went into Dachau" -- but Thomas never made any such statement, and had never heard of Felix Sparks until he read Rivenburg's article. How does Rivenburg explain this apparent attempt to mislead a source in order to elicit a damaging quote about Thomas?
5) Rivenburg used the same tactic with Hugh Foster, an expert on the liberation of Dachau. Foster also signed a letter -- again posted on our website -- indicating Rivenburg misled him by not revealing crucial evidence Rivenburg knew but did not reveal to Foster. Foster recanted his statements quoted by Rivenburg and said he is satisfied Michel Thomas was at Dachau on the day of liberation. Why did Rivenburg not reveal so much crucial information to Foster when he contacted him? Does Rivenburg still claim there is any doubt that Thomas was in the camp on April 29, 1945?
6) Rivenburg implied that Thomas' account of rescuing the Nazi Party's worldwide membership card files in May 1945 was bogus. Thomas says he found the mountains of documents in a paper mill near Munich, where the SS had sent them to be pulped in the closing days of the war. The leading expert in the world on captured German war documents, Robert Wolfe, reviewed extensive documentation at the National Archives, and examined a key document -- an original letter bearing Himmler's signature -- that Thomas took from the paper mill and has kept to this day. He
(continuation of previous post)
6) Rivenburg implied that Thomas' account of rescuing the Nazi Party's worldwide membership card files in May 1945 was bogus. Thomas says he found the mountains of documents in a paper mill near Munich, where the SS had sent them to be pulped in the closing days of the war. The leading expert in the world on captured German war documents, Robert Wolfe, reviewed extensive documentation at the National Archives, and examined a key document -- an original letter bearing Himmler's signature -- that Thomas took from the paper mill and has kept to this day. He has written an extensive scholarly evaluation of the evidence and states that he is confident Michel Thomas's account is true. He also testified to that effect at the mock trial held at Berkeley's law school last April, calling Thomas's rescue of the files a "historic contribution." Does Rivenburg still insist that Thomas did not rescue these files? If so, how can he argue away the detailed and scholarly opinion of Robert Wolfe?
7) Conrad McCormick, whom Rivenburg interviewed and quoted in his article, signed a sworn Declaration -- again, posted on our web site -- stating that he never wrote a Letter-to-the-Editor which the Times published over his name in their Letters column in early May 2001. McCormick stated that he recognized some of the text of the letter from email correspondence he exchanged with Rivenburg prior to the article's publication. Did Rivenburg convert McCormick's emails to him into a phony Letter-to-the-Editor, apparently expressing approval of his own article? If not, how did that Letter appear in the paper?
These are just a few of the many questions Roy Rivenburg refuses to answer. There are many more...
These posts will be re-posted because they are effing hysterical:
I am the real Roy Rivenburg.
Jack Kelley | Email | Homepage | 03.27.04 - 7:56 pm | #
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No, I am the real Roy Rivenburg.
Jayson Blair | Email | Homepage | 03.27.04 - 7:57 pm | #
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Would the real Roy Rivenburg please stand up?
peggy cass and kitty carlisle | Email | Homepage | 03.27.04 - 8:23 pm | #
I am Roy Rivenburg too!!!!!
Deep down, we are all Roy Rivenburg.
Whoever "Saxophone" or "Trombone" may be; the fact is he has launched an anonymous and unsubstantiated public attack on my scholarship.
Long before I ever met or corresponded with Michel Thomas, I had written about the Berlin Document Center (BDC) and the origins of the Nazi Party membership files deposited there. Published in 1994, my essay documented the odyssey of the Nazi Party records from the time of their capture at the Freimann paper mill in May 1945, their assemblage and shipment to the BDC, and their treatment and disposition thereafter through 1994. The sole salient missing fact was the identity of the member of the 45th Division CIC who had discovered and arranged for the preservation of those seized records.
From that May discovery to the first publicity about the capture of the Nazi Party files, the records were being quietly but desultorily processed--through no fault of the initial discoverer who had long since moved on. Only in September 1945 did Stefan Heym become aware of the matter, and indulging his Communist spleen against capitalist America, chose to credit the self-serving story of Hans Huber, the German paper-mill manager. In September, Major William D. Browne of Third Army's Munich MG detachment learned that Huber had reported the existence of the files awaiting pulping at his Freimann mill "to a CIC agent 'in early May 1945," which conforms to the dates given by Michel Thomas. Browne thereupon brought the records still remaining at Freimann into Munich for processing, and conducted an investigation to document the origins, status, and disposition of the records.
With this compilation of incontrovertible evidence of the odyssey of the Nazi Party records, I needed only to examine the few historically unimportant original documents that Michel Thomas had taken (and retained) in early May 1945 , for the purpose of persuading Seventh Army's Munich Military Government detachment of the urgent need to remove the massive collection of irreplaceable records from the Freimann mill to a secure and sterile environment.
On our first meeting, after a minimal greeting to Mr. Thomas, I took the original documents from his hands and examined their external and internal characteristics (letterhead, paper stock, type fonts, and physical condition). As archival consultant to the State Department, during two tours totaling six weeks at the BDC in 1969 and 1970 I had acted in the capacity of Center Director in advising and training the German BDC branch chiefs. There and at the National Archives I had had much experience in examining and authenticating innumerable Nazi Party files. Based on that experience and the cumulative evidence, at that point I arrived at the firm conclusion that "[t]here is no plausible scenario by which Thomas could have come into possession of this original document other than having found it himself at the mill."
Michel Thomas was functioning as a CIC agent in every sense
(Last post cont'd):
Michel Thomas was functioning as a CIC agent in every sense, except that his lack of American citizenship prevented his signing reports. That fact has been corroborated in official records by Capt. Rudolf W. Guenther, Thomas' company commander; by recent testimony of two of his CIC colleagues, Ted Krauss and Walter Wimer; and by mention of "Agent Thomas" in CIC official history. His status was admittedly unusual, an extraordinary ad hoc procedure prompted by his enormous value to CIC tasks. This is explained and documented in my signed statement.
Robert Wolfe
It's time to come clean: I am part of a vast right-wing-Christian-fundamentalist-Illuminati-
fascist-Halliburton conspiracy to infiltrate secular newsrooms and publish extremist propaganda under the guise of objective news. For 12 years, I've labored in secrecy at the Los Angeles Times, under the code name "Roy Rivenburg." Unfortunately, my cover has been blown. As columnist Michelangelo Signorile and a handful of obscure bloggers have revealed, I recently managed to sneak a blatantly biased story about gay marriage into the L.A. Times. It was a daring mission. First, I had to get several top editors to think the story idea was theirs and choose me to write it. Next, after taking dictation from my Christian Conspiracy handlers, I got the final draft approved by a phalanx of liberal Democrat editors and copy editors. My secret? Mass hypnosis, of course. Reader reaction to such an obvious hatchet job on a hot-button topic was swift. A torrent of two phone calls overwhelmed our switchboard, and our mailroom was buried with four, possibly five, letters and e-mails. Bloggers on both sides of the same-sex marriage debate praised the article.
OK, so maybe Operation Ix-Nay on the Ay-Gays wasn't my finest work as a covert Vatican operative (I'm Catholic) at the L.A. Times. But there's more. In 1997, I wrote an expose of the public-relations war over partial-birth abortion that earned me a scathing letter from Helen Alvare of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Other religion-related pieces I've done here have been scolded by William Donohue of the Catholic League and denounced from the pulpit by Chuck Smith, the fundamentalist pastor of Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa, to name a few. So, as you can see, I'm doing a great job of what Mr. Signorile calls "aiding and abetting the hidden Christian right agenda."
The really real Roy Rivenburg's name can no longer be found on the World Journalism Institute's web site as a guest teacher, implying that the recent controversy about his work there has dissuaded him from further associating with the organization.
He has posted his reply to Michelangelo Signorile here under his own name, but the identity of "Saxophone" -- remains a mystery.
Mr. Rivenburg, since you monitor these posts, where and when will you answer the questions we have posted above, and at www.laobserved.com, about your article about Michel Thomas? Perhaps we could set a web log up on our website, where you could respond?
If you want the lowdown on Michel Thomas' bogus World War II stories, visit www.offkilter.org/thomas.html. To answer a couple of the questions posted above: Thomas' own publicist sought me out to profile him in the Los Angeles Times. That's where the story originated. Also, for the record, I wasn't a humor columnist when this story was assigned. I was a feature writer whose background included award-winning investigative articles -- and I had debunked another person who lied about his military record.
p.s., Thomas never challenged the factual accuracy of anything in the L.A. Times article. Instead, he merely claimed it "implied" he had exaggerated or fabricated his World War II record. Four federal judges rejected his claims, ruling that the article was even-handed and NOT libelous.
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