Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Now For Something a Little Left of Center

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by

James A. Bacon
in

Just to show what a broad-minded guy I am, I’m going out of my way today to promote a column that skewers Bacon’s Rebellion. Peter Galuszka, a regular contributor to our Road to Ruin transportation news coverage, criticizes blogs generally, tossing a few barbs Bacon’s Rebellion’s way, in his opinion piece this week, “Plato’s Cave.”

Peter objects to the triumphalism that blogs display regarding the slow-motion demise of the “Mainstream Media.” His main point is undeniable: Traditional media such as newspapers, magazines and television provide the news content that blogs feed off. Few blogs conduct much first-hand reporting. Without the Mainstream Media, bloggers would have little to comment upon.

The decline in journalistic coverage is especially marked overseas — foreign correspondents are being laid off in droves. That’s of particular concern to Peter, who ran the Moscow bureau for BusinessWeek during the transition between Gorbachev and Yeltsin. Americans are ignorant enough of foreign politics, economics and culture as it is, he argues, and the situation will likely get worse.

(Peter doesn’t care for xenophobia either, a tendency he sees in the reaction of many Virginians to illegal immigration and explores in a previous column, “Virginia Is for Gulags.” He also gets pieved when I use the term “Euro-weenies.” He probably won’t like it when I refer to him as a “Euroweeniephile.”)

If you’d like to see more left-of-center commentary in the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine, give Peter some positive reinforcement in the comments section.

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2 responses to “Now For Something a Little Left of Center”

  1. Freedom Works Avatar
    Freedom Works

    Jim,

    You really should cover this story.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/15/AR2007101501458.html

    “Rosita Lim Ong Chang, 66, was arrested Friday and sent to jail by a judge for contempt of court. Chang was cited four years ago for illegally boarding tenants in her single-family home near George Mason University. Since then, Chang has done nothing to comply with county demands that she remove an illegal kitchen from her basement or with a 2005 court order that she notify the county every time she leases a room to a new tenant, Fitzgerald said.

    Fitzgerald said Chang might have divided her four-bedroom home into as many as seven bedrooms.”

    It looks to me like liberal Fairfax Democrats are more xenophobic than Corey Stewart in Prince William County.

    Every American should be outraged at this assault on private property rights and the dignity of the working poor.

    We have now officially criminalized providing housing for poor people.

    So we put a 66 year old woman in jail to maintain our middle class sensibilities, and in Connolly’s case, to pander to the xenophobes to get re-elected.

    “Gerald E. Connolly (D), chairman of the Board of Supervisors, announced the arrest at a board meeting. Connolly, who is seeking reelection next month, has come under fire for not taking a tougher stand against illegal immigrants. His response has been to tout the county’s efforts to police illegal behavior, such as the operation of overcrowded boardinghouses, rather than immigration status.”

    As a former Catholic seminarian, Connolly should know better, or are some of God’s children less equal than others?

  2. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    Lets get back to Peter’s Column.

    First how is this “left of center?”

    Second I would like to thank Peter for expressing his views.

    He is right, bury the “Euro-Weenies.” With the oil prices, energy consumption and dysfunctional settlement patterns the US of A is going to need a reverse Marshall Plan and it would be best not to make citizens of the European Union any more disgusted with citzens of the US of A than they are now.

    But the bigger point is that Peter stated well the view of traditionally trained journalists. Almost too well.

    He does not know it but we are working on a Backgrounder on the Fourth Estate.

    He could not have writen a column that more completely supports our conclusions.

    I am not sure he will like our conclusion but he sure hit a home run.

    Thank you Peter.

    EMR

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