What Jim Hightower wrote recently about the decline of local newspapers is terribly true, and I can testify to that.
My city’s daily newspaper (“daily” now meaning six days a week) became Gannett-owned in 2020 and has gone into a steady decline ever since. There has been a drastic reduction in staff, which has led to less locally produced content. For example, a recent story on a series of auto accidents on the interstate near here, caused by windblown dust from farm fields, was written up in our paper by an AP reporter, not a local writer.
And one would think that, in the digital age, it would be easier to put out a newspaper faster than in the age of mechanical typesetting. But such is not the case, because the printshop is not here, but 64 miles away. Therefore, the paper is put to bed at 4 p.m., not 10:30 p.m., as in the days of “primitive” technology.
But the greatest loss has been in the editorial page. There isn’t one now — no columnists and no letters from the community (for this reason, I am even more grateful for the existence of The Progressive Populist). Gannett started paring back the editorial page soon after they took over, and now its elimination is complete.
What Gannett (and others) are doing is bad for the newspaper business, worse for journalism, and worst of all for democracy and the public debate that nourishes it.
And there is no online refuge; witness the demise of Buzzfeed and Gawker.
JEFFREY HOBBS, Springfield, Ill.
Ho hum, our highest court is at it again, and far from the first time. Back in the Gilded Age, when Morrison Remick Waite was Chief Justice, railroad barons routinely sent free annual passes to Waite and his fellow Justices. That particular kind of railroad bribery came to an end in 1887, when a reform-minded Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act. In the Library of Congress one can see letters from railroad executives asking for the return of the passes.
That was about the time when Chief Waite and his daughter boarded a private Pullman car in D.C. for a luxurious round trip to San Francisco, courtesy of railroad mogul Leland Stanford. I’ve put further details in a play, “The Prosecution of Judge Waite,” which can be seen on YouTube. Waite’s final lines in the script: “Next time some mogul offers you some kind of consideration, some special favor, think twice. Above all, think: Why me?”
JAMES ALLISON, Bloomington, Ind.
Sports columnist Dave Zirin, in the 4/15/23 issue, claims “banning trans athletes is just the begining … of targeting and demonizing trans people.”
I suggest banning trans athletes is just the beginning of protecting female sports athletes from the not-so-secret ingredient potentially leading to trans-male dominance in female sports — testosterone.
Males reaching puberty have a different body structure — sstronger muscles, lungs, stamina than their biological female counterparts. By switching gender identity, the ex-male now possesses physical advantages placing him in unfair advantage when competing in women’s sports, including swimming and track.
Title IX’s goal meant gender equality, resulting in teams for girls, and teams for boys. Title IX did not force mixed-gender teams for obvious reasons.
Zirin has no business making nasty accusations against Olympic gold medalist Nancy Hogshead-Makar, claiming because she believes in abortion rights, she is obligated to favor trans rights and swim happily alongside individuals able to outdistance her, courtesy of testosterone.
Is Zirin not familiar with that ex-Ivy League ex-male swimmer now female and finally winning meets. Compare his shoulder structure with that of —. Definitely not female.
Meanwhile, the GOP is pushing anti-trans bills simply because the party has found a new group of people to hate in addition to —.
SANDRA MAGINLEY-SEYMOUR, Menomonee Falls, Wis.
This pseudo-religious anti-abortion stuff, based on the idea that personhood starts at conception, seems to be both anti-semitic and anti-Christian (at least Biblical Christian). The Tanaka [Hebrew Bible] is held as canonical scripture, by both Jews and Christians. It is also bad science. The Tanaka clearly states that personhood begins at first breath. I resent having their ideas shoved down Bible believers’ throats.
The anti-unisex bathroom stuff is incredible ignorance, fueled by unreasoning hate. Unisex bathrooms have been used in new medical facilities in recent times, and are now recommended for most types of buildings (except, like sports facilities and theaters, where a lot of people want to pee at the same time). Unisex are private rooms for any and all genders, and disabled people. Instead of the usual rest rooms, with multiple stalls, there are private rooms. I am an 86-year-old disabled man, who frequently needs the aid of my caregiver (67-year-old female wife). We can both go into one of these private unisex rest rooms together, for her to help me.
JAMES ADRIAN VAN WYK, Parlin, N.J.
Wayne O’Leary’s dismissal of the 1619 Project is extremely disappointing. Perhaps he did not read the revised version, which took into account criticisms and attempted to deal with those criticisms. At the same time, the lead editor stood by her main point: the centrality of slavery to American society.
Less than 75 years after the ratification of the Constitution we fought the most destructive war in our history, and it was over slavery and its future in America. Estimates run as high as 700,000 dead in a country of only 31 million. More than a century of segregation, enforced by a reign of terror, followed. That segregation may have been less brutal in the North, but it most certainly existed in the North. From Wilmington, NC to Tulsa, Oklahoma to Emmet Till the aftermath of slavery influenced the country. The fact that the national pastime was only integrated after WWII, and then only grudgingly, shows how imbedded racism was.
Mr. O’Leary explains how various ethnic groups vied with each other and believes that those animosities prove class was more important than race. Well, I grew up in Jersey City also during the 1950s. Ethnic animosity most certainly existed, but nowhere near the extent that racial animosity existed. Daniel Boorstin used the phrase “indelible immigrants” to apply to Black Americans. It was one thing for an Irish kid to date an Italian girl; it was an entirely different matter when color was involved.
As for the present, as soon as the Supreme Court eviscerated the Voting Rights Act the Confederacy already had the legislation drawn up to suppress Black voters. O’Leary needs to read the revised version of the 1619 Project with an open mind.
PAUL WHITE, Ridgewood, N.J. (taught history and literature at the high school level)
This is my answer to Columnist Robert Reich’s question [“The great comeuppance? What’s happening to Trump, Fox News, Putin and other public-be-damed scoundrels?” 5/1/23 TPP] asking us, his readers, what we think about justice finally holding high-and-mighty criminals responsible for their misdeeds:
Since there is no statute of limitations for war crimes, shouldn’t the International Criminal Court (ICC) issue a warrant for George W. Bush for his launching of an illegal war against Iraq?
It’s well known that the million-plus lives sacrificed, and the trillions of dollars wasted in an attempt by American oil corporations to control Iraq’s vast oil reserves, became a crime for which George W. Bush was mainly responsible.
Of course, a bench warrant from the ICC for G.W.B. would only be symbolic. The “Mission Accomplished” ex-president will spend the rest of his life in comfort, risking arrest only if he travels abroad.
Unless future historians omit his enormous crime, he’d be the only ex-president whose biography will include an arrest warrant from the ICC … certainly nothing for his grandchildren to brag about.
DAVID QUINTERO, Monrovia, Calif.
We are told that Russia is using rape as a weapon of “war.” My God, why can’t Russia do anything the right way? Don’t they know you can kill women while “in war”? Killing women as “collateral damage” is legal, the US did it for 20 years.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, the US “wars” took over one million Muslim lives. Tens of thousands of those lives lost were females, yet the US is not guilty of any “war” crimes. Thank heavens I live in a country where our government follows the “laws of war,” which allows you to kill women but not rape them.
Imagine how much trouble the United States would be I, if all of the women in Iraq and Afghanistan that the US killed — the US raped them instead of killing them?
My God, I shudder at the thought. I’m so proud of my government, killing women instead of raping them.
FRANK ERICKSON, Minneapolis, Minn.
The old adage of “birds of a feather flock together” is certainly applicable, as this fairly new technology and its nano-second algorithms and apps has enhanced politicians Romanesque and Machiavellian strategy/propositions of divide and conquer and tdhe end justifies the means. As I reflect on almost nine decades of longevity, having led a fairly eclectic life with an awareness of our historical past and societal evolution, I’ve seen the countering forces to enhancements and advances made that threaten “moneyed and political power and control feudalistic influences” counter worldwide. The depiction in Ruth Ben Ghiat’s book, “Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present” is today’s reality that pervades our nation as well and the Republican MAGAs are the replication of the “cult leader mentality.” The “stupidification” of a segment of our male/men’s populations is certainly substantiated with the facts that women are surpassing males/men academically while our males/men are associated statistically with all of our antisocial behaviors with their reversion to more aggressive tribalistic tendencies.
FRANK ROHRIG, Milford, Conn.
From The Progressive Populist, June 1, 2023
Blog | Current Issue | Back Issues | Essays | Links
About the Progressive Populist | How to Subscribe | How to Contact Us