Essays /
America in Wonderland: Have-It-Your-Way Truth
TUCSON, Arizona – Cocooned in our delusional state of exception, we Americans have achieved what eludes only the scariest of despotic states: We have obliterated truth.
When reality bites, we defang it. We stretch our most basic principles to accommodate profit and personal convenience. We soften ugly words so “torture” can equate to a bad hair [...]
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Beyond Towering Babble: Good Schools, Real News
PARIS – Here’s a hair-raising snippet from the towering babble of media debate, signed by a Richard Sine, that argues journalism schools should be abolished:
“You can pick up most media skills on the job, or with a few hours of instruction. If you screw up, nobody dies, and nothing collapses.”
Someone [...]
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Black and White and Reviled All Over
PARIS – When USA Today appeared in 1982, we pterosaurs (you know, toothy jaws, extinct: reporters) laughed it off as the newspaper for people who find TV too challenging.
These days, its America-first, news-bits-for-dummies formula typifies our national view of the world.
And now we’ve recently had Jon Stewart’s ever-lovable Jason Jones laughing off The New York [...]
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Gaza Today Is About Perilous Tomorrows
PARIS – Back in 1981, in a squalid Gaza refugee camp, a kid’s silent stare sent chills up my spine. To this day it haunts everything I read or write about the Holy Land.
As I interviewed his father, the little boy’s message was dead clear: whoever you are, if you think I’m going to put [...]
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America Is Back; Now What?
PARIS – A poker-faced French border cop actually cracked a faint smile as he hefted my U.S. passport. Euphoria must fade inevitably in hard light but, even here, America is back.
It was that simple. A convincing plurality showed a doubtful world that the United States they once respected — however grudgingly, at times — still [...]
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An Editor’s Note
We conceived dispatches to fit somewhere between Gutenberg and Google, a lively source of fresh knowledge about a world changing at warp speed in a format for people who savor the heft of words and images on paper. We want you to carry it on the plane, stuff it in your pocket, underline it, pass [...]
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Links /
- Mort Rosenblum
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