The New Republic

Again, your focus is  "shady relationships" said to be on the wrong side of legal. The far more important relationships, however, are the ones on the other side.

Let me give you an example:

In the current print edition of The New Republic, page 5 features a pictorial recap of TNRs "Inaugural Ball Spotlight".

The event was sponsered by PhRMA. The PhRMA web site lists AstraZeneca, Bayer, Bristol-Myers, GlaxcoSmithKline, Johnson and Jonhson, Eli Lily, Merck and Pfizer as members.

Attendees included Stephnie Cutter from Treasury, Tom DePonty from AREVA [an energy corporation], Gloria Dittus from Dittus Communication [a public relations company for dozens of major corporations], Rahm Emanuel [a major player in the world of crony capitalism], Suzanne Folsom from AIG and Larry Summers [another major player in the world of crony capitalism.

Think about these relationships. Don't they strike you as rife with potential conflicts of interest?

TNR is a publication that features articles, essays and reviews bumping up against the economic and political interests of those above.

So how can it do this and expect readers to believe the content in the magazine is not slanted [consciously or subconsciously] to facilitate an incestuous relationship between the federal government and major corporate players throughout the economy?

Does this ever come up when you are sitting around the table swapping ideas about the content of the future issues?

Or is this sort of tete-a-tete between those who do the writing and those who are being written about basically standard operating procedure among all the players in the mainstream media?

george walton

- iambiguous

February 11, 2009 at 5:20pm

George: Yes.

Crony Capitalism is the root of the problem. They see an orchard of apples, they determine who gets what before the first apple is picked, and after working half a day, they call it a day, congratulating each other on how hard they work. Where's George Grosz when we need him?

It's the week of Valentine's, a time for a bit of poetry -

Rebecca

Who slammed Doors for Fun and Perished Miserably

A Trick that everyone abhors

In Little Girls is slamming Doors.

A Wealthy Banker's little Daughter

Who lived in Palace Green, Bayswater

(By name Rebecca Offendort),

Was given to this Furious Sport.

She would deliberately go

And Slam the door like Billy-Ho!

To make her Uncle Jacob start.

She was not really bad at heart,

But only rather rude and wild:

She was an aggravating child.

It happened that a Marble Bust

Of Abraham was standing just

Above this Door this little Lamb

Had carefully prepared to Slam,

And down it came! It knocked her flat!

It laid her out! She looked like that!  

Her funeral Sermon (which was long

And followed by a Sacred Song)

Mentioned her Virtues, it is true,

But dwelt upon her Vices too,

And showed the Dreadful End of One

Who goes and slams the doors for fun.

                            - Hilaire Belloc

- fougasseu

February 12, 2009 at 7:25am