Across the pond

(I was going to write, ‘Thank God for the New York Times’. But I paused, shouldn’t it be, ‘Thank Jehovad’, because been raised to its outstanding reputation for detailed and impartial reports of matters vital to the world as well as the US, by a devoted and talented Jewish family. But really we should ‘Thank America’, because the NYT, which was my daily newspaper when I lived in New York, is most definitely a product of the American dream, the American constitution and the American reality.

Its detailed coverage enables democracy to have a chance of working. Voters cannot make an informed decision unless they know what is going on, including most importantly Governments, big business and other powerful interest groups, don’t want them to know. It is the kind of newspaper that makes you entirely happy to be a journalist. Shabby raincoat, but not shabby values.

Its standards slipped badly two or three years ago, but the mistakes were recognised and publicly acknowledged. But when the NYT published the results of its long investigation into McCain’s friendship with the blonde lobbyist, it once again became the Aunt Sally for most of the rest of the media. Most attacked it because they thought the story was not worth printing unless the NYT had been able to prove that McCain had slipped between the sheets with his beloved friend. So they did not ponder about what the NYT had demonstrated very clearly. That McCain had intervened to help the causes which his beloved friend espoused.

That is far more important in terms of the government of the country than what McCain does in bed. And my testimony from many conversations with American men of McCain’s age while they were peeing in the next cubicle to me, is that if McCain was having a fling with the blonde lobbyist, that did not make his wife special. Because most American men of his generation, and in his relatively powerful positions, were doing exactly the same thing.

But some of the media attacked the NYT for taking so long to run the story, dithering like an old woman. But when I read the full details, in the New York Times, and in the other media, which for a brief time wrote thousands of words about it, my reaction was different from the majority.

I think it is entirelyi creditable that there was a prolonged discussion within the newspaper as to whether to run the story. Responsible journalists know that what they write can wreck the lives of individuals, and that what they write can sometimes affect who wins an election and who wins a war. Disagreement and argument within a newspaper office is healthy. The young sleuths following the scent on the trail may be unaware of some of the things the editors know from their experience.

So it is entirely to the credit of the NYT that they did not rush to print. And it is entirely to their credit, that they confessed when they printed it, that they simply did not know whether McCain had slept with his blonde lobbyist friend. But of course their story did not need that. Because McCain had favoured his friend, who happened to be blonde, female and young. But every day people in positions of power favour their friends, whether they be lovers, business associates or just ‘buddies’.

In a democracy what is important is that these relationships, lover, buddy, old school friend or business associate, are known about. The lover or business associate sometimes is the best person to get the contract.

That is not entirely reprehensible. Because if you know someone well, you know a lot about their strengths and weaknesses. It is only a problem when the powerful person is so emersed with people who think like him, or her, that he, or she, is blinkered about their weaknesses.

So I thank America for the New York Times. Because the New York Times is trying to do what the founding fathers of the American constitution were trying to do, escablish a better world, where they could live their own lives, rather than have their religion dictated by the King, who in those days was George 111, who today is thougt by most of  the academic psychologists to have been clinically mad.

But the liberated American men I peed next to in the lavatories were just like the Rugby club at my own metropolitan university, Birmingham. Like them they were eager to tell me, in our brief  60 second ‘interviews’, that, altthough they were happily married men with kids, they still made it in the sack with the young and gorgeous.

Today, the story in the US is the Presidential election and probable threat of the most serious recession since the 1930s. In the Brittish tabloids and the heavies, thousands of words are devoted to the McCanns, who have been suffering the most appalling human tragedy.

Their daughter has disappeared. No-one knows where she has gone. Maybe the McCain’s were wrong, to think that she was safe, in the holiday they had booked liked many others with a company, which was caring of people’s children. Maybe they were wrong to have gone off to dinner with their friends, even though they were checking on their daughter.

Yesterday, they won £550,000 in the courts because the Express newspapers, had implied that they may even have murdered their own daughter. The Express group has coughed up the money. They have printed their apology. And all the rival newspapers have given masses of coverage to this story.

But of course all the other newspapers also printed the stories that the McCanns MAY be telling lies to cover up the fact they had murdereded their daughter, or killed her accidentally. There is no shred of evidence that this happened. But this possibility was present in all the newspaper coverage, including the ‘heavies’. Because the heavies reported all the wildest accusations of the tabloids. And the other tabloids, were a lot more skilful than the Express in peddling copy which might lose it millions in libel actions.

So the current position is that one newspaper group in the UK, the Express group, has paid up and admitted its guilt in this disgraceful saga sub-standard journalism. But all the rest of them have fuelled the flames, not just the Express, which is owned by Richard Desmond, the man many of the heavies love to describe as ‘ the pornographer’ True. He has made his fortune from perfectly legal, but not very uplifting, porn magazines. But is he therefore better than Rupert Murdoch, who made a huge amount of money by turning what was originally the only serious popular left wing newspaper in Britain, the Daily Herald, into the tabloid Sun, which made millions by publishing every day on Page Three, a picture of a young woman with naked breasts.

(That is not meant to imply that Murdoch is ‘only’ a merchandiser like Desmond of soft porn. He is also a serious newspaperman who endeavours to cover the real news as well. And, a born again Christian, who does not want a world is which young men are lusting after the unattainable favoured dimensions, portrayed on Page Three.’)

But reading the New York Times, after a day spent reading the British press, the message is quite clear. The New York Times is a newspaper of serious journalism. And the British press, the heavies as much as the tabloids, and the television and radio progcrammes as well, are skewed by the agenda set by the tabloids. Porn, rape, crime, etc. Coverage of all the human beings caught up in this daily saga.

But in order to make up its mind as to who governs the country, the readers want to know about what potential governments are going to do about this. And other ratther more complicated matters, like the behaviour of the banks, which has pushed us into what is probably the worst global recession since the 1930s.

The people who will really suffer from this, are the readers of The Sun and the Express papers, who have been seduced into borrowing more than they can afford.

Thank America for the New York Times, which gives detailed coverage to the real issues.

Thank America for the New York Times, which yesterday wrote an editoral on Obama’ s speech on race. I did not read this until after I had written my own blog about the speech. But many of the conclusions they come to are similar to mine.

But they headlined on something that I had not mentioned. Profile in Courage. As soon as I saw it, I realised that it was right. Obama, though he is sometimes portrayed as being ‘inexperienced’ knows that race is an explosive issue. He knows the risks he is taking by talking straightforwardly about being a black in today’s America. And being a ‘loser’ in today’s America, which is the thing that hits the white working class, who cannot afford plasma TV or Bill Gates rather expensive software. Or even tickets for the baseball game.

After eight years of Geogre W Bush, who has tried to impose the vision of a minority of Americans on the majority, and has attempted to impose that minority vision on other countries as well, I would be delighted if Obama wins.

But I would not be unduly worried if Hillary Clinton wins. Because she has a real concern for the poor of America, who don’t vote, although, unlike the original British feminists, do have the right to vote. They don’t chain seven card studapostar dinero paginas internettrucos ganar ruletajuegos apuestas paginas internetsistemas ruletasapuesta dinero portales internetcasino du libanjugar apostar portalruleta sistemas juegolos mejores casinos onlineweb baccaratruleta europea portal internetcasino virtual gratiscasinos netjugar baccarat en lineadescargar juegos de casino gratisayuntamiento madrid casinojuegos flash casinojuego interactivo internetapuesta dinero onlinejugar cartastrucos para casino empirecasino villajoyosajack black en linea gratisjuego tragaperrascasino portales internetruleta internetcasino on net downloadruleta pagina webjugar interactivo portalcasino virtual portal websistemas ganar ruletaganar dinero real portalescomo ganar en la ruletaruleta portal webjugar gratisganar dinero real portales webcasino internacional paginas internetcasino virtual paginas webcasinos internacionales paginas internetmaquinas tragaperras portalvideo poker paginas webapuesta portales internetjuego gratis la ruletaplay free baccaratjuego instantaneo portal internetcasino juegosroulette paginas webjuegos seguros paginas internetjugar cartas linea themselves to the railings because they feel whatever they do is not going to make much difference.

Obama’s courage is evidenced by the fact that he not only did not repudiate his friend and mentor, Jerimiah Wright, he defended him, when the media was after his head. In my terms he showed himself as a person of integrity. But he took the stand in full awareress that Wright is an eary target for the Clinton supporters and an even easier target for the Republicans.

At this stage of the match, my preference is for Obama as the next President, but I would be quite happy with Hillary Clinton, who has spent years trying to get better health care for poor Americans. On top of all her other relevant experience.

And I would not be unhappy with John McCain. As the New York Times has demonstrated he is not quite as whiter than white as his supporters would have us believe. But he is quite clearly a man of integrity. George W, I have always thought, was led in to the Iraq war, by his more experienced and assertive associates, including the vice President, Dick Cheney, who has has just surfaced, after a bout of ill health, to try and show that the Iraq war, was a triumph not a disasster.

McCain will not be as gung ho as Cheney, because he knows, as Cheney does not, the reality of war. He will not lightly order that the US use its huge stockile of missiles to kill those who oppose them, and a bunch of ordinary civilians who are standing next to the people the US wants to kill.

Because McCain, like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, believe in the American dream.

That is possible to establish a world which is not as bad as that dictated by the now ‘proven’ mad English King, George 111.

These are the kind of things the New York Times tells its readers about. Meanwhile the British press follows the tabloid agenda.

Who is Prince William going to marry? Who are the girl friends of his younger brother, Harry? As if it matters. Because the British Prime Minister listens to the Queen, because of British courtesy. But in deciding policy the imperatives for current British Prime Ministers, are Presidents of the US and the bosses of multi-national companies.

The reality is that we no longer rule the world. And although the Queen is still the religious boss, the adherents of her church are a tiny minority. Outnumbered by all those Roman Catholics, the old Irish, but many incomers from all parts of Europe. And the Muslims, refugees from Uganda, and more recent typrannies. And the slowly growing multitude who think that God was invented by man, and that maybe he was not as all powerful as his supporters would like to think.