[NLA] Media Alert

Thu Nov 14 00:22:26 EST 2002

On Tue, 12 Nov 2002 22:04:25 EST KathleenBombach at aol.com writes:
>
>
>Tonight, Chris Matthews, on his signature TV show, Hardball on MSNBC, 
>stated that bilingual education is a joke and that politicians who use 
>Spanish are pandering to Hispanics who come here and want to insulate
themselves 
>and not learn English. 
>
>I admit I was surprised.
>
>If you find this objectionable, email Matthews at msnbc.com.

Kathleen and others,

Unfortunately, I'm not surprised.  These conservative talk shows are
insidious.  About a week back Chris Matthews was on a talk program headed
by this newer character, Nachman.  They bantered back and forth how
liberals like people in general, but don't like people in the concrete,
whereas, Ronald Reagan (the example they used) always had a friendly word
for the little guy.  That discourse (if you will), was preceded by
another trashing of "liberal elites" from the East coast and California,
who are so out of touch with the hard working mainstream, while of
course, conservatives like Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, I suppose, rub
elbows with the working class folk all the time.  

If this was simply two guys talking informally at the local bar, that
would be one thing, but instead, their conversation was being overheard
by millions of people on one of the major prime time cable news programs.
 And it's not as if there's any balance there as if you'll see a
profusion of left wingers also getting fair access to these airwaves.

Most recently, that is tonight, the obnoxious Bill O'Reilley is in his
second day of bashing the liberal Bill Moyers.  Not that the substance of
any of Moyer's ideas get discussed on the "fair and balanced" television
station, which is basically a wing of the Republic Party, just character
assassination and bullying.  That's also how one of the major opponents
of Bush's impending war, Scott Ritter was treated on that same program
some time back--O'Reilley and one of his ideological cronies bashing
Ritter's character while refusing to discuss the substance of Ritter's
informed opposition to Bush''s dubious war-leaning policy

It is this bullying by right wing television which has led to much of the
public support for the President's war posturing as well as for the
Republican victory in Congress last week.  So, since we don't really have
a free press in our shrinking marketplace of ideas dominated by corporate
elites and their Republican-leaning allies, it does not surprise me that
Chris Matthews has made a rhetorical attack against bi-lingual education.
 I would have been surprised if he didn't.

George Demetrion
sophocles5 at juno.com
>
>kathleen Bombach
>
>--part1_10c.1a729a3b.2b031b39_boundary
>Content-Type: text/html; charset="US-ASCII"
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
>
><HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><FONT  SIZE=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" 
>FACE="Arial" LANG="0">Tonight, Chris Matthews, on his signature TV 
>show, Hardball on MSNBC, stated that bilingual education is a joke and 
>that politicians who use Spanish are pandering to Hispanics who come 
>here and want to insulate themselves and not learn English. <BR>
><BR>
>I admit I was surprised.<BR>
><BR>
>If you find this objectionable, email Matthews at msnbc.com.<BR>
><BR>
>kathleen Bombach</FONT></HTML>
>
>--part1_10c.1a729a3b.2b031b39_boundary--
>_______________________________________________
>NLA mailing list: NLA at lists.literacytent.org
>http://lists.literacytent.org/mailman/listinfo/nla
>LiteracyTent: web hosting, news, community and goodies for literacy
>http://literacytent.org
>

________________________________________________________________
Sign Up for Juno Platinum Internet Access Today
Only $9.95 per month!
Visit www.juno.com
_______________________________________________
NLA mailing list: NLA at lists.literacytent.org
http://lists.literacytent.org/mailman/listinfo/nla
LiteracyTent: web hosting, news, community and goodies for literacy
http://literacytent.org