Upton Sinclair, The Brass Check

Dennis Perrin dperrin at comcast.net
Thu May 2 06:21:47 PDT 2002



> Well, it's been a while since The Black Dwarf or Cobbett were important to
> the working class. Two generations ago we had Izzy Stone. Now we have Doug
> Henwood. But in fact the Internet offers the nearest thing to that old
> flood.


> jks

I agree. And since we're dating things, I wonder how many meat packers, butcher shop workers and burger flippers now read Sinclair's "The Jungle", or, to keep it current, have read "Fast Food Nation"?

Years ago, after I left FAIR, I was invited back to "Counterspin" to debate Newsday's Marvin Kitman about government attempts to curtail what it saw as the excesses of entertainment media. I said then that, given the present make-up of the government, I much preferred the corporate model as it is amoral and concerned solely with market share. The thought of Janet Reno, among others, dictating their concepts of "art" and "entertainment" was, and remains, anathema. In that area of modern communication, there's more freedom to be profane with mega-corps in control. Well, this view practically choked the host, my ex-colleague Laura Flanders, not to mention a few others over at the FAIR office. I'm happy to see it adopted at LBO Talk.

DP



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