[lbo-talk] CounterPunch or Weekly Standard?

Carl G. Estabrook galliher at illinois.edu
Tue Apr 9 13:05:49 PDT 2013


Though this be madness, yet there is a method in it. They publish things that the editors don't agree with, as I know personally, and don't publish some things that they're sent, as I also know personally. That sounds like a fairly open process of editorial judgment, which I think should be applauded even when I don't entirely agree with the results.

And it avoids the pall of (neo)liberal orthodoxy, of which there are many journalistic examples, e.g.,

Noam Chomsky: "I should say that the place where I am most feared and despised is probably in left liberal intellectual circles. If you want to see a graphic indication of this, take a look at one of my favorite journal covers, which is framed and posted right outside my door. It’s the more or less official journal of left liberal intellectuals, The American Prospect, and the cover depicts the terrible circumstances in which they try to survive – the enormous forces that are virtually destroying them.

"In the picture, two figures are depicted; two faces, sneering and angry. On one side is Dick Cheney and the Pentagon, on the other side is me. The left liberal intellectuals are caught between these two huge forces. This depiction is indicative of the paranoia and concern that there might be some small break in orthodoxy. The liberal intellectuals (and not just in the United States) are typically the guardians at the gates: we’ll go this far, but not one millimeter farther; and it’s terrifying to think that somebody might go a millimeter farther. This extends throughout the major media too. So, yes, the United States is a very free country, in fact it’s the freest country in the world. I don’t think freedom of speech, for example, is protected anywhere in the world as much as it is here. But it’s a very managed society, it’s a business-run society, carefully managed, with strict doctrinal requirements and no deviation tolerated – this would be too dangerous..." [vnavarro.org, 2008].

--CGE

On Apr 9, 2013, at 2:00 PM, turbulo at aol.com wrote:


> Carl Estabrook wrote:
>
> You mean they believe in discussion rather than orthodoxy?! How quaint.
>
> ----------
>
> And how quaintly liberal and open-minded of you! As if this neoliberal, anti-worker sludge
> were not already gushing forth from a million sewers! Yet another outlet in a supposedly
> leftwing journal is just what the world needs! Have leftists lost all capacity for indignation?
> (And, as a matter of fact, CounterPunch doesn't believe in discussion all that much. Where is its
> letters column? Where is the piece I wrote in 2006 refuting Vicente Navarro's Stalinist
> narrative of the Spanish Civil War? (It wasn't rejected for literary reasons.) Or Tony Greenstein's
> more recent protests against CP's ongoing publication of articles by Israel Shamir and
> Gilad Atzmon, two certifiable Jewish anti-Semites? CP publishes capriciously.
>
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