Bill Moyers essay

Parent Cafe
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<p>Zoosermom,
It wasn’t meant to push buttons - it was sarcastic because I grow weary of the liberal media tag - in essence that is all this thread has become, a dismissal of Moyers essay by labeling him as a liberal with an agenda. The mantra you’ve adopted probably started with Newt Gingrich in the nineties, maybe even as far back as Reagan - I don’t know. I believe it has been shown to be false by various research institutions. But as long as you keep saying it, the idea will be reinforced till it’s accepted as truth. </p>

<p>ColoradoMom,
Good point but I still find it difficult to believe. I will have to do some research on O’Reilly’s audience.</p>

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<p>"But as long as you keep saying it, the idea will be reinforced till it’s accepted as truth. "</p>

<p>It is the truth, but YOU can keep saying it’s not until you believe it because you’ll be one of a very few.
What I don’t understand is the refusal by so many liberals to acknowledge their goals and agenda. It’s absolutely fine (excellent, even) to have a political philosophy that you espouse and wish to advance.</p>

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<p>I particularly liked this part of Moyers’ essay:
“Behold the double standard: John McCain sought out the endorsement of John Hagee, the war-mongering, Catholic-bashing Texas preacher, who said the people of New Orleans got what they deserved for their sins. But no one suggests McCain shares Hagee’s delusions or thinks AIDS is God’s punishment for homosexuality. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of a foreign head of state and asked God to remove Supreme Court Justices, yet he remains a force in the Republican religious right. After 9/11, Jerry Falwell said the attack was God’s judgment on America for having been driven out of our schools and the public square, but when McCain goes after the endorsement of the preacher he once condemned as an agent of intolerance, the press gives him a pass. Jon Stewart recently played tape from the Nixon White House in which Billy Graham talks in the Oval Office about how he has friends who are Jewish, but he knows in his heart that they are undermining America. This is crazy and wrong — white preachers are given leeway in politics that others aren’t.”</p>

<p>And for those who hadn’t heard before about the Tuskegee Experiment:
"For forty years between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) conducted an experiment on 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis. These men, for the most part illiterate sharecroppers from one of the poorest counties in Alabama, were never told what disease they were suffering from or of its seriousness. Informed that they were being treated for “bad blood,” their doctors had no intention of curing them of syphilis at all.</p>

<p>The data for the experiment was to be collected from autopsies of the men, and they were thus deliberately left to degenerate under the ravages of tertiary syphilis—which can include tumors, heart disease, paralysis, blindness, insanity, and death. “As I see it,” one of the doctors involved explained, “we have no further interest in these patients until they die.”</p>

<p>Using Human Beings as Laboratory Animals
The true nature of the experiment had to be kept from the subjects to ensure their cooperation. The sharecroppers’ grossly disadvantaged lot in life made them easy to manipulate. Pleased at the prospect of free medical care —almost none of them had ever seen a doctor before— these unsophisticated and trusting men became the pawns in what James Jones, author of the excellent history on the subject, Bad Blood, identified as “the longest non-therapeutic experiment on human beings in medical history.”"
[The</a> Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment](<a href=“http://www.tuskegee.edu/Global/Story.asp?s=1207586]The”>http://www.tuskegee.edu/Global/Story.asp?s=1207586)</p>

<p>For those who would be interested in learning more about America’s shameful history of conducting medical experiments on nonconsenting black people, Harriet Washington’s recent book, “Medical Apartheid” is a good source.</p>

<p>"Although medical experimentation with human subjects has historically involved vulnerable groups, including children, the poor and the institutionalized, Washington enumerates how black Americans have disproportionately borne the burden of the most invasive, inhumane and perilous medical investigations, from the era of slavery to the present day. (This burden has become global in the last few decades.) In 1855, John “Fed” Brown, an escaped slave, recalled that the doctor to whom he was indentured produced painful blisters on his body in order to observe “how deep my black skin went.” This study had no therapeutic value. Rather, fascination with the outward appearance of African Americans, whose differences from whites were thought to be more than skin deep, was a significant impulse driving such medical trials.</p>

<p>Shielding whites from excruciating experimental procedures also proved a powerful motivation. J. Marion Sims, a leading 19th-century physician and former president of the American Medical Association, developed many of his gynecological treatments through experiments on slave women who were not granted the comfort of anesthesia. Sims’s legacy is Janus-faced; he was pitiless with non-consenting research subjects, yet he was among the first doctors of the modern era to emphasize women’s health. Other researchers were more guilty of blind ambition than racist intent. Several African Americans, including such as Eunice Rivers, the nurse-steward of the Tuskegee study, served as liaisons between scientists and research subjects.</p>

<p>The infringement of black Americans’ rights to their own bodies in the name of medical science continued throughout the 20th century. In 1945, Ebb Cade, an African American trucker being treated for injuries received in an accident in Tennessee, was surreptitiously placed without his consent into a radiation experiment sponsored by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. Black Floridians were deliberately exposed to swarms of mosquitoes carrying yellow fever and other diseases in experiments conducted by the Army and the CIA in the early 1950s. Throughout the 1950s and '60s, black inmates at Philadelphia’s Holmesburg Prison were used as research subjects by a University of Pennsylvania dermatologist testing pharmaceuticals and personal hygiene products; some of these subjects report pain and disfiguration even now. During the 1960s and '70s, black boys were subjected to sometimes paralyzing neurosurgery by a University of Mississippi researcher who believed brain pathology to be the root of the children’s supposed hyperactive behavior. In the 1990s, African American youths in New York were injected with Fenfluramine – half of the deadly, discontinued weight loss drug Fen-Phen – by Columbia researchers investigating a hypothesis about the genetic origins of violence."
[Amazon.com:</a> Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present: Harriet A. Washington: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Medical-Apartheid-Experimentation-Americans-Colonial/dp/0385509936]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Medical-Apartheid-Experimentation-Americans-Colonial/dp/0385509936)</p>

<p>Once one becomes familiar with America’s history of medical research on African Americans, Jeremiah Wright doesn’t seem totally wakko to think that AIDS is some kind of government conspiracy against blacks.</p>

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<p>"
Once one becomes familiar with America’s history of medical research on African Americans, Jeremiah Wright doesn’t seem totally wakko to think that AIDS is some kind of government conspiracy against blacks."</p>

<p>I’m genuinely curious as to whether he actually does believe that.</p>

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<p>Thank you so much Northstarmom. I was not aware of the medical experiments till I read the Moyers essay - the Aids conspiracy did sound pretty wacky till I read that excerpt.</p>

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<p>OH PLease. It IS wacky nonsense. Taking events half a century and more as if they were today and making grand claims based on that is nonsense and fear mongering. Just a few centuries ago England was still drawing and quartering. We have made some progress.</p>

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<p>Barrons,
Would you say the same thing to Holocaust survivors?</p>

<p>Of course we’ve made progress but that doesn’t mean the effects of slavery and discrimination have been wiped clean.</p>

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<p>From a review on “The Hidden Costs of Being African American,” by Thomas Shapiro, a Brandeis professor.</p>

<p>"How can disadvantage persist so long after most laws, minds and practices have changed? Thomas M. Shapiro argues in this sober and authoritative book that we should look to disparities of wealth for the answer. Whites are wealthier than African Americans, and whites’ wealth advantage is much bigger than their advantages in either income or education (the point of Shapiro’s earlier study, Black Wealth/White Wealth, co-authored with Melvin Oliver). Whites start out ahead because they inherit more from their parents, and America’s racially segregated housing markets boost whites’ home equities, while depressing those of African-American families. Shapiro, a professor of sociology at Brandeis, takes readers through the implications of these inequities and concludes that African Americans will not gain significant ground in the wealth divide until inheritance and housing policies change.</p>

<p>Wealth is the sum of the important assets a person or family owns – home equity, pension funds, savings accounts and investments. Wealth is better than income because it is durable. People use income to meet daily expenses, whereas wealth accumulates. People who have wealth tap it only to deal with emergencies or to take advantage of opportunities – opportunities that usually build more wealth.</p>

<p>Wealth passes down from generation to generation. The main reason African Americans are currently worse off than whites, according to Shapiro, is that today’s African Americans inherited less wealth from their parents than today’s whites did. It is not hard to see why: The generation of African Americans now passed away accumulated less wealth because discrimination in their day kept most of them poor and denied them opportunities other Americans enjoyed.</p>

<p>The disparity in wealth not only persists, it mushrooms. Without a cushion of inherited wealth, emergencies hit harder, and people who have no nest egg have to let opportunities pass by. Because of the wealth deficit, African Americans find themselves more vulnerable to shocks and less able to capitalize on breaks than whites with the same income. So the next generation will inherit less, too. The wealth gap will not close anytime soon.</p>

<p>Shapiro blends statistical analysis and case studies of selected families in Boston, St. Louis and Los Angeles, showing the relative importance of wealth and the disparities in inheritance by class and race. He also supplies some individual case studies, which give depth and humanity to the numbers.</p>

<p>Wealth begins at home. A home-equity loan can see a family through a spell of unemployment or leverage an investment. Millions of middle-class Americans use tax-deductible home-equity loans to pay for their children’s educations. Others buy rental property.</p>

<p>Because neighborhoods are racially segregated, African Americans’ homes do not grow in value as fast as whites’ homes do. Shapiro calculates that housing segregation costs African Americans tens of thousands of dollars in home equity. Homebuyers look for amenities commonly found in predominantly white neighborhoods. They pay extra for parks, convenient shopping and attractive views. Parents pay huge premiums for what they perceive to be good schools. Few parents can judge schools objectively. Instead, they use easy-to-observe markers, including the race of the students. These preferences raise the costs that first-time homebuyers face when they attempt to buy houses in those mostly white neighborhoods. Economic theory implies that if whites continue to waste money on irrational prejudices like this, market forces will eventually undo the racial disparity in wealth. But the experience of the last 50 years suggests otherwise. Inequality has grown because each new generation has been willing to pay a higher premium for these amenities. The market doesn’t punish discrimination; it rewards it.</p>

<p>Whites fail to see any injustice in these differences. "
[Amazon.com:</a> The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality: Thomas M. Shapiro: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195181387/ref=pd_luc_0000207914243750195181387]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195181387/ref=pd_luc_0000207914243750195181387)</p>

<p>My own experience is that the above is true. I have white friends from similar backgrounds (i.e. they had dads who were professionals), who have inherited lots of money much of which came from the homes that their parents had. </p>

<p>My father was a dentist, but due to restrictive covenants against blacks buying property in the most desireable areas of the Upstate NY area where I grew up in the 1950s, our home was located down the street from the city dump, and my father’s office was located in a very deteriorated neighborhood.</p>

<p>The property didn’t appreciate enough for my parents to do things like give me large financial gifts to buy my first house (by comparison, a grad school classmate’s dad gave him $50 k back in the early 1980s to buy his first house). </p>

<p>I have white friends whose parents even were working class who were able to help my friends by giving them generous financial gifts that helped friends buy houses in places that appreciated very well, pay for private schools for their kids, send their kids to college with no loans, etc.</p>

<p>The GI Bill boosted many whites into middle class, and the benefits have been passed on to their kids. However, the then legal discrimination prevented black people from getting many lucrative jobs and educational opportunities.</p>

<p>For instance, H’s father, who served in WWII, used the GI bill to get training as an electrician, but wasn’t able to gain entrance into the unions in Chicago because he was black. He also couldn’t buy in some neighborhoods because he was black. </p>

<p>He already had moved from W. Virginia to Chicago to increase the opportunities for himself. </p>

<p>People who are ignorant about U.S. history often compare African Amerians with people who immigrate here and turn their lives around. There are many black Americans who moved in the U.S. to expand opportunities for themselves, but due to racism were not able to achieve as much as whites who immigrated here even though the blacks worked just as hard.</p>

<p>The legacy of legal discrimination still is affecting black families and their options.</p>

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<p>I take the medical experiments very seriously as a stain on our national conscience, but I do think it’s important to get the facts right. I must take exception with the comments this week of the great historian, Rosie O’Donnell, in which she stated that the government “gave” syphillis to black men. That’s factually untrue. What is true is that the disease was not treated long past the time when treatment was possible. Although there are some physicians who say that the subjects were chosen because they suffered from advanced syphillis that wouldn’t have responded to penicillin at the point at which it became available. In any case, they were used as guinea pigs and never told. That is egregious any way you look at it. But to say that we haven’t made progress is egregious as well.</p>

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<p>Northstarmom, Thank you for the information on those abominable experiments on black people. I knew, of course, about the Tuskeegee study, but I hadn’t been aware of the others. </p>

<p>I am also intrigued by the information on causes of wealth disparity. The arguments make perfect sense. I am going to read the book you cited.</p>

<p>Thank you, also, for the personal information. I agree completely. I am white, from a working-class family with 10 kids, and I received absolutely no financial help from my parents above basic support during childhood and tuition ($40/year for an entire family!) to parochial schools. I have not received one penny after age 17; college and grad school were funded by scholarships and I have always worked. But our family is comfortable because my husband did receive an early, subtantial financial gift which allowed us to buy a house very early. Riding the real estate boom has made all the difference for us. Even though we have a reasonably high income from our two jobs, and we are very conservative about spending and aggressive with saving, things would be very different if his situation had been the same as mine.</p>

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<p>Will anyone who got a significant amount of money from their parents raise their hands? Anyone, Bueller??</p>

<p>A cheap excuse for failure.</p>

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<p>"Will anyone who got a significant amount of money from their parents raise their hands? Anyone, Bueller??</p>

<p>A cheap excuse for failure."</p>

<p>I have mixed feeelings on this. My siblings each received a huge amount of money that I didn’t, and there was a vast difference between us. After a while, though, their years of living large mine of living small balanced things out somewhat. But I do think it was a major leg up that could be life changing for generations. At least them and their kids.</p>

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<p>Where’s Mini to tell us how few wealthy people there are in the US. The fact is most white people don’t get much either. I doubt that even 5% get enough to be life changing.</p>

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<p>“ColoradoMom,
Good point but I still find it difficult to believe. I will have to do some research on O’Reilly’s audience.”</p>

<p>Why would you find it hard to believe? I’m honestly not being snarky or presumptuous, but I would respectfully contend that you feel this way because O’Reilly’s particular slant in his political commentary isn’t your cup of tea. Thus, it would be hard to see his show as being anything close to one in which you WOULD find to be “high-information.”</p>

<p>I find The O’Reilly Factor to be middle-to-high information, and frequently entertaining. He grates on my nerves sometimes and, as an attorney, he bothers the CRAP out of me when he starts to make some legal conclusion totally unfounded in ANY form of American legal jurisprudence. The guy never went to law school, and certainly never stayed in a Holiday Inn next to one!! I try and weigh the good and the bad in his presentation, which I guess is the best that any of us can do.</p>

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<p>coloradomom,
It has nothing to do with O’Reilly’s slant on the news. It has to do with a tone and the affect(okay grammar nazis which one is it) pundits have on the news and general information. I’m critical of most news and am always spotting bias one way or the other whether it’s Fox or not. I like Olberman but I don’t care for his worst person in the world segment - it brings a level of snarkiness to political exchange that I think is destructive. And now since we’re back onto news bias as a subject, I’ll cite the Pew study that I referred to earlier and then I’ll go find the info about O’Reilly. Another study showed that Fox news viewers were also less informed than all other news shows - I’ve cited it before. </p>

<p>Barrons,
My husband nor I inherited any money either and I don’t necessarily agree with the disparity of inheritance theory that Northstarmom proposed but to expect the scars of slavery and discrimination to be healed completely in 50 years is ludicrous.</p>

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<p>I have worked with and for a fair number of successful black people. None came from rich families but all valued education and went to decent colleges. The system works for those who choose to use it. Will you always get the best job–maybe not. But there are plenty of decent jobs out there for those willing to do what it takes. Take school seriously, go to college, and take work seriously.</p>

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<p>I’m not sure who did the study - it mentions it in the link. This is from 1998. Every point I made is supported in this study and I hadn’t even read this particular one before. The idea of a corporate media is supported in the last paragraph. </p>

<p>"The conservative critique of the news media rests on two general propositions: (1) journalists’ views are to the left of the public, and (2) journalists frame news content in a way that accentuates these left perspectives. Previous research has revealed persuasive evidence against the latter claim, but the validity of the former claim has often been taken for granted. This research project examined the supposed left orientation of media personnel by surveying Washington-based journalists who cover national politics and/or economic policy at US outlets.</p>

<p>The findings include:</p>

<h1>On select issues from corporate power and trade to Social Security and Medicare to health care and taxes, journalists are actually more conservative than the general public.</h1>

<h1>Journalists are mostly centrist in their political orientation.</h1>

<h1>The minority of journalists who do not identify with the “center” are more likely to identify with the “right” when it comes to economic issues and to identify with the “left” when it comes to social issues.</h1>

<h1>Journalists report that “business-oriented news outlets” and “major daily newspapers” provide the highest quality coverage of economic policy issues, while “broadcast network TV news” and “cable news services” provide the worst.</h1>

<p>I. INTRODUCTION</p>

<p>The idea that the mainstream media have a “liberal bias” has long been conventional wisdom. At various times, public figures from Richard Nixon to Newt Gingrich have all taken refuge in the claim that the “liberal” media were out to get them. A legion of conservative talk show hosts, pundits and media-watch groups pound away at the idea that the media exhibit an inherently “liberal” tilt. But the assertion is based on remarkably little evidence and is repeatedly made in the face of contradictory facts.</p>

<p>In particular, the conservative critique of the news media rests on two general propositions: (1) journalists’ views are to the left of the public, and (2) journalists frame news content in a way that accentuates these left perspectives. Researchers and analysts have discovered persuasive evidence against the latter claim. Content analyses of the news media have, at a minimum, shown the absence of any such systematic liberal/left tilt; some studies have found a remarkably predictable press usually reflecting the narrow range of views of those in positions of power, as well as a spectrum of expert opinion that tilts toward the right.</p>

<p>But even some progressives have been willing to cede to conservatives the first point: that journalists’ views are to the left of the public. Professionals in general, they observe, often have “liberal” leanings on social issues and there is no reason to expect journalists to be any different. However, they have also argued convincingly that the norms of “objective journalism” and the powerful corporate interests which own and sponsor the news media ensure that news content never strays too far, for too long, from protecting the status quo. You don’t understand the corporate ideology of General Motors by studying the personal beliefs of the assembly-line workers, the argument goes. Ideological orientation is introduced and enforced by those high in the organizational hierarchy who have the power to hire and fire, to reward and punish. Working journalists, despite their sometimes high visibility, usually do not call the shots in the nation’s media corporations. (The documentary “Fear and Favor in the Newsroom” provides vivid illustrations of this situation.) Consequently, the private views of individual journalists often matter little.</p>

<p>[Examining</a> the “Liberal Media” Claim](<a href=“http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2447]Examining”>http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2447)</p>

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<p>Coloradomom,
You were correct about O’Reilly - I stand corrected. Here is a link to the Pew research that evaluated news viewership by education, age and knowledge which is quantified by how much news the viewers watch. The info is about half way down the page. There are higher numbers though for news organizations like PBS and he does have a lower average of College educated viewers. </p>

<p>[Section</a> 4: Audience Segments: Online Papers Modestly Boost Newspaper Readership](<a href=“http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=1068]Section”>http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?PageID=1068)</p>

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<p>Lizschup, FAIR is a liberal group. Not non-partisan, not bipartisan. It’s a lefty group. It’s like citing Code Pink as a source for military information.</p>

<p>“You were correct about O’Reilly - I stand corrected.”</p>

<p>I may not agree with you , but I sure do respect and admire your style.</p>

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<p>Zoosermom,
Thanks for the compliment. I don’t know if you are right though about FAIR - they are equal opportunity critics of all sources of news including the NYTimes.
The study was done in conjuction with the Virginia Commonwealth University (is that UVA?)</p>