Avuncular American

Man Of the 20th Century, Walter Cronkite

When legendary BBC/PBS commentator Alistair Cooke died a few years ago, it was like losing your grandfather, whose wisdom you would now have to do without.  Now we've lost Walter Cronkite, who told us every night "And that's the way it is."  Great was the impact of these authoritative chroniclers of the Twentieth Century.

Cronkite, who hosted a weekly documentary series "The 20th Century" as well as two decades' worth of the evening news for CBS, epitomized the best of broadcast journalism.  His presence was reassuring, even if the news he was relating was of the most jarring sort: war (Vietnam), assassination (the Kennedys, MLK), or revolution (Iran, and the ensuing hostage crisis).

In TPM, David Kurtz provides a touching remembrance of a childhood influenced by this father figure.

The passing of Walter Cronkite also reminds us of the demise of The News, as in "did you see The News last night?"  It was mainly a reference to Cronkite's CBS Evening News, and it invariably included reports from a string of American correspondents positioned across the globe.

Cronkite and his international team are now gone, replaced by pretty boy (or girl) anchors who rely on technicians whose prowess with pixels cannot patch over the lack of depth or analysis.  Cronkite had an amazing team of journalists, reporters like him who had covered World War II with Edward R. Murrow: men like Eric Severeid, who died in 1992, and Richard C. Hottelet, whose work had landed him in a Nazi jail.  Cronkite and his colleagues were literate, homespun, authoritative, and must have been appalled in ensuing years by the downward spiral of TV "journalism" that is embodied by the likes of Fox News.

Readers in the US will be able to watch the CBS tribute, "That's The Way It Was: Remembering Walter Cronkite" (image), tomorrow Sunday 19 July at 7:00 PM EST; for the rest of us, they have put up a nice page of text and video here.

Walter Cronkite, the original "avuncular American."

Charles Bowden, Chronicler of Mexico's Drug War

"Gunmen Boldly Attack Federal Forces In Mexico," reads the AP article after yesterday's multi-city attacks.  Reminded me of two essential-reading articles by American journalist Charles Bowden.  If you want to learn about Mexican realities, you can't find a better source.

I don't purport to know much about Mexico, other than this: it is the world's most populous Spanish-speaking country, and its 100 million + people share a border with the United States that stretches for more than 3,000 kilometers.

And this: "In 2008, more than 6,000 Mexicans died in the drug violence, a larger loss than the United States has endured during the entire Iraq War."

The quote is from Charles Bowden's article in the July/August issue of Mother Jones, "We Bring Fear."  Nothing tops its portrayal of an honest Mexican journalist who had to flee from the Mexican Army in fear for his life.

Bowden is a master of suspense, of making you care for his subject.  "We Bring Fear" makes the reader share the fear of Emilio Gutiérrez Soto, who has crossed the Army by writing stories about the utter impunity with which it carries out its work.  And the matter of the Army's complicity in the very drug trade that it has been charged to fight.

Read Bowden's article to see if Gutiérrez Soto obtains asylum in the US, and the rest of MoJo for its "Totally Wasted" issue devoted to the never-ending War On Drugs.

For a look inside Mexico's drug cartels, Bowden's "The Sicario: A Juarez Hit Man Speaks" in the May Harper's is riveting reading.

The term sicario goes back to Roman Palestine, where a Jewish sect, the Sicarii, used concealed daggers (sicae) in their murders of Romans and their supporters.

There's nothing "patriotic" in the work of the modern Mexican sicario: just dealing out death, in all of its most horrid forms, to those who fall afoul of the cartel.  Oh yes: Bowden's repentant sicario is a policeman, whose work for the cartel was indistinguishable from that of his day job as a cop.

Bowden's reporting from the field ("Juarez is a death machine") is nothing less than heroic, and he is an acknowledged expert on the war on drugs and undocumented migrants.  He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

With the border - a few miles south of Tucson - as porous as it is, I hope for his sake that he lives in gated community.  Except, as we learned from the Mexican/Uruguayan film La Zona, walls don't afford protection when the barrio is everywhere.

(Map: Mapas-de-Mexico.com)

The News From America

Tomorrow is the official Independence Day holiday, but today is a Federal holiday in the U.S.  Happy Fourth of July!  If you're in New York, you can even visit the crown of the Statue of Liberty, closed since September 11, 2001.  (photo, National Park Service).

But most of the attention instead appears to be focused on the Pacific coast, where what has to be the world's largest concentration of journalists and hysterical sycophants since the death of Lady Di has gathered to follow the minutiae surrounding Michael Jackson's sudden demise. 

Writer James Howard Kunstler sees disturbing parallels between the late Jackson and his country ("bankrupt," "has-been"), as the State of California's travails remind us.  But will the thousands of info-tainment reporters camped outside Neverland use some of their Jackson down-time to cover the story behind California's fiscal crisis?  Don't count on it.  The audiences back home which lap up every detail about Jackson might be bored by a bit of real reporting about real people in the US.

Like the kind pictured standing behind California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger as he does battle with budget and banks.  As Jennifer Steinhauer reported for the New York Times,

It was unclear whether the i.o.u.’s, known as warrants, would be accepted by all of the banks in California, which were caught off guard by the move and seemed hesitant to entrust the state to repay the them — at an interest rate of 3.75 percent — in October, as promised.

Now, these would be the same banks that themselves have been receiving billions in government bailout money, some of which comes from those California taxpayers pictured behind the Governor.

I.O.U.s - reminds you of that wonderful rebranding of bailed-out "AIG" into "AIU" (what were they thinking?) - and the haughty attitude of banks in general were on my mind this morning as I sat in a stifling lobby marveling at the (lone) teller behind the glass of her air conditioned space.  On the wall behind her was a poster asking people why - if they owned a computer - they didn't conduct their banking business over the internet?

As it happened, the transaction I needed to accomplish couldn't be done either over the web or at the ATMs arrayed outside this branch.  Otherwise I can assure you I wouldn't have sat a minute more in that sauna.  But why do we have banks?  Have they completely forgotten where their money comes from?  But I digress, sort of.

Back to the US.  On July 4, 1776, representatives of the thirteen colonies signed the Declaration of Independence and set off the process that led to the founding of the United States of America.  They had had it with the "long train of abuses and usurpations" by a distant ruler.

California has often been a trend setter or harbinger for things good and bad.  If banks start biting the hand - government - that feeds them, then it won't be long before taxpayers will act on the resentment against the financial class that has been building up after bailouts, bonuses, Madoff, Stanford...

California banks: better take those State warrants, if you know what's good for you.  Remember who issues your license.  Hint: "I'll be back."

Blind Bloviators: Comedic CNBC + MoJo Hits WSJ

If you haven't seen the Daily Show's Jon Stewart giving it good to CNBC "financial commentator" (that's a bit like calling Bernie Madoff a "banker") Jim Cramer, then here is the extended version (unexpurgated).  It's full of quotable stuff, but my favorite is Cramer's explanation of why CNBC has so much junk financial talk on tape, providing Daily Show editors with a gold mine: "We've got 17 hours of live TV to do" daily.

To which Stewart replies, "Maybe you should cut down on that..."  Which goes to the heart of the problem of TV "news" or, more accurately, infotainment.  CNBC has to say something during those 17 hours of live (presumably they are not better informed during the remaining 7 hours of taped material).  And that's just one network.  Can you imagine the total amount of drivel that America's hundreds of cable channels must churn out daily?

It used to be "the news," as in "did you see the news last night?"  There was CBS in pride of place, followed in order of reputation by NBC and ABC.  Only later did PBS come along.

Less, in the case of TV news, was more: in the sixties and seventies, Americans getting their information from one of the networks could count on a rich mix of reports from foreign correspondents, in-depth investigative reporting, and the occasional prime-time documentary.  Now you have to fork out upwards of $10 to see "Why We Fight" or "SiCKO" at the local multiplex, when the networks used to do stuff almost as good, and all you had to do was watch their commercials from the comfort of your sofa.

And don't get me started on the disappearance of American correspondents from points beyond the continental shelf.

Enter MoJo - Mother Jones, which is making a name for itself for the quality of its investigative reporting - to take on the print media.  Actually, MoJo beat the Daily Show by a couple of months in its castigation of the princes of print financial reporting.  In "Buying the Bull: How could 9,000 business reporters blow the biggest story of their beat?" former WSJ reporter Dean Starkman's ire is no less heartfelt than Jon Stewart's.  But he goes deeper:

but it wasn't just the media abdicating their watchdog role: Just as financial news outlets were weakening, regulators were also abandoning the field, leaving business reporters starved of the investigative leads they rely on. Back in the 1980s, a great deal of tough Wall Street coverage was driven by the aggressive work of prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission (sec). But then came the Clinton-era push toward deregulation that reached its extremes during the Bush administration as the federal government unceremoniously pulled the finance cops off the beat. For a time, Eliot Spitzer filled the void with his aggressive prosecution of Wall Street misdeeds, but for the most part, covering financial corruption without regulators was like trying to clap with one hand.

Starkman then provides some amazing examples of just how lax the Bush Administration had gotten in its fiduciary responsibilities: "Since 2002 the ftc has brought no major consumer lending cases. Zero. The last such case brought by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, against Providian National Bank, came in 2000."  That's it.  No wonder financial journalists weren't getting the leads. He quotes Jonathan Weil, who helped break the Enron story, who wrote in the waning days of the Bush era:

"Is there anybody left in the government with a pulse? Where's the yellow police tape? How about a cease-and-desist order to prevent document destruction? Can anyone give me a good reason why Lehman offices shouldn't be treated as a crime scene now?"

As Weil, Starkman, and Jon Stewart know, Bernard Madoff isn't the only perp.  But the perps were aided and abetted by see-no-evil "regulators" and "financial reporters."

Win One Lose One: Afghanistan and Iran

Afghanistan: 15 February 1989 - 15 February 2009

Having missed it when it was released in Europe last year, it was time to watch Charlie Wilson's War.  Today, exactly twenty years after the last Soviet troops withdrew from Afghanistan after Wilson's mujahideen blasted them out of the sky with U.S.-provided shoulder-fired missiles, Russians and other former Soviets are marking the day in cemeteries from Archangel to Almaty.  BBC correspondent Lyse Doucet recalls the final days here.  The Soviets are gone, but the Stingers still get aimed at foreign helicopters.

The advantage of watching Mike Nichol's film on DVD are the bonus tracks: a bio of former Democratic Congressman Wilson and a "making of" with plenty of good interviews.  These extras actually made me appreciate the film more than the film itself, which at times I felt glided over many of the moral and geopolitical ambiguities in exchange for a glib line of dialogue.  Plus the Moroccan extras posing as Afghan refugees in Peshawar were way too Hollywood to be credible.

Anyway, this is not a film review.  If you want a good one, read Stephanie Zacharek in Salon.

Milt Bearden, the ex-CIA operations guy who advised Nichols during the shooting of the film, worries about what Vanity Fair entitled "Obama's War" in an interview with Michael Hogan.  Additional troops might sound fine on the campaign trail, says Bearden, but

once you’re president you’re going to say, “Are the numbers important, or is the mission—the redefinition of the mission—more important?” My sense is that if you send more gunfighters, you get into more gunfights.

Bearden sees hope in the appointment of Richard Holbrooke as Af/Pak envoy - "he’s not going to be overly burdened with conventional wisdom."  Holbrooke, he of the Bosnia settlement, brings relevant negotiation clout to this job.  But partitioned Bosnia - like the U.K.-partitioned India/Pakistan, Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland/Irish Republic, all having experienced various stages of non-war, non-peace - still has unhealed stitches and requires the presence of foreign troops.

Iran: February 1979 - February 2009

I've already written about Iran's 30th anniversary, but what I'd like to point out here are a couple of interesting BBC reports that show an Iran beyond the ubiquitous photos of the scowling Ayatollah and blindfolded US Embassy hostages.  Not to hide that reality, but to show that there is more to this country of 65 million people.

This morning on BBC World Service Radio, John Simpson put Iran in perspective in "From Our Own Correspondent."  He also put Iran's President Ahmadinejad in his place, describing the "political traffic jam" of layers of authority that transcend the presidential remit.

Last night on BBC World TV, Iranian affairs analyst Sadeq Saba (presumably a refugee from the Revolution, now visiting his native land(?)) started the first of a four-part series, "A Taste of Iran: A journey of discovery of a land and its culture through its cuisine."

If I were an Iranian cultural attache eager to project a more nuanced image to the West, nothing could be better than this in-depth look at a society that comes across as rather more complex than George W. Bush's "axis of evil" one-liner.  It's not heavy on political analysis; in fact there is none - Saba does plenty of that in his day job - but viewers can reach their own conclusions.

This February double whammy of significant anniversaries comes at a time when the Obama Administration is looking to explore new ways of dealing with both Iran and Afghanistan.  The latter - "graveyard of empires" - and the former - "Policeman of the Persian Gulf" under the Shah, according to Time Magazine in 1973 - have a way of entrapping big powers into their maw.

As the USSR learned 20 years ago today in Kabul, and as the US learned 30 years ago this month in Tehran.

Robert Capa Remembered in Brussels

Readers who find themselves in Brussels before 19 April 2009 would do worse with a couple hours' free time than going to the Jewish Museum for its Robert Capa Retrospective.  Many of the legendary war photographer's most famous photos - including his "Falling Soldier" from the Spanish Civil War - are on display.  Others, including many from Israel's early days, when refugees were as likely to be Jewish as Arab, show Capa's ability to capture human feeling on film.

Since Capa was instrumental in getting intellectual property protection for photographers, I hesitate to illustrate this post (for aficionados, the International Center of Photography's eMuseum has some 1,500 of his photos here).  But I make an exception by including the poster for "Robert Capa in Love and War," the award-winning 2003 Anne Makepeace PBS documentary of the photographer's eventful life.

One of the biggest treats of the visit was the screening of Makepeace's film, which helps the uninitiated get to know the rakish Capa, who was a legend in his own lifetime.  Indeed the Jewish Museum's retrospective seems to be timed to mark the 70th anniversary of "Picture Post" magazine's consecration of Capa as the "greatest war-photographer in the world" in late 1938.

Capa already had years of wartime coverage to his credit - he was all of 25 years old - and there were more wars to come: after Spain, there was China fighting Japanese invaders; Capa covering fighting with American soldiers in North Africa and Italy in 1943; landing with the first wave on D-Day; jumping with paratroopers into Germany; and the 1948 Israel-Arab war.  He was killed covering the end of the French Indochina War in 1954.

Anne Makepeace found soldiers' testimony on how much Capa was one of them.  Several remembered him being conversational in the foxhole under fire.  Watching her film, I was reminded of my late father's stories about war correspondent Ernie Pyle, who was killed while covering my father's 77th Division in the Pacific.  Capa, Pyle... the tradition of honoring courageous correspondents continues with the Robert Capa Gold Medal.

Capa was much more than a chronicler of his times, he was an active anti-Fascist, his resistance starting in his native Hungary.  His temporary refuge in Germany ended - Capa, born Endre Friedmann, was Jewish - when Hitler came to power.  He continued to document Fascism, triumphant in Spain, defeated with Hitler's fall, throughout much of this life.  Belgium's own wartime collaborator Léon Degrelle was the subject of one of his shots.

I could go on.  With some 70,000 negatives to his name (most of his D-Day pictures were ruined in the lab!), Robert Capa alone constituted a record of much of what mattered in the mid-20th century.  Hurry to Rue des Minimes in Brussels while this exhibit still lasts.

(Image source: Films Transit)