One of the many shortcomings of all-news radio and TV stations, such as CNN, Fox News and WNBC, is that they have to struggle to keep our attention, to satisfy sponsors with decent ratings. Fox has nearly perfected the shock and scare method. Sean Hannity makes outrageous and indefensible commentaries…and then there are the car chases from lofty TV cameras in helicopters…and detailed reports of the latest blond female missing for about 15 minutes from a Midwestern mall.

The 2-year ...

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After the celebrating of the Obama victory, there was much media focus on the defeat of gay marriage propositions in three states. California, particularly, has evoked controversy with 52% voting in favor of Proposition 8 against legalizing gay marriage.

We have been informed that the Mormon Church poured millions of dollars into promoting the proposition and that exit polls revealed that 70% of African-Americans supported it.

Let me make some observations and suggestions. I.F. Stone, the late ...
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I have often spoken about my first involvement in a civil rights demonstration. It was in June of 1952. Harry Truman was president and Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson would become the candidates for the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively.

It was between my freshman and sophomore years at the University of Denver and I was invited to participate in a summer-long student program in Washington, D.C. There were about two dozen other students from around the county in our group. ...
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Recently, Oprah Winfrey hosted Martin Tankleff on her TV program. He related his nightmarish experience, spending 17 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. For years there had been reports about the crime – with third parties identifying the real killers of Tankleff’s mother and father. To the end, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the Suffolk County District Attorney fought his release.

On that same Oprah program, a young California man told of being held for a y...

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Rush Limbaugh, that champion of political hysteria, has suggested that Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama was determined by the fact that both men are African American.

I wonder if he offered a racial criterion for the endorsement of Obama by the other Republicans, Christopher Buckley, an editor at the National Review and son of the conservative icon William Buckley, and Scott McClelland, George Bush’s former press secretary. Both men are of the Anglo-Saxon persuasion.

I try not t...

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