The Ivory Triangle of media, academic and political elites who push America left is gearing up for another full court press to the port side. “During the Clinton years, they could call up Tom Brokaw and say, ‘Do this report,’” Rick Perlstein, a senior fellow at the Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) says. “We may have that opportunity again with the new Democratic Congress.”
Perlstein, the author of Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of American Consensus, knows whereof he speaks. He has talked with Clinton Administration officials.
In this campaign, the left is using one of its favorite weapons—misinformation.
“Hurricane Katrina stopped the collaborationist attitude that the media had of reporting ‘he said this’ and ‘he said that,’” E. J. Graff, a resident scholar at the Brandeis Women’s Studies Center says. Her announcement might surprise new junkies who have been seeking such mundane coverage in vain for decades as well as Bush Administration officials who have yet to unearth any media collaborators in or out of the White House press pool.
“Our federal government decided to abandon New Orleans,” Graff declared at the CAF conference. That must be why American taxpayers have been pumping billions of dollars into the Crescent City for years.
She blames the federal government for not rescuing people from the hurricane but does not mention New Orleans Mayor Roy Nagin and the buses he refused to deploy when the storm was imminent. She complains about the federal government’s failure to reinforce levees but does not acknowledge the hold that environmentalists put on construction of these barriers for decades.
“E. J. Graff has written widely about issues of marriage and family, women’s lives, and the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people,” according to the Brandeis web site. “Most recently, she collaborated on Evelyn Murphy’s book Getting Even: Why Women Still Don’t Get Paid Like Men—And What To Do About It.”
By the way, this latter contention was rebutted, perhaps inadvertently, by another panelist at the CAF event. “Women fare better than men on earnings,” says Tamara Draut, author of Strapped: Why America’s 20- and 30-Somethings Can’t Get Ahead.
“There are more opportunities for them.” Draut is the director of the Economic Opportunity Program at Demos. Back to Graff.
“Her first book, What is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution, examines 2, 500 years of a central pillar of social life—and asks why same sex couples belong today,” the Brandeis web site proclaims. Incidentally, Graff also contributes to Out, the gay magazine.
She was one of 19 speakers at the CAF event, which was called “Failure of Conservatism: The Big Con.” Factoring in staffers, the audience-to-speaker ratio was about one-to-one.
Don’t be fooled though; In this case, size doesn’t matter. They are connected and they are determined.
The CAF is planning another event in June that will feature:
• “Grass-roots and netroots activists;
• “Labor leaders;
• “Presidential candidates;
• “Progressive bloggers and media makers;
• “Organizers from women’s, civil rights, and environmental movements;
• “Young people;
• “Progressive champions from Congress, state, and local government;
• “Business leaders;
• “Leading public scholars;
• “Activists from faith community;
• “Hip hop visionaries;
• “New technology entrepreneurs;
• “Student activists;
• “Defenders of democracy;
• “Policy experts and economists;
• “And coalition builders—as the many tribes of the progressive movement come together to TAKE BACK AMERICA.”
The CAF is headed by Richard Borosage. Borosage is the former director of the Institute for Policy Studies.
“Insisting that the Soviet threat is but a myth, IPS advocates such deep cuts in the military budget that it comes down to unilateral disarmament,” S. Steven Powell wrote in Covert Cadre, his 1987 book on the group. “Closer to home, the institute lauds Fidel Castro, and helps raise funds for the Sandinistas to consolidate their power in Nicaragua, while, at the same time, attacking Central American allies of the United States for their imperfect human rights record.”
“To what end all these IPS activities?” Powell asked. “The institute’s publications and activities make it clear that the direction IPS would have our country follow is toward an isolated, defenseless, and socialized political and economic system, a future the American people firmly reject.”
Americans have lived up to Powell’s assessment of them in the 20 years since that book was published, so far.
Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.
