|
Mr. Chris Matthews,
MSNBC
Just for your thought. We all have to
deal with these "NAACP issues" in doing business. It is much
harder in the Not for Profit sector which often is placed in the
position of having to change people's opinions after the private sector has
messed things up. We do not make profits and by and large many of us
make very small salaries as well. Not for Profits, like teaching,
constitutes a service to the whole of the Nation and often at great personal
cost to the workers in these industries.
As to your comments on the NAACP, like the
churches, they have a constituency and neither you nor I are that
constituency. I would also state that it is good for the society at
large that they provide the escape valve process for that constituency that they
always have and that Bond is doing at present. I remember when
Martin Luther King marched with the Unions and the same questions were
posed as you are doing now. But he was on the side of his
constituency and he was murdered for those stands and we paid for that murder
with the riots and in America's image abroad.
Today the NAACP continues to
shape African American rage to the peaceful side. Although
Julian Bond has always irritated the former Dixie-crats, now Dixie-Republicans.
Is it better for the NAACP to foment and encourage the
rage against a society that conducts what Bill O'Reilly calls
delicately "Preventive Detention" against them because color is much easier
to profile than finding Aryan German American spies was during
the 2nd world war? Or is it better for them to speak out on the
issues that have a chance for the ultimate success of their constituency in
this society as it is?
Like Churches, the NAACP has been on the side
of the angels while taking extreme abuse during my lifetime and largely
from the side that now inhabits the party that Bond complains
about.
Churches also are Not for Profit and yet we depend
upon each group making the decision to speak out on the moral issues that
cross their culture often in spite of their 501 C-3
status. That is why we fund Not for Profits.
They serve issues that are for the greater good but would never
be income producing in the private sector.
Abortion could be considered profitible and even an
industry in private enterprise but the churches mediate, with their
complaints, the trivializing of life by a medical sector that could simply
choose a for profit solution to low HMO medical pay.
Insurance companies could come up with schemes that would organize it all and
there would be a lot of money to be exchanged in the abortion
"industry." Many more even than at the height the current
law. Hospitals could, without the complaints of
religion, set up clinics that would be profitable and make money to
fund other proceedures that are more rare and would be too expensive to
fund. But religion mediates against such trivializing of life
in the young who are the ones who use abortions the most.
At the very least they make families take such things seriously and go beyond
the rhetorical simplicities of "Pro-life"
or "Pro-Choice" I am "Pro-Choice" but I also know that
life is precious and that the religious groups have, with their passion, served
an important service in making people not use abortion as simply another form of
birth control. It isn't.
On the other hand, abortion has driven almost all
of certain segments of the Christian population into the Republican
camp. Is it fair when they lobby in their church literature or
the Priest or Minister preaches weekly against Democratic issues or
e.g. the favorite voucher issue of profit for fund strapped religious
schools, in the Supreme Court put their by a powerful religious
lobby? Is it fair for the religious culture of the of the
five justices who recently voted for vouchers to be members of the very
organizations that will benefit from vouchers? How about the
religious culture of the Media pundits who are supposed to discuss the issue
objectively and fairly? When that is transfired to the pulpit
a church service can become a weekly political rant with religious
overtones.
In all fairness, what Democrat can afford to have a
weekly rally of HIS constituency? In the past, such
things split churches into Northern and Southern versions around political
issues. It has also torn my family apart as members have moved
away from the politics of the common person and their willingness
to contribute back to the society through taxes. They
are now using the abortion & voucher issues as a doorway
to become anti-tax and irresponsible in their support for government action even
in things like regulation of Wall Street for the protection of their own
pension funds.
They are put in the position of having to choose
between what the Preacher has been preaching about for years, at least a couple
of Sundays a month, and helping themselves in protecting their
retirements and elder health plans. That is real Hardball
and I hope you never have to take the hit that a my family has taken
in the last year when they have had to sell the family home
because people like Ken Lay and others filled their
pockets. What little justice there is in all
of this is that the executives of those companies exist in the areas of heaviest
concentration of churches in those denominations that have taken heavy
retirement hits. The same ones who placed their faith in
the Stock Market. This is a problem of morality but it is also
a prolem of America's life and role in the world as a supporter of American
business interests. When American business makes a mess or
shoots itself in the foot we all pay.
What follows is a sample of what I have experienced
in dealing internationally in the arts. America graduates
thousands of young performers who are amongst the finest in the world with
barely 2% of them able to find full time jobs in the profession that they
trained in for the four years and $100,000 + that the average college
degree costs.
In my profession, the operatic profession, we
depend upon good international relations for our performers to work abroad
while we allow anyone who can get a green card to work as competition for
our labor here. All of Europe is protectionist with
opertic laborers but we say very little since the artistic work force
is little more than 1% of the labor force. But is it not the
principle of the thing? Are you not claiming to speak up on
principle?
Life is a lot more complicated for us than simple
Republican or Democrats, conservative or liberal. Is it
not time that we give up our parental issues and accept responsibility
for our selves, our families, our communities and our workplace? I
would not praise the late President Kennedy, as you did tonight, for
abusing the FBI, (I believe you used the word "tough") to get the business
community to follow his lead. Instead there is a need
for more maturity and less praise in the news and media sector for creeps who
steal from us all or abuse the American principles of equality, with
impunity.
Nothing is more unfair and of mediocre
thought than the complaints that White Males are an endangered
species suffering from a loss of civil rights. Such
complaints sound like the complaints of the Chinese Human Waves in the
Korean War against Americans for shooting at them.
When Julian Bond complains that his community was
tremendously abused in Florida it is about the abuse, and the abuser must take
the heat for his actions whatever his party or family affiliation.
It was true in Memphis in the late sixties and it is true
today. The question here is whether some NRA or
militia nut, like McVeigh, will take Bond out just like Martin
Luther King was. The other question is how close media shows
tread toward the UN Genocide treaty that grew out of the Julius Streicher case
at Nuremburg in complaining when organizations like the NAACP do what they
have always done and take the heat for. (I find it interesting
the William Buckley is worried enough about Nuremburg and the new
International Court to write a book about it "from the conservative
perspective.")
You are younger than I and I guess you weren't
in Washington in 1968 but I was. Are we walking down that same
road again that led to the burning of the Washington and the deployment of the
troops?
I can hear the next shot. It goes like
this: "How could they complain when we are in a war against
terrorism?" I would suggest that cooler heads prevail in
the media and that includes less bias on the part of cable and radio
media. Unlike Ann Coulter said on your show the other night, it is
not the public that gave us the bias on talk radio and cable media any more
than that meeting with Hilton Kramer and Samuel Lipman that started the New
Criterian conservative Intellectual Journal was with middle class and poor
folks. We don't pay for you and we listen for the same
reason the Soviet public listened to Pravda, because you are the only game
in town. You may be FOR profit but you still are Americans and
you have responsibilities, since you take profits out of the system, to preserve
that system's equality and fairness.
Thank you for listening if you are still
reading. The following article is absolutely correct as far as my
business is concerned. We are not doing better because
of American business conflicts of interest in the international scene
but worse. I would remind you that it is the productivity of the
entertainment industry that has rescued America's balance of payment deficit for
years. If that cultural product is boycotted abroad it
has the same psychological implications as does attitude in the
market.
Ray Evans Harrell, artistic director
The Magic Circle Opera Repertory Ensemble,
Inc.
New York City
The New Ugly Americans Are Giving Us All a Bad
Name
Corporate scandals stain the U.S. abroad. John Balzar (LA Times) July 7 2002 GUANGZHOU, China -- I've been feeling glum about the drift and shortsightedness of American business for some time. Being abroad and looking back at my homeland only makes me glummer. The U.S. "war against terrorism" is a fight for our way of life, for ideals and idealism, for freedom and for opportunity. Back home, most of the people I know have hardly a doubt about the soundness of these things. Americans, I among them, have closed ranks behind the men and women who stand on the murky front lines of the battle. But the relentless boardroom scandals of 2002 are undermining the nation abroad, and not just in the Muslim world or on hostile terrain. When someone like Intel's chairman, Andrew S. Grove, finds himself "feeling embarrassed and ashamed" to be an American business executive, he should be. The country's global leadership--its example to the world--is as easy to doubt as to believe in right now. Yes, countries like China and other developing nations around the world know greed and corruption. But the U.S. has for a long time projected itself as different--a country where integrity and prosperity are maintained by self-governance and lofty principles of justice. Not so these days. Americans aren't alone in understanding that what has engulfed U.S. business is not the corruption of an individual or an administration or a party or an industry but the corruption of a system. Sadly, it is the system that the United States is trying to sell--or, let's say, defend--as the model for the world. Many Americans view the rot in our entrepreneurial values, vast as it is, as a momentary and correctable turn of events. Unfortunately, the disclosures spill forth at the precise moment when skeptics abroad are hungry to capitalize on any evidence of our moral failings. "For a superpower, as America calls itself, your house is in disarray, am I right?" asks a Chinese businesswoman over dinner. How does a visiting American answer such a question today? China has embraced free markets with barely bounded enthusiasm, and this southern megalopolis of Guangzhou is where the boom has the greatest momentum. But the Chinese I spoke with, as well as the English-language press in Asia, make clear that the United States' claim to be the custodian of free-market leadership is open to challenge. The flood of American manufacturing investment into China is not necessarily a show of power. American industry is not seen as expanding so much as it is fleeing, as if something is wrong at home. Headlines circle the world with revelations of accounting frauds, mass layoffs, insider trading, stock market shenanigans, pension rip-offs and tax evasion, and they compound a darkening picture of Uncle Sam. In my conversations, Chinese were particularly attentive to widespread job cuts and huge retirement losses inflicted on millions of working people as a result of business corruption and the implicit belief that the U.S. government is culpable in events. That differentiates this scandal from Bill Clinton's dalliances or Ronald Reagan's Iran-Contra or Richard Nixon's Watergate--transgressions that ultimately wound up reinforcing the nation's strait-laced values. By contrast, the misdoings of corporate executives and their perceived insider domination of the government at the expense of the citizenry reduce the U.S. to the stature of lesser nations. The Chinese don't view these events as bystanders, but as distant victims. The fizzling of stock investments in the U.S. has dragged down markets worldwide, and Asian newspapers protest, "We don't deserve this." The result is a blow to the fundamental American message that free markets thrive for the betterment of everyone under the hand of U.S.-style pluralism. "Good government," said Confucius, "obtains when those who are near are made happy, and those far off are attracted." Who could blame Chinese or Africans or Latin Americans for not finding American mores so attractive just now? The looting of a nation's wealth by a few is something long associated with despots, not idealists. The country that demands "transparency" in the affairs of other nations is now unmasked for secret dealings that ended up with billions of dollars going missing. As the U.S. looks for friends in the world, might and muscle count for plenty. But the only true and lasting argument for democracy is its example. |
