As anyone who has taken a look at some of my posts here on ww.brooklynsoc.org or at my "Traces" blog on www.i-italy.org knows all too well, I believe that one of the keys to an effective democracy is a vigilant, intelligent, and multi-partisan free press. Until a few decades ago America had something approaching that ideal. Unfortunately, since then, we have lost many intelligent competing voices as newspapers folded or were consolidated with radio and television stations. Those that are left seem to have become almost pure vehicles for conveying advertising. Even the promise of the Internet as a great Electronic Highway for freedom of expression has been lost as the big guys and gals have moved in on the rest of us humble "bloggers." An especially big disappointment for me has been the newspaper scene in The Big Apple. It is not just those broad sheets on my Left which have lost so much luster but also those on the Right. Below is my response to the most recent of Karl Rove's political pablum being dished out in The Wall Street Journal. It doesn't instill confidence in the future of the American (and therefore the World's) economy when the sacred paper of investors has Karl as a "regular." Then again, they also couldn't tell the difference between a derivative and a Madoff.

Friends: If one wishes to understand how we in the US have been dumbed down, one need only take an occasional peek at the Wall Street Journal which at one time (B.M. as in "Before Murdoch") was at least a literate bastion of the allegedly Free Market System (and mythical). It is a daily newspaper that I peruse among many others in order to fathom how the Other,"Other Half" thinks.
Today you can be treated by another hopelessly non-tongue in cheek "Ode" to the ungracefully exiting ex-non-elected President George W. Bush by none other than Karl Rove (the man who single-handedly gave agitprop a better name). One will also find smack in the middle of WSJ's editorial page "Review and Outlook" which has been regularly bashing anything and anybody left of Attila, a note about "The Journal Editorial Report on FOX News Channel." In comparison with FOX, CNN seems almost centrist.

From The Wall Street Journal, December 26, 2008 page A11
"Bush Is a Book Lover"
A glimpse of what the president has been reading.

By Karl Rove
With only five days left, my lead is insurmountable. The competition can't catch up. And for the third year in a row, I'll triumph. In second place will be the president of the United States. Our contest is not about sports or politics. It's about books.
It all started on New Year's Eve in 2005. President Bush asked what my New Year's resolutions were. I told him that as a regular reader who'd gotten out of the habit, my goal was to read a book a week in 2006. Three days later, we were in the Oval Office when he fixed me in his sights and said, "I'm on my second. Where are you?" Mr. Bush had turned my resolution into a contest.

To find the whole thing go to: http://sec.online.wsj.com/article/SB123025595706634689.html

where I posted this comment:

K's piece should have been titled "Look! Look! Look at "W" Read." With all that reading going on, I guess he didn't have enough time to find the WMD's or noti ce the economic meltdown. Syntax has hardly been the forte of either the mouth or the piece thereof.

I also added this disclaimer below:

for ID purposes only:
Jerome Krase, Ph.D.
Emeritus and Murray Koppelman Professor
Sociology
Brooklyn College
The City University of New York