Stop Me Before I Vote Again

I have a lot of respect for old CH, I really do, even though I don't agree with him here. I caught him on C-Span's In Depth last month and I really admired the guy, the way he left a dream job at the Times because of Iraq, the graduation speech he gave around the same time while being pelted with boos, the fact that he keeps going out there and chaining himself to things and going to jail. I may not agree with him on everything he says, but a lot of people in the last week have questioned his motives and compared him to the likes of Bill Maher, and that is really, truly beyond the pale.

I guess I'm having trouble following the Socialist Entertainment Tonight tidbit here - Hedges was caught with some porn? Henwood is accused of doing what with with who - Jodi Dean?

Yeah, Paine Owen, what happened with Henwood Doug?

just about irrelevant Paine
a worm after the rain
flopping on the flagstones
good for you, buddy
getting gossip muddy
its your level
native state
the shopkeeper's hate
worming in the shit
thats it
your dialectic struggle ending
rumor bending, you sending
post it notes to the dead
to the jeers of empty auditorium echoes
your synthesis, the Alex Jones conspiracy
crayoned in red

Yikes. I turn my back for a week and look what happens.

I don't think it's beyond the pale to question Hedges' motives. I say it's entirely legitimate to question anyone's motives, because that's part of how to make balanced judgments.

That Hedges even worked for the NYT suggests to me the possibility of others' hands at play. Same goes for Hedges' having worked at NPR. That he attended ruling class universities raises legitimate questions. That he has acted as faculty at such universities raises still more legitimate questions.

One is not going to survive in such institutions unless one is willing to toe the party line.

Most of all his evident intolerance of opposing points of view led me to question his motives. Was he born yesterday? After all, it's only reasonable to expect that a certain percentage of any sizeable "protest movement" is going to disagree over non-violent tactics.

Hedges is old enough and wise enough to know this.

That he should express such righteous indignation over tactics that one can reasonably expect in such circumstances - particularly when Hedges himself appears willing to engage in his own nominal lawbreaking - strikes me as at least a significant possibility of his being less than above-board in his moralistic pronouncements.

Perhaps I'm just a cynical bastard. But ever since the Gulf of Tonkin I don't believe anything unless the footsteps match the oratory.

Noble statement pied one

Yeah, Hedges is heroic because he's more "activist" than Bill Maher.

That's like saying Dean Corll's accomplice was more noble and saintly because he only raped and killed a handful of the team's total death/rape count.

It's not like Hedges gets arrested or chains himself to things for MEDIA ATTENTION or anything like that.

Not at all.

Chris Hedges, patrician phony has gulled more than Yellow Kid Weil ever did.