By GEORGE SALAMON// “What a senseless waste of human life.” Customer, played by John Cleese, in Monty Python’s Cheese Shop Sketch as he shoots the shop’s proprietor.
You wish President Obama were mocking the “senseless” part of the “senseless violence” phrase he applies relentlessly to past and current destruction of life. But he’s
Now that the USA and the coalition of the hesitant are stumbling toward the objective, NBC reporter Elizabeth Chuck had good reason to wonder “Why the Obama administration keeps saying ‘degrade and destroy’.” White House press secretary Josh Earnest finds the phrase “brimming with meaning.” Chuck did not. The strategy of air strikes on
By GEORGE SALAMON// “Journalists have no choice but to fight back because if they don’t, they will become irrelevant.” James Risen, NYT investigative reporter
What are they supposed to fight against? Fellow journalist Lindsey Bever of the UK’s Guardian spelled it out: “Committing an act of journalism could soon become an imprisonable offense.” That’s
By GEORGE SALAMON// Reporting on Israel-Palestine, especially during the August exchange of rocket attacks from Gaza and Israel’s bombing of the densely populated strip, drew criticism from supporters of one side and those on the other. Since declaration of the ongoing cease-fire, things are not improving. Both sides insist that reporting generally ignores the
By GEORGE SALAMON// “American society is a sort of flat, freshwater pond, which absorbs silently, without reaction, anything which is thrown into it.” Henry Adams
The great grandson of John Adams and grandson of John Quincy Adams would still be right today about America except for the “silently, without