Elite Media's respectful obituaries of Daniel Ellsberg have had something just a bit off, says Peter Bergen. The New York Times used its first establishing sentence to reference Ellsberg's quote: "The sobbing anti-war epiphany on a bathroom floor" And it ended that lead with the statement that, quote, the disclosure of the Pentagon Papers plunged a nation that was already wounded and divided by the war deeper into angry controversy,. Well, you don't have to be a linguist to sense the suggestion that the disclosure did the plunging and not the crimes themselves.
This week on CounterSpin: 70% of House Republicans belong to the Republican Study Committee, which just released a budget that calls for curtailing programs supporting racial equity and LGBTQ rights, natch—and also for increased cuts and access hurdles for Social Security and Medicare. It’s a tale as old as time, how some people want to take resources explicitly designated for seniors and disabled people and funnel them to rich people, in supposed service of “saving” those popular social programs. We’ve been asking for debunking of that storyline for years now from Nancy Altman, president of the group Social Security Works, and author of books, including The Battle for Social Security: From FDR’s Vision to Bush’s Gamble. We’ll get some more debunking this week, because when it comes to Social Security, it seems everything old will always be new again.
Also on the show: Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg died last week at the age of 92, and elite media did that thing they do, where they sort of honor someone they discredited in life, burnishing their own reputation as truth-tellers while still somehow dishonoring the practice of truth-telling—of the sort that afflicts the comfortable. CounterSpinspoke with Ellsberg many times over the years. We hear just some of those conversations this week on the show.
