Feisty Aphrodite Archives
Amy Goodman reigns on MSNBC’s 10th birthday parade
Finally, the American Corporate Media has given us 10 more minutes of intelligent broadcasting. During Chris Matthews' show Hardball, he facilitated a debate between Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, and Michael Smerconish of WPHT Philadelphia talk radio (click here for the 10-minute clip). Matthews questioned his guests about the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, in which Goodman scorched the screen in defense of a ceasefire and negotiations, while Smerconish began by focusing on the "Mel Gibson controversy" as a more important event to the public than the crisis in the Middle East.
(By the way, when Matthews asked the audience if they agreed with Smerconish's shallow and dumbed-down view, not one person said yes.) It was just after the break when Matthews opened the mic to on-lookers that Amy dropped the bomb in her congratulating MSNBC's anniversary by revealing the MSNBC secret memo to fire Phil Donahue based on his anti-war stance. Matthews was taken aback, apparently naive that such a memo existed, and became upset.
We tip our hat to Goodman for her aggressive determination in bringing the real issues to the forefront of mainstream media and giving the American public a glance at reality (despite Smerconish's opinion that they couldn't stomach it). One of the responses to this clip on YouTube stated that Goodman "manages to not single [I]srael out as the aggressor and...she equates what both sides are doing, which may not be the most effective. Israel is at fault." If you watch the clip, Goodman repeatedly exposes Israel's aggression by pointing out the mounting Lebanese civilian (especially children) casualties who have fallen at the hands of Israeli air strikes. Israel has made their campaign very clear to the world, however, it is the suffering of the Lebanese people that has been neglected and underestimated by the Western spotlight. But instead of arguing the ignorantly simplistic good-guy, bad-guy scenario and turning it into a mere two-sided cheerleading match, she took her argument beyond that by challenging people to see the entire situational spectrum and how it is affecting our present-day world as a whole...an approach that is very rarely ever proven capable by our fluffy leading anchors. Kudos to this Feisty Aphrodite and check out DemocracyNow! in case you forgot what reporting was all about.
Oh, and Michael, you're an ignoramus.
