MoveOn as an Instrument of the People
Written on June 25th, 2004I had an early look at that birth. We both threw up web petitions within a week or so of each other. Wes Boyd and Joan Blades created Moveon.org while I, in league with writer Sara Davidson, produced enoughisenough.org. They were inside the high-tech world; I was someone who did email. About 15,000 people signed enoughisenough. When Boyd and Blades put the word out to their networks, over half a million people signed their petition.
I had high hopes for what they would do with that network, and to my mind Moveon.org has far exceeded those expectations. We may look back some day and feel it was too partisan to be ultimately revolutionary, but these are highly partisan times. From the perspective of April 2004, it feels like one of the very greatest gifts of the Internet age.
Joan Blades is a software industry veteran, having co-founded Berkeley Systems, responsible for the once ubiquitous flying toasters screensaver. Blades served on the Berkeley Systems board and as Vice President of Marketing. Prior to her work in consumer software, Blades taught mediation at Golden Gate Law School, and practiced mediation. A past member of the California and Alaska bar associations, Ms. Blades is also a published artist.
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Crime and the Ultimate Punishment
Written on November 18th, 2003November 18, 2003 | The United States, alone among advanced democracies, still enforces the death penalty. The public’s support for capital punishment, however, seems to be dropping in the face of numerous recent exonerations of wrongly convicted death row prisoners. So now the argument gets serious. When does a crime warrant the death penalty? Some say the ultimate punishment should be reserved for “the worst of the worst,” the most horrific cases — yet attorney and best-selling author, Scott Turow, says that’s exactly what can make for its undoing. Turow’s new nonfiction book, Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer’s Reflections on the Death Penalty, is about his shift from a self-declared “agnostic” on the death penalty to his current belief that it can never be made fair and accurate enough. Turow served as one of 14 members of the March 2000 Commission appointed by Illinois Governor George Ryan to consider reform of the capital punishment system.
The Professor Takes the Gloves Off
Written on November 12th, 2003November 12, 2003 | Accustomed in economic circles to calling a stupid argument a stupid argument, and isolated (in Princeton, New Jersey) from the Washington dinner-party circuit, Paul Krugman has become the most prominent voice in the mainstream U.S. media to openly and repeatedly accuse George Bush of lying to the American people to sell budget-busting tax cuts and a pre-emptive and nearly unilateral war.
Krugman cannot be dismissed by opponents as some dyed-in-the-wool lefty. He’s a moderate academic economist who’s been radicalized by the Bush White House and the right wing it represents. Krugman joined The New York Times in 1999 as a columnist on the op-ed Page and continues as professor of Economics and International Affairs at Princeton University. His new book, “The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way In The New Century” (#9 on the New York Times best-seller list and a top seller on Amazon) is a collection of his op-ed pieces from January 2000-January 2003.
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Riding With Bill Maher
Written on February 20th, 2003February 20, 2003 | On Sept. 17, 2001, six days after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, Bill Maher made this now-infamous remark: “We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That’s cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building? Say what you want about it, it’s not cowardly.”
Those words ran afoul of Press Secretary Ari Fleischer. They also aggravated ABC and Disney, which insisted that Maher’s comment and some sponsors’ cancellations had nothing to do with his show’s eventual cancellation.
“Politically Incorrect,” which Maher created in 1993, won four Cable Ace Awards at Comedy Central; after it moved to ABC in ’97, it was nominated for several Emmy Awards. His newest book is “When You Ride Alone, You Ride With Bin Laden.” His new show, “Real Time With Bill Maher,” will debut on HBO at 11:30pm on Friday, Feb. 21.
Maher recently had the following conversation with Terrence McNally, host of the radio show, Free Forum.
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America According to Hertsgaard
Written on November 19th, 2002November 19, 2002 | Mark Hertsgaard is the author of the highly acclaimed study of the media during the Reagan years, “On Bended Knee” and “Earth Odyssey; Around the World in Search of Our Environmental Future.” On Sept. 11, 2001, Hertsgaard was traveling around the world asking people questions about America. Interviewer Terrence McNally recently spoke with him about his new book, “The Eagle’s Shadow: Why America Fascinates and Infuriates the World.”
