letters to the editor

CCT Staff

Article Created: 05/07/2008 11:05:40 PM PDT

Potluck party

SOMETIMES AMERICA gets divided into slices of pie that are black and white, young and old, rich, middle class and poor. Sometimes America gets scooped into an everything-in-one-pot stew.

Barack Obama is trying to create something else without division or altogether the same.

Obama's political position is more like a big potluck dinner, where each family recipe is special and adds to the plenty on all of our plates.

The predominantly white media insists Obama needs to be a fighter, but he cannot be seen as an angry black man throwing punches at a white woman. This same media insists Obama has to take down his lifelong pastor, portrayed as an old black man with angry black separatist oratory blues and prophecies. These are popular sexist and racist stands.

Many African-American Christians hold great respect for their elders, who have made a way out of no way for the current generation in our still-racist American society.

Both the Rev. Wright and white-made Obama have to choose between maintaining polite respect for Wright or airing honest "ridiculous" words of rejection.

I wonder if the American people will ever hear Obama's potluck party giving thanks for all people, and wonder when we will stop discarding valuable people with enemy and liability labels.

Cynthia Sojourner

Union City

class="letterhead">Massaging the message

WHEN I was a young man, I thought I had all the answers. Now that I'm much older, all I have are questions, one being: Can I believe national network news anymore?

In early 2002, the Pentagon recruited 75 retired senior military officers to serve as military analysts to the major television networks.

Their role was to shape the coverage of the Bush administration's war on terrorism from the inside. Coincidentally, many of these men already were working for military contractors as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants.

After a two-year investigation and a legal fight to obtain government documents under the Freedom of Information Act, the New York Times reported the story on April 20.

This comprehensive report revealed the retired officers were fed information to generate favorable news coverage of the administration's wartime performance.

Several of them now regret participating in what they came to realize was an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda labeled as an independent military analysis.

It comes as no surprise that Fox News had the largest number of these analysts on their staff, but CNN, NBC, CBS and ABC also used their services.

I now listen to international and independent news reports to get the whole story.

Douglas A. Tinney

Fremont