I was looking for another book this morning when I came across a 1969 hardcover copy of The Establishment Is Alive and Well in Washington, by one of the two maestros of humorous column writing of the mid- to late 20th century, Art Buchwald. I had paid probably 50 cents for it used a decade or three ago so it didn’t owe me anything, but the title jumped out. The Establishment is still alive and well in Washington, where corporate interests reign.

If Buchwald and fellow humor columnist Russell Baker were still alive and writing, either would do well to train his sights on fellow Establishment columnists and reporters and editors who serve the Establishment so well that readers and TV news watchers blame elected politicians and whatever (major) political party for problems — while not realizing that without the Establishment-serving columnists and reporters and editors, the Establishment-serving elected office-holders couldn’t serve the Establishment so well, to the detriment of majorities in “our democracy” which they might be expected to be trying to serve.

In short, to paraphrase the late Marshall McLuhan, the media is the problem.

The media that the Establishment (corporate) media tirelessly blame for “misinformation” are the uncontrollable independent (often retired) individuals trying to figure things out — often with the help of non-Establishment, non-corporate media authorities.

How often, for instance, have newspaper readers and TV news watchers been reminded that the pharmaceutical industry (raking in the money from vaccines, free from any liability thanks to Congress) vies with the weapons-manufacturers for the title of most powerful/influential single one of the Establishment interests in Washington? Often enough?

What interests benefit from the current government/media fixation on vaccines and vaccine mandates as the cure-all globally for the coronavirus pandemic?  Why, pharmaceutical ones.

I know that I am led to this line of thinking because I am reading Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new book, The Real Anthony Fauci, which has not — to my knowledge — been reviewed in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, or an other publication Americans are encouraged to look to for guidance. Maybe soon a decent, even negative, review will show up in an Establishment publication, and if this happens I’ll make note of it.

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In the meantime, how about THIS opinion column headed “Two-faced COVID madness” Wednesday in my local daily, The Berkshire Eagle, by Paul Waldman, who writes a blog affiliated with the (Establishment) Washington Post? Waldman takes off after a congresswoman named Nancy Mace. On one TV program she likes what natural immunity can do against Covid, while on another TV program says “I have been a proponent of vaccinations.”

For Waldman, natural immunity is “dangerous lunacy.” Mace has been in favor of vaccines. So is Robert Kennedy Jr., who describes himself as not anti-vaccine across the board but skewers Dr. Fauci for promoting vaccines (along with Bill Gates) as the answer to everything coronavirus.

For my money,  Waldman’s is an exemplary propagandandistic hit piece aimed not so much at Mace as at Americans who question the government/media insistence that vaccine, vaccine, vaccine is the answer to Covid. Waldman, an openly left-of-center writer with close-to-zero medical or scientific credentials, has latched onto the establishmentarian side of the divide on combatting Covid. Readers of the blog you are reading now would do well to click on his column and note the loaded language.

Get vaccinated, he urges — while employing “conspiracy theory” (the term) twice and lamely throwing up a couple of straw men to swat down. The column is without substance. Do read it for the lessons in dubious rhetoric it can teach. He targets a politician, but also everyone out there including his readers who don’t swallow the one-sided and overly simplistic government/media line.

Would Art Buchwald or Russell Baker be amused? Would either do a column lampooning Waldman? That’s doubtful, because he’s a fellow journalist. Who knows? But it’s not funny.

— Mark Channing Miller

I nominate Michael Spector as possibly the best person to review Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s new book, The Real Anthony Fauci.

Spector is a writer for The New Yorker magazine and is or has been adjunct professor of bioengineering at Stanford University. In the spring of 2020 he wrote a long piece about Dr. Fauci, “How Anthony Fauci Became America’s Doctor.” Last year also, his audio book, Fauci, came out. He would seem to be the most authoritative person in this country to assess Kennedy’s book, which casts a skeptical eye on Dr. Fauci’s role in guiding how the United States and other countries have dealt with the novel coronavirus.

Spector appears to be a Fauci fan. (HERE is his New Yorker piece.) Kennedy is not. In previous entries I have written favorably about the book on Nov. 17, 18, 21 and 23. (Click on each numbers to read.) But what do I know? So far, though, I have not seen any references to reviews in the news media.

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P.S. Roughly four hours after completing the above “nomination,” just before supper, an hour ago I came across THIS RECOMMENDATION by Edward Curtin of “Behind the Curtain,” who I’m delighted (but not surprised) to see is working on a review of The Real Anthony Fauci himself.

Curtin appeals to his readers to view an hour-long interview of the book’s author by Tucker Carlson of Fox News on “Tucker Carlson Today.”

I’ll just add that just as Kennedy’s book would benefit from an index, so the online version of the televised interview would benefit from a transcript.

— Mark Channing Miller

PICTURE A full-page house ad in what is regarded as the most authoritative newspaper in the United States, with lettering in black on a muted yellow background. It looks something like this.

The truth
takes a journalist

More than 1,700 journalists work for The New York Times.
They come from Iraq, Iowa and everywhere in between.
They include doctors, former service members, business
graduates and lawyers. They also include a son who bonded
with his mother over kimchi, a woman who chose a school
for her daughter in a segregated city and a man who got his
start in journalism while attending college — and working
two jobs. They’re people who have dedicated their lives to
helping us understand the world.

The New York Times

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AND THEN there is this message from Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth about their new billboard on Times Square aimed at the mangers who keep the journalists in line. Click HERE to see the billboard and read a few paragraphs about why it’s where it is.

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IN YESTERDAY’S Times Ben Smith’s  weekly “The Media Equation” feature is devoted to the thorny question of truth. It is headed

New Words
To Label
The Truth

and begins, “On Friday afternoons this fall, news executives have dialed into a series of off-the-record Zoom meetings led by Harvard academics whose goal is to ‘help newsroom leaders fight misinformation and media manipulation.’” Read it all HERE courtesy of the Washingtonian magazine.

One observer’s guess is that some of the attendees would like to meet elsewhere, in person, to discuss getting the word out comprehensively about, say, the September 2001 terror attacks or the worldwide coronavirus mess of the past two years.

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OVER AT the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, the work continues to get the movie “9/11: From Crime Scene to Courtroom” produced. See this last Sunday’s Weekender or the LC’s website for a bit more. Movies like the ones AE911Truth, the LC and others have to make — there are probably a dozen of them — would be unnecessary if our newspapers would do their jobs.

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MEANWHILE, those two organizations are competing with thousands of others today, “Giving Tuesday,” for some bucks from thankful supporters. No time like the present to help.

— Mark Channing Miller

This morning, while out walking after hearing, HERE, about the jury’s guilty verdicts in the Ahmaud Arbery murder case, I started humming the melody and maybe singing some of THIS SONG.

I had just picked up a newspaper with a slight variation of THIS NEWS STORY about the decisions and read it when I got home.

— Mark Channing Miller

HERE is something else to share on Thanksgiving Day 2021 and the long Thanksgiving weekend.

It’s from 2006.

It’s an example of why Boston is called the Cradle of Liberty and the Hub of the Universe.

Thanks to everyone at Boston 9/11 Truth.* Keep it up, y’all.

And thanks to everyone who is involved in the 9/11 Truth Movement (which is related in spirit to the other truth movements).

— Mark Channing Miller

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* www.boston911truth.org

Some people will never forget that Nov. 22 is the anniversary of the assassination in 1963 of the 35th president of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy — and I’m one. I am happy to link, HERE, to an excellent article from the current edition of Garrison: The Journal of Deep History and Politics. I found it this morning on the website of Edward Curtin’s blog, “Behind the Curtain.” There is no byline, but I assume that Curtin is its main, if not sole, author. It begins below. — MCM

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President John F. Kennedy: His Life and Assassination

The following article on the life of President John F. Kennedy, and his assassination on this date, November 22, 1963, is the lead piece in the eighth issue of Garrison: The Journal of History and Deep Politics that has just been published: “The Political Assassinations of the 1960s.” From JFK, RFK, MLK, and Malcolm X, to Hammarskjold and Lumumba, the 1960s were a tragic period when the CIA took over the United States and profoundly changed the course of history, and Garrison is indispensable for understanding that history and its importance for today.  This issue is double-sized (348 pages), a book really.  If you like the following article, please support and purchase Garrison. 

Despite a treasure trove of new research and information having emerged over the last fifty-eight years, there are many people who still think who killed President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and why are unanswerable questions. They have drunk what Dr. Martin Schotz has called “the waters of uncertainty” that results “in a state of confusion in which anything can be believed but nothing can be known, nothing of significance that is.”^[1]

Then there are others who cling to the Lee Harvey Oswald “lone-nut” explanation proffered by the Warren Commission.

Both these groups tend to agree, however, that whatever the truth, unknowable or allegedly known, it has no contemporary relevance but is old-hat, ancient history, stuff for conspiracy-obsessed people with nothing better to do. The general thinking is that the assassination occurred more than a half-century ago, so let’s move on.

Nothing could be further from the truth, for the assassination of JFK is the foundational event of modern American history, the Pandora’s box from which many decades of tragedy have sprung. READ MORE . . .

Today’s entry is a followup to yesterday’s, which was mostly about the new book The Real Anthony Fauci, by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Kennedy is founder and board chair of Children’s Health Defense, from the website of which the story below is excerpted. Its headline is borrowed from the top story in today’s edition of The Defender. — MCM

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CDC Forced to Admit It Doesn’t Collect Data on Natural Immunity to COVID

By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.