[SfN] great news! McChesney to speak Monday!

[Jim Buell]

Folks,

Robert McChesney has offered to speak to us Monday night at Allen Hall on 
the UIUC campus, Urbana! McChesney, author of _Rich Media, Poor Democracy_ 
(UI Press, 1999) is a UI professor (Library and Info Studies) but is mainly 
based in Madison these days. I was delighted when he called this week to 
offer his voice to the cause.

McChesney's book is a worthy follow-on to critiques of corporate media 
domination like Chomsky's _Manufacturing Consent_. He's an ardent Nader 
supporter, as his appended call for Democrats to urge Gore to step aside 
for Ralph makes clear ;-). (Now please don't anybody post the piece to any 
local Dem lists ;-(.)

The event kicks off Monday, Oct. 30, at 7 p.m. with a musical performance 
by Paul Kotheimer, well known locally for his political songwriting. 
McChesney will speak at 7:30. The event is free and open to the public, so 
mark your calendars and bring your friends!

McChesney's appearance is sponsored by the Prairie Greens and the 
Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center - who'll also be collaborating to 
bring you that great fundraising event at the Highdive on Sunday, Nov. 5! 
(More on that in a separate note tomorrow.)

Check out www.robertmcchesney.com for more on his work.

Go we go!
Jim

>Paid for by the Nader 2000 General Committee, Inc.
>----- Original Message -----
>From: Jacob Harold
>To: officestaff
>Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2000 4:15 PM
>Subject: [OfficeStaff] mcchesney op-ed
>
>Bob McChesney (member of Citizens' Committee and
>prominent writer/prof) just sent me the below op-ed.
>It asks Gore to drop out so as not to hurt Ralph's
>chances. Bob is my kind of guy.
>This is going to run in Madison's afternoon paper, The
>Capital Times, on Thursday, October 26. It is timed to
>coincide with Vice President Gore's campaign stop in
>Madison on Thursday afternoon. Send it to everyone you
>know!
>Bob McChesney
>Will Gore Throw the Election to Bush?
>Robert W. McChesney
>This past Friday a dozen former "Nader's Raiders" held
>a press conference and told Ralph Nader to drop out of
>the presidential race and throw his support to
>Vice-President Al Gore. Concerned about Gore's
>faltering numbers in the polls, they argued that votes
>for Nader might well lead to the victory of George W.
>Bush.
>It is not an original argument. But the problem with
>it is that they are asking the wrong candidate to
>quit the race. Had they thought it through, they
>would have demanded that Al Gore quit the race and
>throw his support behind Nader.
>Think about it.
>Vice President Al Gore has now had three 90 minute
>mano a mano debates with George W. Bush. His campaign
>and related soft money groups have spent hundreds of
>millions of dollars on political ads to convince
>Americans to support him. He has received an
>overwhelming amount of press coverage, much of it
>sympathetic. He is a household name across the nation.
>
>Yet here we are less than two weeks from election day
>and Al Gore still is not ahead of George W. Bush,
>arguably the least impressive and most unqualified
>candidate for president in U.S. history. Many polls
>find him trailing Governor Bush. And there is little
>hope for a turnaround, as Bush has twice the money
>Gore does to bombard the nation with TV ads. Were a
>politician the caliber of Bill Clinton running against
>W., he would mop the floor with Bush's carcass, and
>lead him by 15 points in the polls.
>Al Gore has failed. For whatever reason, people just
>don't like the guy, and the more they see him, the
>less they like him. The voters have made it clear they
>might not elect him even over such a numbskull as
>George W. Bush.
>It seems pretty clear why Gore cannot expose Bush for
>the fraud he is. Bush is owned lock, stock and barrel
>by the huge corporations and the wealthy. As
>president, Bush will reduce the tax burden on the
>wealthy and eliminate those remaining regulations that
>protect the environment, consumers and workers. He
>will also give the green light to anti-competitive
>corporate mergers and consolidation. A Bush
>Administration will make the Republican
>administrations of the Gilded Age and the Roaring 20s
>look like socialist states.
>But Gore cannot attack Bush on these obvious points.
>Why? Because Gore is pretty much in hock to the same
>crowd, and the Clinton-Gore administration has been
>pursuing similar policies, albeit with a different
>grade of rhetoric to dress it up. So the debate is a
>lot of insincere focus group tested sound bites or a
>lot of mumbo jumbo on a bunch of incomprehensible
>policy programs. No one is advocating positions that
>tackle the extreme inequality of wealth and power in
>the United States directly, and the total corruption
>of our governing system by big money.
>Since there is little of substance to debate between
>them, those voters who haven't fallen asleep are
>making their choice between Gore and Bush on the basis
>of which they think has a better personality. On that
>score, whether it is fair or not, Gore is a sure
>loser.
>Ralph Nader is not the reason Gore's campaign is
>struggling. Gore has has ample opportunity to make his
>case before the American voters. Gore had a ten point
>lead in some polls in September. As that lead
>disappeared, most of the votes shifted to Bush, not
>Nader. In fact, surveys show that a significant
>percentage of Nader's supporters -- perhaps a majority
>-- either would not vote or would vote for someone
>other than Gore were Nader not in the race. Most of
>those sympathetic to Nader but scared about a Bush
>presidency have already decided to vote for Gore.
>Al Gore, and Al Gore alone, has blown his golden
>opportunity.
>In fact, that Gore has laid such an egg is damaging
>Nader's effort to reach the five percent threshold and
>earn matching funds for the Green party in 2004. If
>Gore were doing as well as he should be doing, he
>would win the election handily and Nader could get
>7-10 percent of the vote with little effect on the
>outcome. But Gore has indeed laid an egg, and party
>hacks are desperate to find a scapegoat.
>If Democrats are truly concerned about the fate of
>progressive politics, the rational solution would be
>for Gore to quit and throw his support to Nader. Gore
>can't win. Nader can.
>Without hardly any money and worse media coverage than
>Andrei Sakharov got from Pravda in the 1970s, Nader
>has drawn the six largest crowds in the campaign --
>ranging from 10,000 to 15,000 people -- and these were
>paying audiences no less. When people actually hear
>Nader's message they respond, and they respond
>favorably. Nader can galvanize the citizenry in a way
>Gore cannot. He is the smartest, most competent, and
>most honest figure in public life today. He is a
>national treasure.
>In leaving the race, Gore should demand that George W.
>Bush have three 90 minute debates mano a mano with
>Nader in the final 10 days of the campaign. Without
>Gore's dreadful semi-Republican record, Nader will
>easily expose Bush for the ignoramus that he is. Let's
>see Bush serve up his banalities about favoring "small
>government" and "returning power to the people" in the
>face of Nader's command of the real record of massive
>corporate welfare that Bush supports.
>Those genuinely concerned about the fate of
>progressive ideals should urge Vice President Gore to
>withdraw from the race immediately. Only Nader can
>defeat Bush. All that progressives stand for -- the
>Supreme Court, a woman's right to choose, the
>environment -- is on the line. The sad truth is that
>on November 7 a vote for Gore is a vote for Bush.
>Robert W. McChesneyInstitute of Communications
>ResearchUniversity of Illinois at
>Urbana-Champaignwww.robertmcchesney.com
>--
>Jacob Harold
>Speakers Bureau Coordinator
>Nader 2000