Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group

Print Journalism in the United States

By Edd Applegate

Print journalism in the United States is experiencing dramatic change as a result of readers favoring other media, including web sites, for their information. Consequently, newspapers are experiencing declining circulations and subsequently advertising revenue. In 2009, for instance, newspapers lost 26 percent in advertising revenue, according to the summary essay about newspapers (Project for Excellence in Journalism and Rick Edmonds), which is part of the “State of the Media: 2010.”

Newspapers, including newspapers in the major markets, have developed web sites which have become popular among readers, according to “Newspaper Web Traffic in Top Markets Leaps to an All Time High,” a press release that concerned a study by the Newspaper National Network. However, newspaper management has not been very successful in developing a system that generates enough advertising revenue from the web to earn a comfortable profit. In short, is going to the Web costing many newspapers more than it is worth?

As a result of declining revenue, newspaper management has laid off employees, especially reporters, by the thousands over the past few years. Several major dailies have even closed while other major newspaper companies filed for bankruptcy. The Tribune Company was merely one of several major newspaper companies that filed for Chapter 11 in 2009. And yet, despite these reductions, newspaper management asks their employees, especially reporters, to do more, often for the same salary.

Last year—2010—was an improvement over 2009. However, newspapers continued experiencing declines in advertising revenue, resulting in layoffs of more than 1,000 employees. Newspapers are no longer the key intermediary that companies need in order to reach consumers. Indeed, as Tom Rosenstiel and Amy Mitchell of the Project for Excellence in Journalism pointed out in the “Overview: The State of the News Media: 2011,” “Software programmers, content aggregators and device makers control access to the public. The news industry . . . finds itself more a follower than leader shaping its business.”

Where will the newspaper industry be in a few years? Well, one thing is certain: the typical newsroom will not be what it was just a few years ago. Editors and reporters will be employing a multitude of platforms—not just newsprint—to disseminate information to people. Besides, newsprint as we know it may not be around.

Edd Applegate has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in advertising and mass communications for more than 30 years, primarily in the School of Journalism, College of Mass Communications, Middle Tennessee State University. He is the author of numerous academic articles, chapters, and entries which have been published in scholarly journals, books, and encyclopedias. He is the author of several books, including Journalism in the United States: Concepts and Issues, which was just published by The Scarecrow Press.

Mental Illness Does Not Erase Your Dreams: The Little Metal Box

By Randye Kaye (parts first published on Ben Behind His Voices blog)

Mental illness makes news. Usually sensational news. CNN reports that Jared Lee Loughner is unfit to stand trial. Last month, Catherine Zeta-Jones spoke openly about her bipolar diagnosis. Charlie Sheen? Anybody’s guess. (But I say: get that man into treatment, stat!)

But what about the people who don’t make the news? What about the large proportion of consumers who are managing their lives somehow, or trying to, without shooting anyone or landing on the cover of People? Those who have been diagnosed with mental illness deserve respect - and help. Their courage is enormous, the obstacles often beyond comprehension for those who don't understand.

My son, Ben, earned another six college credits this semester, and is still on the Dean's list. Plus - in the past two months - a new job, and a move to his own small apartment. All this after seven hospitalizations, seven years in a group home, eight years unemployed. Amazing! He's getting his life back in small steps. But there’s no news coverage for people like Ben.

Why did it take so long? Ben has paranoid schizophrenia. That kind of messes up your path to maturity. Never, never compare his progress to someone else his age whose brain functions without illness. There are other yardsticks to use.

Ben spent lots of time dealing with an illness whose onset confused us all, and then lots of time learning to recover. He’s still learning to recover. But years ago, when all was in confusion and chaos, he’d still had dreams, which he wrote down and kept in a little metal box. I discovered these seven years after his fifth trip to the Emergency Room for psychiatric admission.

When I cleaned out Ben’s last apartment seven years ago, I’d found a little metal box. At that time, I peeked at its contents: more scraps of paper, obviously precious enough to be stored in this place of honor. I couldn’t bring myself to open these papers then. What crazy ideas would I find written on them? He was so desperately ill, his schizophrenia so in charge of his mind at that time. I’d seen enough; I’d heard enough. I threw the box in with the rest of his “desk supplies” and stored it away with more evidence of his disastrous attempt to live on his own that year.

Recently, I rediscovered that old metal box in a storage bin in Ben’s childhood bedroom. It had originally held mints: “Organic Cinnamon Snaps! Over 100 snaps per box,” reads the cover. The hinges are covered in duct tape now; the picture of forests and volcanoes under the words has faded. Ben’s little treasure box, now seven years old.

I open it. Inside are pages ripped from a small spiral notebook, carefully folded to fit. I hesitate. I do – and I don’t - want to open these.

What will I find? What secrets has he kept in here? I hold the box in my hand, a key to the things my son considered sacred when he was 20 years old.

I take out the first paper and unfold it. I expect to see what I have found before in his writings from that period: grandiose ideas, poetic phrases, delusions that guide my son when his symptoms flare up.

But I’m wrong. It’s only a list of phone numbers, readable, organized. His friends, our family, his most recent employers. At the bottom of the list, the names of some old friends – from high school days – with no numbers listed.

People he hoped to get in touch with again, I think. I’d almost forgotten how many friends he used to have. So many friends. Would they even talk to him now?

I open the next paper. It’s another list, with “Stuff” written across the top, then: candles, lawn chair, blank tapes, phone card, origami paper. The list goes on; it’s a “want” list, or a shopping list. Things he’d like to have for his birthday, perhaps. The simplicity of these small desires touches me.

The next sheet is a to-do list. Again, the handwriting is legible and the columns organized. There are about seventy-five items on this list. Most are written in blue ink, a few in green, black or red. I stare at this for a long time.

Among the plans he’d made:

• Write letters (with a list of over twenty people, including me, Ali, other family, old friends, our rabbi, his old therapist – what had he wanted to say?)
• Write play
• Write animal language dictionary
• Make gifts: Mom pillow, Dream Catchers, Ali cookbook (for his sister)
• Compose college essay
• Build a drum
• Make chess set

More lists: movies he wanted to see, videos he wanted to rent, books he wanted to read, CDs he wanted to buy.

I’d almost forgotten that he used to have dreams. So many dreams, such simple ones. Any dreams at all. It’s not fair! He had all of these plans. Will he ever get to do them?

At the bottom of the pile is a last piece of folded paper. This one is messier, but I can still read what it says. It is full of quotes, ideas, and plans that are more internal. Written here are ideals Ben wants to live by, almost like New Year’s Resolutions:

• Listen a lot.
• Blow nothing up out of proportion.
• Simplify, don’t be hypersensitive.
• Don’t judge people.
• Don’t use your muscles, use your mind.
• Don’t use big words.
• Think before I speak or act.
• Don’t try to control others, let them be.
• Reach out to people, lovingly.
• Hear and consider others’ points of view.
• …and the list continues.

I’d had no idea Ben was trying to change himself all the time I was desperately trying to change him.

Plans for his life - a life at a standstill for so many years. A life worth living; a life worth saving; a life stolen from him. Will he – will we -ever get it back? My boy, my precious boy. I know you’re still in there. Come back to us. Come back to you.

I wipe my eyes, carefully refold the papers and put them back in the little metal box. I wish I could sleep with it under my pillow, like a lost baby tooth, and have my wishes – and Ben’s – come true.

Randye Kaye is an actress, broadcaster, voice talent, and speaker. She is the author of Ben Behind His Voices: One Family's Journey from the Chaos of Schizophrenia to Hope.

Stockman’s March to Social Madness

By James W. Russell (first published on Perfect Swindle blog, 4/24/2011)

David A. Stockman, Ronald Reagan’s Director of Management and Budget, came right out and said it in an April 24, 2011 New York Times op-ed, “The Bipartisan March to Fiscal Madness” Social Security should be reduced to a means tested program that would benefit only the poor.

Instead of being the primary source of middle and working class retirement income, it would become a welfare program.

At a time when 401(k) type retirement plans have been exposed for not being able to provide anywhere near the retirement security that the traditional pensions that they replaced provided for working and middle class retirees who are now more dependent than ever on Social Security, removing that source of retirement income from ordinary people would be a road to social madness.

Stockman’s advocacy is consistent with the World Bank’s 1994 Averting the Old Age Crisis report that led to widespread disastrous privatization of national retirement systems in Latin America.

What neither he nor the Times disclosed is that since leaving the Reagan administration, he has become very rich through positions in the financial services industry, including in Salomon Brothers, the Blackstone Group, and his own company, Heartland Industrial Partners. That industry stands to profit handsomely from all diversions of current retirement savings from Social Security to its own 401(k) like plans.

And, of course, Stockman has become so rich from the financial services industry that he has no personal need for Social Security benefits during his own retirement.

James W. Russell is CSU Professor of Sociology at Eastern Connecticut State University and the author of Double Standard: Social Policy in Europe and the United States: second edition.

Detours on the Way to a Classless Society

By Rudolph H. Weingartner

For many right-thinking people—that is to say, liberals—equal pay for equal work has always been a goal to be achieved. While this aspiration pertained particularly to women, who once were very far from getting the same compensation as men and have yet to reach parity, it applied, as well, to discrimination that is based on race, religion, national origin, disability or age. The objective of reaching equality is an expression of a piece of American ideology that wants us to stand out as a classless society or at least to come closer than Old Europe, not to mention the lands of the Middle East. And since we are talking about economic criteria, this goal has a genuine resemblance to Karl Marx’s notion of a classless society, though it would be best to keep quiet about that, since it might scare off potential friends of the cause.

Progress is being made. Last January, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act. The law makes it easier to sue a company for pay discrimination and in that way discourages such bias in the first place. In another part of the forest, however, there is backsliding. I shall be pointing to practices, moreover, that cannot be alleviated by Congressional bills, signed by the Chief Executive. In the second edition of my Fitting Form to Function: A Primer on the Organization of Academic Institutions [Rowman & Littlefield, 2011], I give a brief deploring account of the vast increase of the use of adjuncts, part timers, and full time lecturers to teach students that the professoriate used to teach. These non-regulars, can never attain the stability of employment that tenured faculty enjoy nor are they remotely compensated at the same level as the so-called “regular” faculty.

You might say the work they do is not equal to that of the (proportionately) shrinking regular faculty and, indeed, for some of the regulars this would indeed be true. But many others, with a small number of courses to teach, engaged in research that is trivial that seldom brings beads of sweat to their brows. On the other hand, the teaching load of the irregulars is large, calling for multiple preparations and the ministering to—that is testing, grading, advising—myriads of students and poorly paid. Two classes of faculty: one markedly more favored than the other.

And now this insidious two-class system is infecting the world of lawyers. An account in The New York Times of May 24, 2011, “At Well-Paying Law Firms, a Low-Paid Corner” describes an expanding practice very similar to the one that has taken hold of the world of post-secondary education. Besides hiring attorneys who stand a chance of becoming partners of the firm (and are generously paid, accordingly), other “fullfledged,” competent lawyers are being hired, earning “less than half the pay of their counterparts, “doing pretty high-level work — writing briefs, visiting client sites, prepping witnesses for hearings.” Law firms used to be composed of two classes: partners and aspiring partners—a healthy division, like that of tenured professors and those on tenure-track. Healthy, because ability and energy came close to assuring “promotion” from the lower to the higher class.

What we are now seeing both in the world of higher education and in the legal establishment is the creation of inferior and superior classes with as much chance of moving upward as in medieval times, a serf had the potential of becoming a knight. Are these signs that we are sliding back into the Middle Ages?

Rudolph H. Weingartner is Emeritus of Philosophy, University of Pittsburgh and the author of Fitting Form to Function: A Primer on the Organization of Academic Institutions: Second Edition.

Surveillance Directed at Critics of the FBI

By Ivan Greenberg (first published on Ivan Greenberg’s blog 5/16/2011)

J. Edgar Hoover’s conception of free speech did not include criticism of the FBI. Public expressions that challenged the supremacy of political policing should be monitored and, if possible, sabotaged. The “free press” was not free enough to question the validity of the government’s domestic intelligence system. A chief example of intolerance of press criticism is the FBI’s relationship to the Nation magazine. The magazine’s FBI file totals about 2,000 pages with the largest portion covering the late 1950s when the FBI believed it faced growing opposition to its spying practices. The Nation directly challenged FBI power when it devoted the Oct. 18, 1958, issue to a single article on the FBI by Fred J. Cook. The FBI viewed the article as “vicious” and “destructive” and began to track Cook interviewing his friends and family and opening his mail. Hoover wrote in a memo, “I think we should discreetly get a line on this man and his background and associations for current article just didn’t ‘bloom’ – it is planned literary garbage barrage against FBI by a dedicated [Alger] Hiss apologist.” The FBI also identified Nation editor Carey McWilliams as someone “long publicly identified with the activities of a number of subversive organizations.”

The Bureau investigated Nation contributors and leaked negative information about the magazine to members of Congress and friendly press sources to undermine its reputation. In 1959, the bureau produced a 180-page monograph, “Smear Campaign Against the FBI,” which focused exclusively on the magazine. The FBI feared the view that it should be restricted to investigations of criminal conduct and FBI critics run “the risk of being considered an enemy of the nation.” The FBI argued, “Cook’s article represents a manifesto for intensified attacks against the Bureau which can be expected in the future.” Only Communists (and their allies) wanted to limit FBI power. “The strategy of the smear campaign is now transparently revealed. With the FBI discredited and disposed of, communists and other subversive operatives would be able to flourish with relative impunity.”

Another FBI critic, historian Henry Steele Commager, often wrote for the popular press with negative views of the Red Scare. His FBI file (457 pages) covers more than 20 years. In 1947, the FBI opened an investigation after Commager’s article to Harper’s magazine (“Who is Loyal in the U.S.?”) attacked emerging McCarthyism. Commager’s defense of liberalism and criticism of the Director led top officials, such as assistant director William C. Sullivan, to view him as “a too vocal, bombastic and misinformed liberal or ‘fellow traveler.’” The FBI questioned his loyalty after an article for the Nation was distributed by the Communist Party to attract members. When Commager argued in the New York Times that the CP had a constitutional right to exist, the FBI noted that he “was making Communistic addresses and remarks which appeared to be harmful and not to the best interests of the Government of the United States.” In another article, Commager denounced loyalty tests (“Where Government May Not Trespass”) prompting the Bureau to compare him to the National Lawyers Guild. They continued to condemn him for how others used his work: Commager “has long been considered a ‘darling’ of the Communist Party.” The Bureau expressed anti-intellectual sentiments: “Commager’s article illustrates that the real danger to needed Governmental authority is from the pseudo-intellectual realm.” By the early 1960s, the FBI had placed Commager on its “Not to Contact” list because “he has been a long-time critic of the FBI.”

New York Post columnist and editor James Wechsler challenged Hoover’s leadership and defended FBI critics. Wechsler began his career working for liberal-Left publications: the Nation during the late 1930s; and the newspaper PM during the early 1940s. While at PM, the FBI placed him on its “custodial detention” list and Hoover described him (and his wife, Nancy) as “radicals and leftists of the most dangerous type.” At the Post during the 1950s and 1960s, Wechsler criticized the FBI in three key areas. He viewed the infiltration of the CP as counterproductive. He criticized the Bureau’s failure to protect black civil rights workers in the South. In this regard, he proposed stripping the FBI of its jurisdiction for civil rights. Lastly, Wechsler wrote against FBI surveillance of student activism at the University of California, Berkeley. Wechsler’s FBI file grew to about 530 pages with critical notes about his journalism. One memo indicates: “His hostility to Mr. Hoover and the FBI actually renders a negative service to the cause that Wechsler supports.”

In 1962, a Post article featured historian Howard Zinn, who had authored a report critical of the FBI’s civil rights enforcement in Albany, Georgia. A memo in Zinn’s FBI file says his views were “slanted and biased” but “expected from an individual of Zinn’s background.” The FBI identified Zinn as a former Communist. In response to the Post article, Hoover directed agents to discredit Zinn by spreading information about his CP associations and sympathy for Cuba. “Suggest our friends on Georgia papers be alerted.” An FBI official also wrote: “Zinn should not be dignified by contact by this Bureau.” After an article appeared in the Boston Globe in 1964 again quoting Zinn, FBI officials noted: “This is the second time the “Boston Globe” has published distorted articles concerning the FBI… the Crime Records Division [should] attempt to set the record straight through other friendly news sources in the Boston area.” Hoover approved this recommendation with a short note -- “yes and promptly.”

The FBI demonized media criticism even in the form of satire. The Director called Washington Post columnist Art Buchwald a “sick comic” and directed agents to monitor his writing. As an example of Buchwald’s satire, in 1964 he suggested that President Johnson was unable to fire Hoover as director because the lawman actually did not exist. “What happened was that in 1925 the Reader’s Digest was printing an article on the newly formed Federal Bureau of Investigation and as they do with many pieces they signed it with a nom de plume,” Buchwald wrote. “They got the word Hoover from the vacuum cleaner – to give the idea of a clean-up. Edgar was the name of one of the publisher’s nephews, and J. stood for jail.” An interview with Buchwald in Playboy magazine elicited a long FBI memo about the writer’s subversive Cold War humor. “Buchwald has previously come to the Bureau’s attention in connection with his writings,” the FBI noted.

"Spoke of FBI informers in the Communist Party and the possibility that ‘someday soon J. Edgar Hoover will be elected Chairman of the American Communist Party.’ Buchwald also commented that ‘you’re allowed to make fun of the FBI because they have such a good sense of humor.’ ‘They never get upset when you make fun of them. You may get a call from two FBI Agents the morning after the column appears, at 3 o’clock in the morning, but it always is a friendly call. It is the one organization in Washington that doesn’t mind being laughed at.’

"This particular issue contains no other references to the Bureau or the Director and the entire issue is the typical trash which has characterized Playboy since it inception."

In a separate file, the FBI monitored Playboy for carrying on “a campaign of snide innuendoes against the FBI and at times was outright critical of the Bureau and the Director."

The FBI infiltrated writer’s organizations (American Newspaper Guild, Radio Writers Guild, and American Authors League) and focused surveillance on a broad segment of allegedly “anti-American” book authors: E. B. White, Sinclair Lewis, John Steinbeck, Upton Sinclair, Carl Sandburg, Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, Pearl S. Buck, Dorothy Parker, H. L. Mencken, Edmund Wilson, John Kenneth Galbraith, Norman Mailer, Irving Howe, Betty Freidan, and Studs Terkel. The FBI developed informants in the publishing world. The best known case involves Henry Holt and Company. As scholar Claire Culleton notes, for several decades Hoover reviewed manuscripts and the firm sought “his explicit approval on authors and his advanced sanction on works and topics under consideration by the press.” Once the FBI approved a book for production, it obtained advanced copies of page proofs and played a central role in designing Holt’s advertising and marketing campaigns.

Three books critical of the FBI prompted efforts at suppression. In the case of Max Lowenthal’s The Federal Bureau of Investigation (1950), Hoover obtained an advance copy and tried to plant anti-Lowenthal editorials in newspapers. In an effort at censorship, agents tried to discourage booksellers from stocking the work. In order to counter the book’s impact, the FBI distributed a reprint of a Reader’s Digest article, “Why I No Longer Fear the FBI,” by ACLU leader Morris Ernst, who doubled as an FBI informer. Hoover also obtained an advance copy of Fred Cook’s The FBI Nobody Knows (1964) and helped delay publication for several years. Cook’s book built on his Nation article and the FBI believed the negative depiction of Hoover’s relationship to others in government posed a challenge to its organizational integrity. The FBI told its agents:

"Cook claims that official Washington is intimidated by Mr. Hoover, citing a situation in which the publisher of the New York Post had found that ‘some of the most distinguished figures in the Hill simply will not be quoted on the subject of Hoover.’ In addition, Cook, through quotes from unnamed liberal Congressman who express fear of Mr. Hoover, attempts to make Mr. Hoover responsible for an atmosphere of conformity. It can be said that the unnamed Congressman seem to be feeble carriers of the liberal tradition if they are afraid to express their views."

The FBI tried to suppress Peter Matthiessen’s In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1983), which offers a sympathetic history of the American Indian Movement (AIM). The book focuses on the FBI’s role in the flawed prosecution of AIM leader Leonard Peltier, which Matthiessen compares to the Sacco and Vanzetti case of the 1920s. Matthiessen hoped his book “might become an organizing tool in his [Peltier] fight for justice,” while the FBI sought to limit the book’s circulation. Within a year of publication, an FBI special agent cited in the book filed a $25 million libel suit against Matthiessen and his publisher, Viking Press. Although the FBI lost the case after eight years of litigation, the lawsuit substantially delayed paperback and foreign editions. In the Peltier case, two FBI agents had been killed in the line of duty and the Bureau’s pursuit of justice included legal misconduct.

For Further Reading:

FBI monograph, “Smear Campaign Against the FBI: The Nation,”1959.

Fred J, Cook, Maverick: Fifty Years of Investigative Reporting.

Richard Lingeman, “The Files’ Tale: Redbaited by the FBI,” The Nation, Jan. 11, 2010.

W. C. Sullivan to A.H. Belmont, Feb 19, 1955. Nation FBI file

D.M. Ladd to Director, “Henry Steele Commager,” June 29, 1949. Commager FBI file

W. C. Sullivan to A.H. Belmont, Jan. 29, 1957, Commager FBI file

A. H. Belmont to L.V. Baordman, “Henry Steel Commager, Central Research Matter,” Nov. 35, 1957. Commager FBI file

M. A. Jones to Mr. Nease, “Request for Information Regarding Porfessor Henry Commager,” June 13, 1958. Commager FBI file.

M. A. Jones to Mr. Deloach, “Henry Steel Commager,” Nov. 15, 1963. Commager FBI file.

FBI Liasion [name redacted] to White House, July 10, 1967. Commager FBI file.

Department of State report, “Henry Steel Commager,” Oct. 19, 1968. Commager FBI file.

SAC Boston to Director, “Henry Steel Sommager,” Nov. 21, 1976. Commager FBI file.

Murray Polner, “James Wechsler: The Editor Who Dared Challenge J. Edgar Hoover,” Jan. 5, 2004, http://hnn.us/articles/2869.html.

FBI monograph, “The FBI in Our Open Society,” June 1969. http://www.governmentattic.org/docs/FBI_In_Our_Open_Society_1953.pdf.

M. A. Jones to Mr. DeLoach, “Howard Zinn,” Nov. 27, 1962. Zinn FBI file.

A. Rosen to Mr. Belmont, “Racial Situation Albany, Georgia,” Nov. 15, 1962. Zinn FBI file.

A. Rosen to Mr. Belmont, “Howard Zinn,” Jan. 8, 1964. Zinn FBI file.

David Carty, “Art Buchwald Couldn’t Make This Man Laugh,” CBSNews.com, June 25, 2008, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/25/national/main4207013.shtml.

M. A. Jones to Mr. DeLoach, “’Playboy’ Magazine, April,1965,” March 3, 1965. Buchwald FBI file.

Hugh Hefner- Playboy Magazine FBI files, http://www.paperlessarchives.com/playboy.html.

Herbert Mitgang, Dangerous Dossiers: Exposing the Secret War Against America’s Greatest Authors (New York: Ballantine Books, 1988).

Natalie Robbins, Alien Ink: The FBI’s War on Freedom of Expression (New Brunswick: Rutgers University, 1982).

“FBI Tracked ‘Working” Man Studs Terkel,” NY City News Service, Nov. 15, 2009.

John Rodden, “Wanted: Irving Howe FBI No. 727437B,” Dissent (Fall 2002).

Claire A. Culleton, “Extorting Henry Holt & Co.: J. Edgar Hoover and the Publishing Industry,” in Culleton, ed., Modernism on File (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

Stephen J. Whitefield, “Civil Liberties and the Culture of the Cold War, 1945-1965,” in Raymond Arsenault,ed., Crucible of Liberty: 200 Years of the Bill of Rights (New York: New Press, 1991).

Peter Matthiessen, In The Spirit of Crazy Horse (New York: Viking, 1991).

Ivan Greenberg is a former adjunct instructor in the City University of New York college system and the author of The Dangers of Dissent: The FBI and Civil Liberties since 1965.

Bahrain: A Kingdom of Fear and Repression

By Emile Nakhleh

Bahrain, a small island country in the Persian Gulf used to be viewed by the international community as a relatively tolerant, inclusive, and liberal country. Once the “Arab Spring” erupted a few months ago in neighboring Arab countries, pro-reform demonstrations gathered steam in and around Pearl Roundabout in Bahrain demanding political and economic reform. The ruling Al-Khalifa family reacted with brutality and repression, including arrests and firing at protesters, detention of journalists, academics, parliamentarians, medical doctors and health providers, without regard for basic human rights. Within a few short months, Bahrain has become a Saudi satellite—politically and ideologically—and is no longer a shining beacon of tolerance in the Gulf.

Several reasons might explain why Bahrain’s uprising so far has not achieved the same results as in Tunisia and Egypt:

• A small population (barely over half a million)
• Pervasive Saudi influence
• The military and security leadership hails from the ruling family
• A tacit American and international support for al-Khalifa suppression of the uprising because of the stationing of the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, concern about Iran’s influence in the Gulf, and worries about the potential for instability in the oil region.

Amnesty International in a recent briefing paper describes Bahrain as a “human rights disaster” and suggests that the regime suppression of dissent through arbitrary arrests and torture has created an atmosphere of fear and sectarianism. The al-Khalifa family heads a Sunni minority with access to power, privilege, and wealth and rules over a Shia majority that is mostly poor and dispossessed, with minimal access to government jobs and lucrative economic opportunities. Many Shia live in villages and poorer sections of the capital Manama. A few prominent Shia families have cooperated with Al Khalifa and have been amply rewarded with access to wealth and high government positions, including cabinet posts.

Since March 15, 2011, King Hamad has imposed a state of emergency under the rubric of a “State of National Safety,” which has given the security forces “sweeping powers” to arrest and try protesters in special courts for “offences against the state” with no “explicit human rights safeguards.” Under SNS regulations, hundreds of people have been detained, tortured, and injured. At least 30 protesters have been killed, according to media and international human rights reports. Many others have “disappeared” by agents of the regime in the middle of the night without a word to their families or access to legal defense. More recently two al-Wefaq parliamentarians, Matar Ibrahim Matar and Jawad Fairuz, were arrested by masked armed agents of the regime and whisked away without minimal due process. Their families were not informed of their whereabouts.

Regime repression of protesters and human rights activists—Sunni and Shia—continues unabated. More doctors are being tried in special tribunals for alleged “crimes against the state.” In reality, they were arrested and tried for providing medical help to those injured and beaten by security agents.

Talk of possible dialogue with the opposition, which was first voiced by the Crown Prince and the King’s son Shaykh Salman, has all but evaporated with the advent of at least 1,000 Saudi troops into Bahrain. These troops, including a few from Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, came to Bahrain as part of the so-called Desert Shield. They crossed the causeway that connects Bahrain with Saudi Arabia under the Gulf Cooperation Council collective security agreement. The Saudi leadership was extremely distressed by the downfall of Tunisia’s Bin Ali and Egypt’s Mubarak and therefore decided not to spearhead a “counterrevolution” to safeguard the Bahraini and other Sunni Gulf ruling families. The Saudi action reflects Riyadh’s claim that the “Arab Spring” is a threat to internal stability and that Iran was stirring Shia opposition in Bahrain, and potentially in Saudi Arabia.

Three key points underpin the on-going crisis in Bahrain:

• The current protest movement calling for government accountability and reinstatement of the constitution is decades old; in fact, it goes back to 1975 when the ruling family dissolved the National Assembly and suspended the 1973 constitution.
• The movement is not driven by sectarianism. Because the majority of the population is Shia, large numbers of the protesters are therefore Shia. Sunni reformers, however, are also actively involved in opposing regime repression and have been at the forefront of the reform movement.
• The Shia community is diverse politically, socially, and economically and has not voted as a bloc. Nor is the Shia community beholden to Iran. Bahraini Shia over the years have turned to Iraqi and Lebanese Shia Grand Ayatollahs for emulation, and although several prominent Bahraini Shia leaders have studied in Iran, the Shia community does not view Iranian senior clerics as their sources of emulation or marja'.

Bahraini protesters, like their counterparts in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Libya, Syria, and elsewhere, are as diverse as the wider Bahraini society. They are villagers, city dwellers, laborers, farmers, professionals, teachers, health providers, and government employees. They seek dignity, justice, respect, and the opportunity to live as free citizens. Many of their postings on the Internet, Facebook, and Twitter reflect their desire to have the freedom to dream for a better life and pursue their dreams without repression or restrictions on their freedoms to speak, to create, to travel, and to associate with others. They also aspire to join the rising Arab generation as a peaceful force of change in their societies.

Contrary to Saudi and Bahraini government claims, calls for reform are not a Shia thing or a recipe for sectarianism. Media reports indicate the sectarianism argument has been pushed by the Saudi and Bahraini leadership in order to justify their actions against Bahraini peaceful protesters. Many Bahrainis view the main goal of the Saudi presence in the country is to persecute the Shia community and silence all opposition voices.

The three key ingredients of the envisioned compromise involve a return to the 1973 constitution, a re-establishment of a popularly elected national Assembly, which the king’s father dissolved in 1975, and dissolving the current government, which has been headed by the king’s uncle, Shaykh Khalifa, since independence in 1971. The prime minister is perhaps the most disliked senior member of Al Khalifa because of perceived corruption, nepotism, and repression, according to academic analysis and media reports. Many Bahrainis also view him as a staunch opponent to reform within the ruling family. The opposition movement maintains that implementing these demands will lead to transparent and accountable government, a just distribution of wealth, recognition of freedoms of speech, assembly, and the press, and an independent judiciary.

The pro-reform demands are in response to economic, political, and social grievances, which many Bahrainis have endured for decades. I have discussed many of these grievances in the first edition of my book, Bahrain: Political Development in a Modernizing Society, which Lexington Books published in 1976. These grievances, including the same prime minister, continue to exist in the country today.

Emile Nakhleh is the author of Bahrain: Political Development in a Modernizing Society (Lexington Books, 2011).

One Day It Will All Make (Common) Sense: Common, Conscious Rap, and Right-Wing Critiques of Hip Hop

By Reiland Rabaka

Along with Jill Scott, Bill Collins, and Rita Dove, the “conscious” rapper Common (Lonnie Rashid Lynn Jr.) was featured at a poetry evening at the White House on May 11. His invitation drew criticism from big name Republicans and their media outlets. It is curious that folk who have little or no relationship with rap music and hip hop culture always wanna fix their faces to say something every time hip hop is given its props. It is even more dubious that for many of these same folk African Americans – their history, culture, politics, religion, and music – only seem to register in the negative. This is what we in African American Studies call a “pathological approach to black people,” which is to say, one that views people as problems instead of people with problems. All human beings have problems, right? Even Republicans, right? It is rare to hear anyone outside of the Hip Hop Generation acknowledge the power of poetry via rap music. Few folk are willing to concede that after the movements of the 1960s and 1970s, hip hop seems to be one of the most salient vehicles for self transformation and social change available to twenty-first century youth. Obviously hip hop, as with most great art forms, has its controversies and contradictions. But, to make it seem as though hip hop is the only art form with issues revolving around violence, misogyny, and homophobia is outright disingenuousness. Has anyone ever heard the song-cum-slogan “Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll!?” Is rock & roll somehow free from violence, misogyny, and homophobia? I don’t think so (and here I’ll make no mention of Ozzy Osbourne, Dire Straits, Guns N’ Roses, Nirvana, or Korn, etc.). Think for a moment. When is the last time you have heard heavy-hitting Republicans come out against the violence, murder, misogyny, incest, adultery, and profanity in the work of William Shakespeare (just for fun, see The Taming of the Shrew, Hamlet, A Midsummer Nights Dream, King Lear, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet)? The Republicans, if I may state it outright, have the wrong rapper this time. Common, like Talib Kweli and Mos Def, is actually one of the more progressive rappers on the scene today. However, I’d be the first to admit that it took him a moment to find his voice and vision. His first two albums, Can I Borrow a Dollar? (1992) and Resurrection (1994) were interesting but rather generic. It wasn’t until he dropped One Day It Will All Makes Sense (1997) that his audience was provided with his unique brand of hip hop shamanism. It would be helpful if Common’s Republican critics really and truly engaged his work before mindlessly diving head first into foolishness and misinterpretation. African American music, as with African American life in general, is full of deep double entendres, and sometimes rappers raise issues to bring awareness to those issues and offer their own unique solutions to our problems. I am critical of hip hop’s cheerleaders just as much as I am hip hop’s hyper-critics. I am attempting to develop a relationship with rap music and hip hop culture that allows me to highlight its positives and its negatives, to both appreciate it and critique it. In closing I should say, President Obama is not the first president to invite an artist to the White House whose work includes references to controversial or, even more, criminal topics, and he certainly should not be the last. Here’s to American democracy. Here’s to freedom of speech. And, finally, here’s to artistic license, even for working-class and poverty-stricken U.S. citizens. God Bless America.

Reiland Rabaka is an associate professor of Africana Studies in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the author of Hip Hop’s Inheritance: From the Harlem Renaissance to the Hip Hop Feminist Movement; Against Epistemic Apartheid; and Forms of Fanonism.

The Publicly Profane Odd Future of the Music Industry

By Elizabeth B. Christian

What’s a headstrong, creative musical artist to do now that the music industry is in freefall, and record labels prefer signing easily moldable youth who can be pre-packaged and marketed to a mainstream audience with a ready-made profit margin? Singing talent is optional as long as you look like a star and will do as your label commands. In fact, labels often balk at originality in a marketplace increasingly based on the bottom line rather than the message in the music.

The music industry of the 21st industry reminds me of a 1973 episode of the iconic sitcom The Brady Bunch in which a record producer offers Greg the role of rock star Johnny Bravo because he “fit the suit,” not because of any musical genius.

Perhaps this type mindset is part of the reason for the epic fail of the industry, suggests Christian Clancy, former Interscope Records executive and co-manager of one of raps’ rising stars. Clancy told Billboard in March that the new business model is one in which artists come from a place of authenticity—and you can feel it in their lyrics and see it in their imagery. They may not produce No. 1 hits overnight, but in time this brand of artists will garner lasting and loyal fans.

Enter: Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All (OFWGKTA), a group of 11 alternative hip-hoppers who skate, create and debate what direction they want to take their artistry in next. Led by a 19-year-old known to fans as Tyler, the Creator, OFWGKTA is much more concerned about the group’s authenticity than airplay. Thanks to catching the ears and eyes of superstar Kanye West in the summer of 2010, however, airplay and Internet attention have followed.

Clancy, co-manager OFWGKTA, believes the group’s genre-bending, real-world branding is the wave of the future of music. The group formed in 2009 and released its first self-produced album Bastard on its website, oddfuture.com, near year’s end to little fanfare from hip-hop media. The group gave out free albums and recorded and posted a music video for its song French. People started talking and tweeting and Tumblring.

Kanye and Soulja Boy then publicly endorsed OFWGKTA, leading to an appearance in February on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon and the release of two iTunes singles, Yonkers and Sandwitches, thus far the only two songs available from the group for retail purchase, selling 12,000 and 6,000 units respectively within the first month.

That, however, is about to change with Odd Future’s Tyler, the Creator’s second album due out May 10, distributed by XL. What most definitely is not going to change, Clancy said, is the group members’ commitment to staying true to themselves and not some corporate music magnate.

To say Odd Future is rough around the edges would be an understatement. The group voices profanity as often as many of us take breaths. They rap about committing violent and sexual crimes, use homophobic and misogynistic phrasing, and have no respect for anything or anyone with whom they disagree. Still the message resonates with many in the younger, urban generation. And the creativity of the group--profane words notwithstanding--cannot be denied. No other twentysomething musical artists out there can boast of writing and producing their own music, marketing it, doing their own promotional material, and creating and choreographing their own music videos and shows.

It’s a powerful package—headstrong youth whose motive isn’t profit or political correctness.

Now, if this secondary placement of profit after authenticity catches on in the music industry, it would most certainly be an odd future.

Elizabeth Barfoot Christian is assistant professor of journalism at Louisiana Tech University and the editor of Rock Brands: Selling Sound in a Media Saturated Culture.

Next blog: The political branding of country music: 10 years post 9/11