Posted on 12/08/2003 9:45:54 PM PST by kattracks
On Dec. 1, 2003, this obituary headline appeared in the New York Times: "Sylvia Bernstein, 88, Civil Rights Activist, Dies."
Though the passing of Mrs. Bernstein was reported in almost every major newspaper in the country, there is a good chance you missed it.
Too bad. Because the headline and the obituary tell you a great deal about the moral compass of mainstream American (and world) journalism.
For, if you read through the entire piece (almost always either a verbatim or edited Associated Press report), you will come across this one line: "Members of the Communist Party in the 1940s, the Bernsteins were targets of government scrutiny."
Note the headline: Mrs. Bernstein is described simply as a "civil rights activist." Indeed the whole obituary is a laudatory description of her and her husband's work "to desegregate area restaurants, an amusement park and pools and playgrounds. She advocated home rule for the District of Columbia and protested the Vietnam War and the development of nuclear weapons."
Quite a terrific lady, no?
According to every one of the seven major newspapers I checked, Mrs. Bernstein was described as essentially a wonderful, idealistic lady. So what if she was a member of the Communist Party at a time when Joseph Stalin was murdering and enslaving more human beings than anyone else had in history? So what if she was a member of the party that supported those who wished to destroy America, the land that her parents had fled to in order to be free people? So what if she remained in the Communist Party even after it supported the Soviet peace pact with Hitler's Nazi Germany?
None of this matters to mainstream journalists. For these people, the fact that a person was a member of the American Communist Party when it obeyed Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Communist Party is as irrelevant to a moral assessment of that person as if she had been a member of a stamp club. In fact, the only time her membership was even mentioned in the AP obituary printed in the New York Times, the Washington Post and elsewhere, was to invoke Mrs. Bernstein's victimhood.
As noted above, in the words of the AP report as printed in the New York Times: "Members of the Communist Party in the 1940s, the Bernsteins were targets of government scrutiny."
In the Washington Post's words: " . . . the Bernsteins were Communist Party members in the mid-1940s and endured long persecution by the government for their political beliefs."
The poor Bernsteins. Investigated by the American government for being members of a genocidal, totalitarian, anti-American party.
Our language has become Orwellian. Communists are described as "social activists"; and when communists are investigated by a democratic government, the government is the villain and the communists are victims.
To better appreciate the nonchalance with which mainstream (i.e., liberal and leftist) journalists greet Communist Party affiliation, imagine if Mrs. Bernstein had been a member of the American Nazi Party or the Ku Klux Klan, and had gone on to be a prominent "social activist" on behalf of right-wing causes in America. Needless to say, if her death would have been reported at all, her membership in those organizations and her subsequent right-wing social activism would not merely have been noted in passing. They would have been noted in the headline and featured in the body of the text.
As a New York-born and raised Jewish liberal, when I am asked when I left liberalism, I answer that I never left it. It left me -- first and foremost over the issue of communism. At one time, to be a liberal meant being anti-communist as well as anti-fascist. Shortly after the death of John F. Kennedy, however, liberalism ceased being anti-communist. Instead it became anti-anti-communist.
Though communism is largely dead, this has not changed. That is why our press regards Sylvia Bernstein merely as a social activist.
©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Excellent line. I'm sure that it sums up the way that many former liberals feel.
Communists in Hollywood are still at it. They called our attempt to protect freedoms in America "Black listing".
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You are either young or naive. Liberalism was anti-anti-communist long before Kennedy's death.
Really?
Well, that is just a small world coincidence, no need to mention such an irrelevancy in any obit.
Liberalism is not dead, its just spreading
Communism is NOT largely dead, it has just moved into different names.... leftists, enviromentalists, greens, and any number of NATIONAL organizations linked to their website.
A frightening list to be sure!
But difinately alive and well!
(Where is the spell check on this site?)
That's probably true, and an important reason why JFK, a rabid anti-communist, was no liberal.
There are two kinds of fascists: the Fascists and the Anti-Fascists.
-ccm
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I'm drawing upon my experience with communists in the '40s and '50s and the atmosphere under which they operated. Plus, there is my historical research. When Bennington college began graduating 35% communists and socialists in its senior class during the '30s it was hailed as a brilliant academic achievement not to be questioned or tampered with by liberals.
enviromentalists,
difinately
I'll do my best:
environmentalists
definitely
You might consider typing your comments into your word processing software (like WORD) and then, after using the spell checker, cutting and pasting your reply to FreeRepublic. :)
"communism" is alive and well, as as been pointed out here.
I would merely point out that the press is complicit in not only their survival, but in feeding, and nurturing them.
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