Bob Garfield, cohost of “On the Media,” spoke on WNYC about Edward Snowden getting asylum in Russia for one year and put on his righteous pundit hat:
It’s unclear whether… Julian Assange is an anarchist or a righteous defender of the rights of individuals. It’s unclear. It’s equally unclear to me, I know I’m speaking not as a reporter but strictly as a critic and a commentator, how Edward Snowden has the temerity [chuckling] to seek refuge in Russia. Whatever the American security state is, he has just been accepted by the open arms of a gathering tyranny. And it is an explicitly authoritarian state. And to me, pundit, to me, opinionator, it seems like the height of hypocrisy.
Does the media host have any respect for why Snowden finds himself in the position he does? I suppose if Edward Snowden had asked Garfield what to do weeks ago, he’d still be working for the NSA in Hawaii.
Snowden has expressed great fondness for the U.S.
America is a fundamentally good country; we have good people with good values who want to do the right thing, but the structures of power that exist are working to their own ends to extend their capability at the expense of the freedom of all publics.
J’s comment at the WNYC site notes all the good that Snowden has done for Americans, and why he might have good reason to seek refuge in Russia:
That Snowden does not wish to spend the rest of his life in jail, in no way diminishes the fact that he exposed, to the benefit of the American people and system, government surveillance like that of authoritarian states in what is supposed to be a transparent democracy. That he had “the temerity” to go to Russia–one of the few countries willing or able to stand up to U.S. pressure–does not diminish the benefit of his actions to the people of the U.S., transparency, and democracy. It only shows how far astray the current administration has taken the U.S. from it’s constitutional principles by prosecuting whistle-blowers and reporters as spies.
Garfield’s critique of Snowden as being a hypocrite for not happily skipping to a jail cell for the rest of his life–even if he is forced to go to an un-democratic state–is misguided and reveals Garfield as an armchair warrior.
I think the Snowden saga has allowed a younger generation – not steeped in the Cold War morass like flinted minds such as Garfield’s – to see for the first time, very clearly, that their own country isn’t brilliant.
The Iraq war was also such a catalyst, but the aftershock of 9/11 can explain that away for many, even though they never liked the war, they remember the frenzy the country was in at the time.
The Snowden story is different. You have a reasonably “progressive” president, the wars are all unwinding slowly and what they see is their country being exposed for its use of brutal power. I don’t think Snowden idealizes Russia in any way whatsoever. But it’s Garfield that idealizes his own country.
NPR’s foreign policy coverage is really quite stunning in it’s right-wing tilt. On Israel/Palestine they’re essentially hard-right Zionists.
No wonder it’s easy to drum up the public for war if this is supposed to be the “left-wing”.
And as always, one of the important backstories of the entire Snowden story is the media itself and how it has utterly failed. Maybe I should read more Chris Hedges.
I dismissed him as a hothead and a sensationalist, initially, but everything he has written about – the collapse of the liberal press, the judiciary system that has become in-hock with the national security state – is truly coming apart before my eyes now.
Of course, for most people in the Democratic party, as long as one of “our guys(or girls)” is in the White House that’s all that matters. Like the opposition to Bush’s policies that Obama not only continued but intensified, as fast as Obama came in, it all melted away. Makes you wonder how much principle a lot of people in the Democratic party actually have. The conservatives have long let it known that they will accept a lot of wars and torture all in the name of ‘patriotism’. My hope there is the younger, Ron Paul-inspired activists who are gaining ground but are still attacked viciously by the neocon establishment.
Here is Andrea Mitchell speaking about seeking refuge in anti gay oppressive Russia and Glenn Greenwald’s response.
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/andrea-mitchell/52655276#52655276
I wonder if the NPR nitwit thought it was the height of hypocrisy for refugees from communist countries to come to the US when the US was supporting equally heinous rightwing regimes that persecuted leftwingers. Refugees go where they can–if they had the power to set policy in whatever country that took them they’d be superheroes, not refugees.
Ideology makes people really really stupid.
Snowden isn’t the issue — the development of a total surveillance state in America is.
Why do mainstream media pundits like Bob Garfield and Andrea Mitchell have such a difficult time focusing on the real issue? Or is it that they believe that the development of a total surveillance state, under the control of people who share their political agenda, is in their best interests?
It is better to have a life sentence in a solitary confinement in a supermax prison in a free country than a good job and fun in an oppressive country. I wonder what would be poll results on that question.