BuzzFlash Reviews

April 2005

Promises Betrayed: Waking Up from the American Dream
by Bob Herbert

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We have often lambasted the news section of the New York Times for being a suck-up to the White House, which it is. It's coverage of the Bush Administration is somewhere between apple polishing, journalistic malfeasance, probable collaboration with White House strategy (e.g., Judith Miller's Iraq stories, which the White House and Chalabi fed to her, and then the Administration used Miller's stories as "evidence" of the credibility of their own lies), and occasional minor "leak" exposes.

But we have always been careful to qualify that the NYT editorial board has remained "traditionally liberal" (although it supported the Iraq War) -- and it has several top-notch columnists.

Among those pro-democracy columnists we often link to on BuzzFlash.com is Bob Herbert, who embodies the heart of America, if you define our country as a national community that should care for its citizens.

Herbert never fails to eloquently and compassionately point out how America has fallen short of its potential to be the shining light of enlightened government of, by, and for the people. That is why this 352-page book, just released, is entitled, "Promised Betrayed: Waking up From the American Dream."

As Herbert reveals in this book based on his New York Times columns, there is a dark underside to the constant GOP mantra of the "American Dream." The "American Dream" is now just a Disneyesque image of a nation long ago sold out to the highest bidder and campaign contributor. Corporations run the nation through the legislators that they contribute to. The citizens of our nation come a distant second, as they do -- ironically -- in the mainstream press.

But there are exceptions to the rule in the corporate media -- and Bob Herbert is one of them. If Paul Krugman is the economic Diogenes, Herbert is the moral conscience of the NYT.

His America is a great nation that leaves no citizen behind; but unlike the "bait and switch rhetoric" of Bush, Herbert believes it with all his heart and journalistic powers to "afflict the powerful and plead for the afflicted."

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