Moyers on the money

Bill Moyers has a thoughtful post in tribute to the 50th anniversary of the Texas Observer. It ties into a discussion we're having at this post on how the mainstream press is failing in their duty to inform the public.

It's a really long piece but well worth the time to read in full. Here's a couple of quotes to get you started. First a quote from the inaugural editorial of the Observer.

"We will have a good time, and we hope you do. We will twit the self-important, and honor the truly important. We will lay the bark to the dignity of any public man any time we see fit. Telling the whole truth is not an exercise to be limited to children before they reach the age of reason. It is the indispensable requirement for an effective democracy. If the press and the politicians lie to the people, or hide those parts of the truth which trouble the conscience or offend a friend, how can the people’s falsely-based decisions be trusted? Here in the Southwest there is room for a great truth-telling newspaper, its editor free, its editorials cast in a liberal and reasonable frame of mind, its dedication Thoreau’s ‘The one great rule of composition is to speak the truth.'"

Bill and I both wish we had wrote that. Meanwhile, it's difficult to pick one quote from Moyers, but here it is.

Everything President George W. Bush knows, he learned here, as the product of a system rigged to assure the political progeny needed to perpetuate itself with minimum interference from the nuisances of liberal democracy. You remember liberal democracy: the rule of law, the protection of individual and minority rights, checks and balances against arbitrary power, an independent press, the separation of church and state. As governor, Bush was nurtured by the peculiar Texas blend of piety and privilege that mocks those values. With the election of 2000, he and his cohorts arrived in Washington like atheists taking over the Vatican; they had come to run a government they don’t believe in.

Moyers doesn't pull any punches in the rest of the piece and is not afraid to use the "N" word. Read it all for yourself. It makes you wish he wasn't about to retire.