Flash: Mass Murder in Africa! Andrea Mitchell Hit Hardest!

Let the Sudanese government be warned: In the view of the U.S. government, killing 200,000 people in Darfur and displacing another 2 million or so is one thing. But roughing up NBC’s Andrea Mitchell?  Well, that is quite another!

Especially when Secretary of State Condi Rice watches the abuse of Mitchell live and in person. Condi didn’t flinch, my fellow Americans. Within moments she extracted an unequivocal apology from our Sudanese friends. About Andrea Mitchell, that is. As I said, the Darfur genocide is quite another issue.

As noted a few weeks ago on this blog, we learned that during the Rwanda genocide, the Clinton administration figured it would take 85,000 African deaths to justify the death of one American soldier. Now we know that the Bush administration equates the manhandling of one hack reporter with the deaths of 200,000 (maybe we have finally discovered the real difference between Republicans and Democrats!).

To be fair, Condi did let the Sudanese government know she was, in fact, starting to get impatient with its unwillingness to halt the Darfur butchery. Condi said if the Sudan doesn’t soon shape up, its rulers could lose international credibility (and they ought to know this warning comes from an expert in that particular field).

Meanwhile, Mitchell herself has gotten all sanctimonious as a result of her mistreatment. Fact is, Mitchell is one of the all-time great windbags; a totally undistinguished reporter and a bottomless font of network conventional wisdom.

Nevertheless, it’s been a great p.r. week for Mitchell and her insufferable hubby, Pope Greenspan. He was all over the news the past two days bloviating about the economy.

I found it particularly ironic to read Greenspan’s public worrying that “rising labor costs” threaten the economy in today's papers. I have spent the last three days interviewing dozens of California farm workers about the ongoing decline in their real wages. In return for picking and packing grapes 9 hours a day in triple digit temperatures and often with a single ten minute break, they are rewarded with the minimum wage of $6.75 per hour. That’s about $200 a week after taxes. I still have a day of interviews left to do. I will be proposing to my subjects that, for the good of the economy, they reconsider their current greed and that they ponder the possibility of voluntarily kicking back a percentage of their pay to their over-generous employers. Alan and Andrea need a material sign of their solidarity.

Comments

[Abbas-Ali Abadani]

Thanks for the links, Virgil.

I've been away for a couple of days, but I'm gonna start reading this stuff today.

"are migrant workers organized? can they not strike or something to get better treatment?"

I recently donated $100 to United Farm Workers. If you're concerned about the treatment of farm workers, you can donate too. In return, they'll send you a really nice button .