George Will vs. Jesse LaGreca on ABC's "This Week"

Occupy Wall Street's articulate champion of the Nu-New Left, Jesse LaGreca, finally made it to air this Sunday when he was invited on ABC's This Week with Christiane Amanpour. Watch the Daily Kos writer made famous by his un-aired Fox News interview hold his own against the likes of George Will and Peggy Noonan. We've also transcribed Mr. LaGreca's segment below for those of you at work without headphones.

Christiane Amanpour: Okay, we've spoken a lot about them, now I'm going to bring in Jesse LaGreca, who is a blogger for the liberal website Daily Kos, and he's been a fixture at the Wall Street Protests. So Jesse, you've been listening to all of these descriptions of your movement, where do you come down? We've talked about it being immature, it hasn't had a policy, a sort of directives...what is it that you are trying to consolidate around there?

Jesse LaGreca: Well I think that the matter at hand is that the working class people in America - 99% of Americans who aren't wealthy and aren't prospering in this economy - have been entirely ignored by the media. Our political leaders pander to us but they don't take action, they stand in the way of change, they filibuster on behalf of the wealthiest 1%, and they fold around the wealthiest 1%. So the conversation we need to have is about the future; what kind of country we really want to be. And I think the most important thing we can do in this occupation is to continue to push the narrative that's been ignored by so many pundits and political leaders. I mean, the reality is that I'm the only working class person you're going to see on Sunday news... political news... maybe ever. And I think that is very indicative of the failures of our media to report on the news that matter most importantly...

Christiane Amanpour: (cutting in)...We are trying our best, Jesse..

Jesse LaGreca: Thank you.

Christiane Amanpour: And I wanted to ask you: Some of your most vociferous supporters like our colleague Paul Krugman have spoken quite glowingly about this populist movement. And you've even heard people around this table say that it should be harnessed. But you also say that it's the moment now to try and perhaps translate that into some kind of political question... political demand. Is there something that you can make this about?

Jesse LaGreca: I think the entire movement is about economic justice. I mean to me - and I'm not speaking on behalf of Occupy Wall Street, I'm just giving my personal opinion - I think it's a matter of economic rights, and I think it's a matter of social rights, and social justice. And to the people who would take offense to the word "social" being placed before the word "justice," I'd invite them to re-read the Constitution.

Christiane Amanpour: Let me ask George Will, who wanted to ask you a short question.

George Will: Mr. LaGreca, I hear a certain dissonance in your message: Your message which is that Washington is corrupt, Washington is the handmaiden to powerful, and a lot of conservatives would agree with that. But then you say that this corrupt handmaiden to the powerful should be much more powerful in regulating our lives. Why would you want a corrupt government bigger in our lives?

Jesse LaGreca: You know, I find that a lot of these conversations about government tend to deflect away from Wall Street, because let's be honest: the lobbyists have enormous power, and they've shut out a lot of the voice of the American people. So I think we should demand a government that is listening to people, and I find it ironic that when people demand action from their government, suddenly people tend to overreact and say "That is uncontrollable government." Our government is a function of our democracy; by attacking our government we are attacking democracy. So to me, yes, I think the government should represent the will of the people, and if the will of the people are demanding action, then they should follow suite.

Christiane Amanpour: Do you think these demonstrations are going to have momentum? Is it going to continue now, day after day?

Jesse LaGreca: Absolutely. People are extremely excited about what we are doing. We're engaging in a direct democracy conversation. I mean, the General Assembly is really the new town hall, and we don't have filibusters, we don't have lobbyists, we don't have a system that can be co-opted. And I invite anybody to come down and talk to us.

(Ms. Noonan says some B.S. about the Brooklyn Bridge protests.)

Christiane Amanpour: You know we're going to have to ask Jesse that really quickly. Jesse, are you going to harness this into a movement, or are you going to hang out for months?

Jesse LaGreca: You know what I find amusing is that now people are looking to us to solve the political problems...and they should. But I'm not going to support one party or the other, I'm not going to tell you who to vote for, but I will encourage you to be a voter. I think we have succeeded tremendously in pushing the narrative that working class people can no longer be ignored, and I think it's very important that we have this conversation, because it is about the future of our country. You know, right now working class people are being told to sacrifice, we're being told that our future is going to have to be put on hold in the name of austerity. And I can't name another country that has succeeded their economic problems with austerity. So I think the important thing to do is to come out and speak to us: the town halls that you see are very top-heavy. Our political leaders come and try to sell us a message...they should be listening to us.

The hour, close friends like Dr. Kissinger knew, was far too early to be calling Mrs. Buckley from any place but a hospital.

When a voice on the other line explained that it was the President calling for her husband, William F. Buckley Jr., she shot back: “The president of what?”

Dr. Kissinger was with more than a hundred other mourners that morning at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Temple of Dendur who’d gathered for a service in honor of Bukley, who died last month at the age of 80.

The setting was fitting for a woman whom so many worshipped.

“We mortals need to be reminded of the finite nature of our scale,” Dr. Kissinger said. “The term ‘larger than life’ can be overused. In Pat’s case, it was an understatement.”

Reinaldo Herrera, husband of high-society fashion designer Carolina, briefly illustrated “the extraordinary fantasy world that Pat created” for her friends and family. She was, according to Mr. Herrera, as at home in the drawing room of a palace as she was in the kitchen, conversing with the “three Dominican ladies,” who cared for her affectionately for so many years.

Then, a few short remarks by the jeweler Kenneth Lane drew upon Mrs. Buckley’s incredible sense of style, which, Mr. Lane offered, was about a lot more than spending a fortune.

Caitlin Buckley, her granddaughter and the daughter of her surviving son Christopher, told a crowd that included Tom Wolfe and George Will about the woman she called “Nan,” who chided her for buttering rolls in mid-air and taught her the fine art of air-kissing.

Following a song by the Wiffenpoofs, Yale’s famed a capella troupe, Frederick Melhado, an investment banker and close friend to the Buckleys, recalled that in the final days of Mrs. Buckley’s life, he’d told his dying friend that he wished he had a magic wand.

At this, he said, Mrs. Buckley responded: “I know, but we all run out of magic wands, eventually.”

Ms. Winfrey posed the question to Entifadh Qanbar, a spokesperson for the Iraqi National Congress—an erstwhile group of Iraqi exiles led by Ahmed Chalabi that, at the time, was busy lobbying the American government to overthrow Saddam Hussein. “Absolutely,” responded Mr. Qanbar.

Later, Ms. Winfrey called on an audience member. “I hope this doesn’t offend you,” said the young woman. “I just don’t know what to believe with the media and…” Ms. Winfrey cut her off. “We’re not trying to show you propaganda,” Ms. Winfrey explained. “We’re just showing you what is.”

Four-and-a-half years later, with American troops embroiled in a seemingly intractable civil war in Iraq, and the reputation of Iraqi National Congress in tatters, the question of what exactly Ms. Winfrey and the rest of her colleagues in the media were showing to millions of American viewers on the eve of invasion begs a second look.

Tonight at 9:00 p.m., PBS will be airing a special episode of Bill Moyers Journal, entitled, “Buying the War,” which takes a long, hard look at the American media’s performance in the months leading up to the start of the war. The result is a detailed portrait of media groupthink gone horribly awry.

Throughout the 90 minute program, a large number of print and broadcast journalists--from Oprah, to Judith Miller, to George Will, to the Sunday morning talk show pundits, to Roger Ailes’ legions at Fox, to William Kristol, to the reporters on the evening network news, to Vanity Fair’s David Rose—are shown passing along hyperbolic stories about Iraq’s biological and nuclear weapons capacity.

As it turns out, many of those overblown stories relied almost exclusively on the false claims of hawkish administration officials and dodgy Iraqi defectors. Claims that often went unchecked by some of the best minds in the business.

There were exceptions, and throughout “Buying the War,” Mr. Moyers gives plenty of airtime to the reporters who got the story right, particularly to John Walcott, Jonathan Landay, and Warren Strobel of the erstwhile Knight Ridder news service.

The show also features captivating interviews with 60 Minutes’ Bob Simon, the Washington Post’s Walter Pincus, and an apologetic Dan Rather.

“Especially right after 9/11, especially when the war in Afghanistan is going on, there was a real sense that you don’t get that critical of a government that’s leading us in war time,” Walter Isaacson, the former chairman and CEO of CNN tells Mr. Moyers. “Big people in corporations were calling up and saying, ‘You’re being anti-American here.’”

Reached by phone on Monday, Kathleen Hughes, the producer of “Buying the War,” said that the documentary has been a year in the making. “Bill has called this a historical documentary except the history is only four years ago,” said Ms. Hughes.

“By and large most of us in the media accepted the administration’s point of view,” said Ms. Hughes. “I think that had to do with what some of our reporters say in the show--that there seemed to be an almost bipartisan belief that Saddam Hussein was keeping a big arsenal and that we had to be worried about him. But when you look at the Knight Ridder reporting you begin to understand that there was plenty of detailed, accurate information available in real time. That was the biggest surprise.”

Did the largely unflattering portrayal of the press leave Ms. Hughes feeling depressed about her profession?

“No,” said Ms. Hughes. “I still have a tremendous amount of respect for journalists. We all have our good work and our not so good work. I still think it’s a noble profession. Just look at the Knight Ridder guys. In this case, they’re my heroes.”

Hillary Clinton met with her husband's political advisers last night in DC.

George Will wants Barack Obama to run.

Bronx state Senator Efrain Gonzalez, Jr. is charged with pocketing $400,000 from non-profits that received state aid.

Negotiations in Albany over key bills are deadlocked.

The plan to close some New York hospitals is headed for approval.

The Post says that the Albany DA has enough to indict Alan Hevesi on criminal charges.

Bill Hammond says Alan Hevesi is in denial.

The sale of government office space in Manhattan before its value was determined is "at best, bizarre and, at worst, illegal," said Assemblyman Richard Brodsky.

Daily News editors say there's no reason the Public Authorities Control Board should not approve the Atlantic Yards Project.

And City Comptroller Bill Thompson wants Google and Yahoo to address censorship issues.

-- Azi Paybarah

George Will noted on Fred Dicker's radio show this morning that the Governor's presidential hopes are widely seen as "delusional."

"You must have an interesting job watching the GOP fall apart," Will told Dicker.

But Mr. Buckley and Mr. Will seem to think that their celebrity armors them against such petty concerns. Mr. Will haughtily told The Times , "My business is my business. Got it?" All well and good, but if that's your business, you have no business calling yourself a journalist. And when asked by The Times why he had not disclosed his financial history with Lord Black in a column he wrote for The National Review, Mr. Buckley-who received approximately $200,000 from Hollinger-replied, "I didn't think that had any bearing whatsoever."

It seems statesmen are as easy to purchase as some journalists these days: Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger-who gushes on the back of Lord Black's book, "No biography of Roosevelt is more thoughtful or readable"-also served as a paid Hollinger adviser, as well as being a director of the company. Indeed, Mr. Kissinger did quite nicely thanks to Lord Black: Hollinger also paid about $200,000 a year to The National Interest , a publication whose editorial board was co-chaired by Mr. Kissinger and Lord Black. As you can imagine, Hollinger shareholders don't find any of this particularly cute.

It's no wonder that Lord Black-a man who gave up his Canadian citizenship because the Canadian government wouldn't allow him to join the British House of Lords-spent a few bucks courting famous media and political personalities. After all, in addition to Mr. Buckley, Mr. Will and Mr. Kissinger, Lord Black packed Hollinger's informal advisory board with the likes of Margaret Thatcher, Paul Volcker and Valery Giscard d'Estaing. This well-compensated board would gather once a year to debate the world's problems-a high-falutin' agenda for a newspaper board, but one that allowed Lord Black to fancy himself a sort of intellectual celebrity. And when he published his 1,360-page Roosevelt biography, he knew just whom to call for a blurb.

Mr. Buckley and Mr. Will should have known better. Both men have had long and illustrious careers and had no need to cozy up to Lord Black, other than for a few dinner parties. And there's not too many of them in Sing-Sing.

Clear Sailing Till Mother's Day

Take a good, long look at that calendar, folks: From now until Mother's Day in May, the weeks are blessedly free of holidays. This only happens once a year, so enjoy it while you can. Just think about it: That means no hauling yourself off to your parents' house, no pretending to be thrilled that your children and grandchildren are coming home for a visit, no scrambled gift-buying and tip-giving. And it just gets better and better: You don't have to spend weekends at your friends' country houses (bad weather, icy roads, annoying and incomprehensible "house rules"); you don't even have to spend weekends at your own country house (face it, you always have a more peaceful time in the city). You don't have to "swing by" friends' boorish holiday parties or make the round of business parties, you don't have to scribble thank-you notes, and you don't have to figure out how long you have to wait before throwing out that stack of holiday cards bearing photos of your friends' adorable children.

But come Mother's Day, this five-month idyll comes to an end, and the intensity builds to a blurred crescendo: After Mother's Day comes Memorial Day, Father's Day, the Fourth of July and Labor Day. Then in quick succession come the Jewish High Holy Days, Thanksgiving, Hannukah, Christmas and New Year's (and if you don't spend Christmas and New Year's in St. Bart's, Gstaad or Machu Picchu, don't tell anyone).

And what good do these holidays do for us? If we didn't have them, worker productivity would be up, the G.D.P. would be higher and the dollar would be doing better against the euro.

What about retail sales, you may ask?

Oops. Let us think-we'll get back to you.

Regardless of who really made the connection between baseball and American culture, you could do worse in the aphorism department. God forbid if anybody ever seriously suggested that to know America, one must first understand, say, Talk magazine.

If this year's National League Championship Series between the Braves and the Mets was a window on the wider world of end-of-century America, it would be hard not to conclude that the cultural apocalypse is indeed upon us. We're not slouching towards Gomorrah. We've already crossed the city line.

And it comes down to professional wrestling. This cheesy entertainment, celebrated and indeed promoted in the usual ironic way among the media elites who think all the fake blood and the obscenities and the casual misogyny are really funny in their ironic way, has so penetrated the culture that we apparently don't even notice that its production values have ravaged homespun baseball, and therefore, the living room.

Game 5 of the N.L.C.S., that 15-inning instant classic at Shea Stadium which captured the attention of all but the athletically challenged, may be remembered for all sorts of wonderful drama, but one decidedly un-wonderful moment offered a glimpse through that famous wider window. NBC's cameras, searching the crowd for telling images, found a boy of about 10 caught up in the excitement. Ah, a Ken Burns moment! Alas, the young lad was wearing a T-shirt that read: "Chipper Suck This." And, for the benefit of Chipper Jones, the Met-killing Atlanta third-baseman, the shirt contained an arrow pointing to the innocent little lad's crotch.

Yep: DeTocqueville or Lincoln or Wilde or whoever certainly had it right. To understand America, you have to understand why a 10-year-old was wearing an obscene T-shirt at a championship baseball game.

These sorts of vulgar sentiments are regularly expressed on prime-time television on the various professional wrestling shows whose plot lines are crafted by some of the Ivy League's finest minds. Not coincidentally, the Mets-Braves series was marred by wrestlinglike confrontations between Atlanta's star reliever, the crotch-grabbing, middle-finger-waving John Rocker (even his name suggests a cartoonlike villainy), and Mets' fans, each playing an assigned role in the script. Wouldn't you know-Mr. Rocker is a devotee of professional wrestling; his employer, Ted Turner, owns a professional wrestling federation; and one of the stars of Mr. Turner's sweaty stable was recruited to sing "The Star Spangled Banner" before Game 1 of that holy rite of fall known as the League Championship Series.

The coarse and even dangerous taunting between the self-appointed bad guy (Mr. Rocker) and the hot-breathed Shea Stadium crowd was hardly the only example in recent weeks of fans and players behaving badly. Football fans in Philadelphia cheered when a bad guy, Michael Irvin of the Dallas Cowboys, was severely injured (and momentarily paralyzed) during a game with the Eagles; Boston fans hurled missiles at Yankee players, forcing the players to take cover; Mike Ditka, coach of the New Orleans Saints, gestured obscenely to less-than-appreciative hometown fans. Charming.

The world-weary will note that sports stadiums are not cathedrals, that fans have always erred on the side of vulgarity in making their opinions known. But it was one thing for fans of the football Giants to sing "Goodbye, Allie" to embattled head coach Allie Sherman in the mid-1960's; it is quite another to experience the catcalls in Yankee Stadium's bleachers, where women of all ages, shapes and sizes are regularly invited to display their breasts.

I called my friend Phil Mushnick, sports columnist of the New York Post , to ask how we've managed to get from "Goodbye, Allie" to "Chipper Suck This." Mr. Mushnick, who ought to win a Pulitzer Prize for his relentless exposure of pro wrestling's corrosive effects on children and mainstream sports, noted that the wrestling mentality has produced a generation of fans that associates sports with vulgar, violent spectacle. "Watch these shows," he fairly demanded. "You hear women described as bitches and ho's all the time. And this is on prime time, when kids are watching." T-shirts like "Chipper Suck This" are commonly displayed on these shows, as are raised middle fingers. "And last night, a 9-year-old girl stopped by our house to pick up a newspaper," he said. "She ran out saying she had to get home because wrestling was on."

Behold tomorrow's American, tomorrow's baseball fan.