Hey Star-Ledger’s Julie O’Connor… this is who you are…

We all know who Julie O’Connor is.  She writes those lousy editorials about people when Tom Moran gets too bored to do it.  You know those editorials.  The ones that tell you more about the kind of day the writer is having than about anything actually going on in the world.

Julie O’Connor is part of the problem in corporate journalism today.  Here a colleague of Julie O’Connor is examined rather closely by a panel of the non-corporate/ non-neo-con Honest Left – on the Jimmy Dore show.  Enjoy…

Received opinion… (aka corporate opinion)

Amazing isn’t it?

If only the Star-Ledger had the moral mettle of the Atlantic City Press.

Once upon a time in America… newspapers provided a safe space for the exchange of ideas.  They kept the drama in check, maintained a rational balance, and never let their emotions get the better of them.

You need only read an editorial written by the Star-Ledger’s Julie O’Connor to know that those days are long gone.  Today’s media is all wrapped up in the moment and very, very emotional about it.  There is no civil exchange of ideas, just the daily line that the Establishment media is right… and the average working man and woman is wrong.  And if you disagree with them, they call you a “racist”. 

Once upon a time in America… newspapers didn’t tip their hand as to whose side they were on.  You couldn’t tell if they were leaning Democrat or Republican – and they tried not to give it away until their endorsement a few days before an election.  Now there’s no hiding who they support and what they are.  As the Star-Ledger’s Tom Moran wrote last year:  “Voters will be standing in the booth Tuesday, and our core mission is helping them decide which lever to pull.”

With a “core mission” like that, it sounds like the Star-Ledger needs to register itself as a political action committee.

Of course, there are still a few – very few – old style newspapers.  About the same time the Star-Ledger was publishing its “core mission”, the Atlantic City Press wrote: “Telling readers how to vote, however, is contrary to the mission of newspapers and other media, which is to extend the public’s experience and perspectives.  Newsgathering organizations give the public eyes, ears and memory beyond the capability of an individual.  People want them to be reliable and credible.  When the media start making judgments, their audiences wonder if they’re altering their content to support that judgment too.”

Once upon a time in America… colleges and universities were safe spaces for the exchange of ideas.  Freedom of thought and of speech was respected – even when disagreed with. 

Now look at them.  They threaten those they disagree with and – if they show up anyway – they get violent.  Who would have believed that students would one day get violent over the idea of being exposed to a different point of view?  The parallel to another time, and other students, is an exact one.  And that ended in book burning.

Recently a Sussex County Democrat wrote:   "Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state."  He went on to explain that Fox News should be banned because, in his view, it was “propaganda”.  The idea that this Democrat is aligned with an institution of higher learning – in this case the Sussex County Community College – is chilling. 

The safe space for civil discourse, the safe space for the exchange of ideas, is fast disappearing.  And when society’s “betters” behave irresponsibly – equating words with violence – what do we expect from the “unhinged” elements of society?  Who is teaching society how to hold a civil, rational discussion with someone with whom they disagree?

Instead, by equating words with violence, the editors, reporters, faculty, and administrators are telling society that they engage in violence (with words) and so it is okay for others to engage in violence (on their terms).

The problem with writers like Julie O’Connor, Tom Moran, Matt Arco, and Matt Friedman is their lack of humility and lack of intellectual curiosity.  Their moral certainty has closed the book on considering any viewpoint but their own.  They are good… everybody else is evil.  That makes for a pretty darn predictable writing style.  Pretty darn boring. 

There has been a lot of social change in America.  O’Connor-Moran-Arco-Freidman and the like are in a rush to make everyone conform to those changes.  They believe it to be a moral imperative that any diversity of opinion be labeled and then stamped out.  But they are acting out at a very dangerous time in the world. 

Democracy defeated the older models of totalitarianism because it produced both freedom and prosperity.  Totalitarianism failed to produce either freedom or prosperity.  Now there is a new model of totalitarianism – Chinese fascism – that is quite good at lifting people out of poverty and making them prosperous.  Prosperous… but not free. 

If we lose our safe spaces for civil, rational discussion.  If we lose the ability to exchange ideas.  If we convince our people that they must be “protected” from the freedoms in Bill of Rights – from being exposed to speech they disagree with, from the right to self-defense.  What will we be left with?  Will we embrace the Chinese model if it ensures prosperity and protects us from the “threat” of freedom?

We have been warned before about the inorganic imposition of new cultural ideas on society.  We have been warned about what happens when you are not patient, by that old-fashioned liberal, Mrs. Lillian Smith.  A Southern writer, she was a pioneer in the battle to end segregation. We recommend her book, The Winner Names the Age.  In it, you will find this passage she wrote when she accepted the Charles S. Johnson Award for her work:

“It is his millions of relationships that will give man his humanity… It is not our ideological rights that are important but the quality of our relationships with each other, with all men, with knowledge and art and God that count.

The civil rights movement has done a magnificent job but it is now faced with the ancient choice between good and evil, between love for all men and lust for a group’s power.”

“Every group on earth that has put ideology before human relations has failed; always disaster and bitterness and bloodshed have come.  This movement, too, may fail.  If it does, it will be because it aroused in men more hate than love, more concern for their own group than for all people, more lust for power than compassion for human need.”

“We must avoid the trap of totalism which lures a man into thinking there is only one way, one answer, one option, and that others must be forced into this One Way, and forced into it Now.”

Why is the media shilling for “designated terrorist group” CAIR?

715 residents of New Jersey died on September 11, 2001.  For most, it was a horrific death.  Perhaps Politico’s Matt Friedman has forgotten, or the Bergen Record’s Hannan Adely is too young, or the Star-Ledger’s Rob Jennings just doesn’t care.  We all know Julie O’Connor’s problem… staring in the mirror too long making sure her tin halo is just so politically correct that she forgets all but her own self-image.

For much of the past two weeks, elements of the media have appeared obsessed by the fact that a local party chairman in Sussex County had “re-tweeted” some “tweeter trains” that contained images or language some “might” consider “offensive”.  Of course, the term “offensive” is very subjective. 

The Star-Ledger does not find the burning of the American flag to be offensive – at least to the point that they have never, to our knowledge, called for the resignation of any public or party official who supported the burning of the American flag.  It seems burning the American flag does not rise to the level of “re-tweeting” a “tweet” – such is the mindset of the Star-Ledger.

Apparently dipping a Christian cross into a jar of urine, and calling it art, also does not register as “offensive” in the subjective reasoning of the media.  But a “re-tweet” containing a negative comment about a Muslim congresswoman – who even fellow Democrats acknowledge is anti-Semitic – that apparently merits two weeks of continuous commentary.  It is a funny old world we live in.

As part of the “re-tweets” story, the media has approvingly published statements made by the New Jersey chapter of CAIR, which is short for Council on American-Islamic Relations.  CAIR put out a statement that labeled these “re-tweets” as “anti-Muslim” and “Islamophobic, racist, and xenophobic” and called for the resignation of the local party chairman.

It appears that the media deliberately suppressed something very important about CAIR.  Something most readers would want to know… 

CAIR has been designated a “terrorist organization” by one of America’s closest Islamic allies in the Middle East.  That’s right… a “terrorist organization”.  Don’t you deserve to know that?

It wouldn’t take much effort for a journalist to find out.  Even one of today’s journalists.  Wikipedia explains that CAIR is “a Muslim civil rights and advocacy group. It is headquartered on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., with regional offices nationwide.”  Wikipedia goes on to note:

Critics of CAIR have accused it of pursuing an Islamist agenda[5][6][7] and have claimed that the group is connected to Hamas[8] and the Muslim Brotherhood,[9][7] claims which CAIR has rejected and described as an Islamophobic smear campaign.[10] Due to apparent ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, the government of the United Arab Emirates has designated CAIR as a terrorist organization.[11]

A “terrorist organization”?  That is a very serious matter.

Hamas?  So much has been written about this group’s anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.  So much written about its violence and terrorism, attacks on civilians, on women and children, the murder of Islamic rivals, the use of civilians as human shields, and the conscription of children as soldiers… that you would think even people as thick as Matt Friedman and Rob Jennings would have it together enough to work up a line or two about it. 

Hamas, together with several charities it runs,[438] has been designated by several governments and some academics as a terrorist organization. Others regard Hamas as a complex organization with terrorism as only one component.[439][440] Israel outlawed Hamas in September 1989[441] The United States followed suit in 1995, as did Canada in November 2002.[442] The European Union outlawed Hamas's military wing in 2001 and included Hamas in its list of terrorist organizations in 2003,[443] …Egypt,[448] Saudi Arabia,[449] Japan,[450] New Zealand,[451] Australia and the United Kingdom[452] have designated the military wing of Hamas as a terrorist organization.[453] The organization is banned in Jordan.[454] (Wikipedia)

Imagine being connected to an organization where “terrorism” was a “component”?  And imagine the media ignoring it? 

The Muslim Brotherhood?  Quite a few nations have designated that a   “terrorist organization” as well, including Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

The United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia… these are all Islamic nations and all strong American allies. 

We have offered CAIR the use of these pages to explain how it came to be designated a “terrorist organization” by one of America’s Islamic allies.   

What is most alarming about this story is the media’s apparent focus… on “re-tweets” while a designated “terrorist organization” feeds a willing media its statements, judging what is or isn’t “offensive”, calling on “offenders” to resign, and generally behaving as if it has the moral high ground.  Is the media lazy or culpable? 

If culpable. If the media really does believe in suppressing the truth about CAIR, then no sane person should ever cooperate in helping them do their job again. Walk away. Ignore their phone calls, texts, and emails. Don’t help them write if they won’t be honest about CAIR. Starve them of content. And let their advertisers know what they are up to. They’ll go away soon enough.

Julie O’Connor: Stark raving ideologue

(originally published by CNJ in February 2013)

“It does take great maturity to understand that the opinion we are arguing for is merely the hypothesis we favor, necessarily imperfect, probably transitory, which only very limited minds can declare to be a certainty or a truth.” ― Milan Kundera

According a 2009 account given in the Star-Ledger, Julie O’Connor spent her formative years in that bastion of establishment liberalism, Montclair, New Jersey and now lives in one New Jersey’s Abbott Districts – Jersey City.  Like similar members of the establishment, Ms. O’Connor has had the benefit of most of the state’s income tax payers working hard to subsidize the property taxes paid by the affluent households in her community.  Isn’t it nice to live in one of the wealthy colonies dependent on the largesse of the state’s Democrat Party? 

Isn’t it nice to see your property tax bill subsidized by everyone else – including the 49 percent of the state’s economically deprived children living outside the Abbott Districts?  And this number comes from the state Supreme Court’s own Doin Report.  Even Governor Jim McGreevey’s Education Commissioner said that the state should stop subsidizing rich gentrified urban communities at the expense poor rural ones.

Before joining the Star-Ledger’s editorial board, Ms. O’Connor was active in the Peace Corps – in the vacation paradise known as Costa Rica.  The Ledger’s promotional piece on her notes:  “In her spare time, she enjoys running, drinking chai tea and watching reruns of ‘I Love Lucy.’”  Get the picture?

Somewhere along the way, this hothouse orchid developed quite a mouth on her and an intolerance to civil debate.  If she happens to disagree with your opinion, that makes you “nuts”, and she’ll call you that, in print.

And it doesn’t matter that her own newspaper, in editorial after editorial, once expressed the same concerns about the same issue – if you disagree with Julie O’Connor, you’re “nuts”.

In a February 14, 2013, editorial penned by Julie O’Connor on behalf of the entire Editorial Board and management of the Star-Ledger, Ms. O’Connor put forward the argument that anyone concerned about the unwieldy size, composition, or process that has gone into concocting the Bush-Obama “Terrorism Watch List” and the effects this might have on due process and the protections afforded by the Bill of Rights, was – in Ms. O’Connor’s word – “nuts”.

Apparently she hadn’t read the concerns put forward by the Star-Ledger itself, in earlier editorials:

“Terror list cries out for reform” screams one editorial.  Criticizing the million name list it notes:  “The number of names on the terror list, many as common as ‘Gary Smith’ or ‘Teddy Kennedy,’ guarantees thousands of innocent travelers regularly get pulled aside for questioning at airports and borders. Besides being a pain for ordinary people, it wastes valuable law enforcement time with no real security benefit.”

The Star-Ledger advises the FBI to “shelve” plans to use “profiling” to enhance its “terrorist” watch list.  The Ledger editorial warns:  “Comparing untold numbers of Americans to a terrorist profile would endanger civil liberties and wouldn't be a very effective way of ferreting out those who threaten the nation.”

In another editorial headline, the Star-Ledger concludes that “the watch list is dangerous”, and makes the following observations:  “The flaws in the FBI's handling of names on the nation's terrorist watch list are troubling enough. Inaccurate, outdated or incomplete data are passed along by agents without being reviewed for reliability. The result is a list with many names that shouldn't be there. Here's something more troubling: The FBI is probably doing the best job in government in processing names to be added to the list, according to a recent Justice Department inspector general's report. Other agencies don't share information reliably, don't all follow the same reporting protocols and don't even always define ‘terrorism’ the same way. Information isn't updated. Names aren't removed when people are cleared of any connection to terrorism.”

Those are from just three of the many editorials written before the management and editors of the Star-Ledger executed an about face on the question of due process and the Bill of Rights.  The list is flawed and should not be used as the basis of whether or not we are afforded our constitutionally protected civil rights.  In the following clip, Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert shreds the ridiculousness of the so-called “Terrorist Watch List”, noting that Nobel Prize winner Nelson Mandela was on the list for many years:

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/167607/may-07-2008/terrorist-nelson-mandela

Look, we all know why this editorial was written like a piece of attack mail from the New Jersey Democrat State Committee.  The day before the editorial’s publication, PolitickerNJ.com reported that state Democrat Party leaders had held a strategy session by conference call that day and were “mobilizing” for a “public relations assault” against Republicans on exactly the issue on which Ms. O’Connor labeled Republicans as “nuts”.  Maybe she was on the call?

In the past, Star-Ledger editors and management, through their editorials, have lectured the newspaper’s readers on the importance of “civility” in public discourse.  They have lectured against name-calling and bullying and on the need for a greater understanding of mental health issues and a greater sensitivity to those who suffer from mental health problems.  The Ledger praised then Acting Governor, Senator Dick Codey, for his good service in this area and noted the difficulties braved by the state’s then First Lady.  It is a good thing Julie O’Connor wasn’t selecting the words for that editorial.

Of course, the management of the Star-Ledger is in hock to the state’s Democrat Party and there is little the editorial board can do about it.  Like Julie O’Connor, the Star-Ledger is located in one of the state’s Abbott Districts and the corporation’s property tax bill would rise astronomically if New Jersey were to adopt Fair School Funding.  And the Ledger is only a tiny part of a much larger corporate enterprise with significant holdings that benefit from the largesse of state Democrats. 

Remember how the state’s newspaper industry panicked when they thought they would lose their corporate welfare?  When there was a bill up that would have allowed county and local governments to post notices on-line instead of forcing them to spend the money from property taxes to publish newspaper notices that nobody reads.  That’s right, in the age of digital technology your property tax dollars are being used to prop up a failing business model that depends on deforestation and flushing effluence into waterways. 

But there is a larger question here and it is a really BIG and IMPORTANT question:  The management of New Jersey’s largest newspaper, through its editorial board, appear to believe that due process and the Bill of Rights have no place in our current situation.  That in the twelfth year of the “War on Terror”, with no formal Declaration of War and no end in sight, we as a nation must accept that ideas such as due process, the rule of law, and justice no longer have a place in our society.  They appear to want to convince us that “if we can save just one life. . . for the children” then we should shove the whole Bill of Rights into the shit bin.

Tom Moran, the man entrusted by the management to run the Star-Ledger’s editorial board, has labeled the Constitution as a “source of our woes” and as much as said that we need to scrap the American Constitution in favor of a strong-man executive style of government, similar to what they have in Egypt or Russia.  One idea that Moran floated was to allow newly elected presidents to appoint 10 senators and 50 congressmen to serve “at large”. 

Let’s put President Obama aside for the moment.  Here’s the question for Tommy Moran:  “Would you really want a President Nixon, George W. Bush or even a President Christie with this kind of power?”

What Tom Moran advocates is neo-Fascism disguised as an attempt to break the slow, deliberative process inherent in every democracy.  It is no wonder then that the management and editors of the Star-Ledger want to dump due process and the Bill of Rights in favor of a secret list, with a secret process, developed by an unaccountable bureaucracy answerable only to the executive.

What happened to Blackstone's formulation that it is "better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"?  Too old-fashioned?  Not chai tea enough for our contemporary “lifestyle”?  With thousands of drones set to take to the skies and some in the government arguing that Americans can be killed extra-judicially – is neo-Fascism our future?

Maybe we will get some answers.  CNJ’s editor has been reaching out to people concerned about due process and the Bill of Rights, regardless of party or ideology, because that doesn’t matter.  Without due process and the Bill of Rights, all of us are susceptible to being terrorized by the government of the day.  Who gets terrorized will just depend on the regime.  And who “wins” in a game with no rules? 

In the next week or so, the editor will be contacting the management and editors of the Star-Ledger, to ask them to be part of a cross-party, cross-ideology, cross-community discussion about due process and the Bill of Rights in a time of endless, undeclared “war”.  We will all be watching to see if the Ledger’s apparatchiks have the courage to come out of their well-guarded building to sit down with other Americans to discuss the position put forward in their name, by Julie O’Connor.

Star-Ledger's Tom Moran: An accusation is enough to convict!

Well, there goes the rule of law.

In the future, we should not expect a judicial process to determine our guilt or innocence.  What we should expect is the Moran prescription:  Merely to be accused, then to have a media-appointed judge determine our guilt, and finally a social media firestorm whipped-up to ensure our punishment.

How arrogant must someone like Tom Moran be to believe that he has the power to erase due process and our Republic's democratic traditions?  With his dutiful satellite Julie O'Connor, knelt passively by his side, Moran passes  judgment to take away the civil rights of an American citizen.  To muzzle a point of view by saying that someone should not be permitted to access their constitutional right -- protected by our Bill of Rights -- to run for office and freely voice their opinion.

Hey Julie!  Didn't you recently write an entire column about the falsely accused and admonishing those who would rush to judgment?  Guess your words don't apply to Tom, do they?

Is it not enough that the property taxpayers of New Jersey are made to subsidize out-of-date print media like the Star-Ledger?  Moran and his ilk have used their political relationships to successfully lobby for a law that forces local governments to use money from property taxes to advertise in print media when so many other formats cost nothing.  The law keeps Moran and his kind in a job even as the pressure it places on working people raises New Jersey's foreclosure rate to the highest in the nation.  But this is only one instance of Moran's corruption.

Sadly, Tom Moran and the Star-Ledger newspaper continue to add to the growing stain that is New Jersey's public life.  Moran has long been the subject of derision by professional journalists, who have been appalled by his panegyrics to political bosses like George Norcross.  Moran has long supped at the posterior of the Newhouse clan, who own the Star-Ledger and other organs (Moran amongst them) and for this Moran has been hated by the union workers and journalists who have suffered personal and material privations to service the greed of the Newhouse corporate masters.  Yes, Tom Moran is a sheepish fellow (and from the looks of him he might have been sired by one).

But it hardly ends here.  Tom Moran and his editorial board of sports writers and pom-pom girls have purposefully participated in the lowering of New Jersey's standards in public life.  They have steadfastly ignored the presence of convicted criminals in New Jersey's political system and have unflinchingly remained silent when these convicts were given political power or even elected office. 

When Montclair State University proposed fashioning a course in public service modeled around the life of a bureaucrat and lobbyist who had actually been criminally indicted for public corruption (he was saved from the legal process by an untimely death) Moran and O'Connor did not wince.  There was no admonishment in the Star-Ledger's editorial pages about what they were "celebrating".  The judicial process was mocked -- even though those who were indicted along with this "model of public service" were found to be, most guilty.

You see, to Tom and Julie, public theft and public corruption and criminal conviction and all that once was bad, it no longer matters.  What matters now, so our warm couple insist, is what goes on in your head.  They -- Moran and O'Connor -- want to be the judges of your inner moral conduct.  And while their concern for public morals does not encompass corporate prostitution and office trysts, what they will not tolerate are words.

Words and writing and books and speech are what they are on about.  They will use them, to reach into another person's soul, to determine motives and character, to decide if their subject is worthy of a human consideration, like doubt.

Tom Moran and Julie O'Connor are corporate versions of Captain Beatty in Ray Bradbury's  Fahrenheit 451.  Narcissistic windbags, usurpers of process and of judgment, haters of any way other than their own, of words and of writing that expresses what they do not embrace, and so -- haters of books and of free speech.  They terrorize them without power while sucking corporate ass, are friends of corruption and criminality.  They are authoritarians and the destroyers of liberty.