February 2019 - Steve Salaita

What to do about Corporate Media

Should leftists pursue access to corporate media? Only if they’re willing to accept rejection.

If you consider yourself a leftist, corporate media are your enemy. I don’t use the term “enemy” to sound melodramatic. Nor do I use it hyperbolically. I’m thinking about its denotation as a person or entity whose interests are anathema to your own. If you are not of the elite (culturally, politically, or economically), or don’t long to join the club, then hostility exists between you as a consumer of news and those who deliver the product, even if you don’t always see it. In fact, corporate media view you with bald contempt. You needn’t return the favor (though it won’t hurt to try), but it’s wise to understand that the industry is beyond redemption (by its nature) and does its best to keep you disempowered.

Except for Palestine

Progressive Except for Palestine (PEP) is a myth. Adherence to Zionism inhibits comprehensive political decency.

Progressive except for Palestine, PEP (or PeP), is a familiar appellation. Palestine solidarity activists have been using it for a long time to describe the kind of leftist who professes support for racial and economic justice without extending that concern to Palestinians. In other words, the appellation describes standard-issue liberals in the metropole.

In recent months a cognate has emerged: feminist except for Palestine. This species, often indistinguishable from the PEP, locates in settler colonization a space for women’s liberation. In some cases, FEPs affirm Zionist civility by highlighting male barbarity among Israel’s enemies. They have a cozy relationship with US intervention in backward regions of the globe and imagine that gender equality can be realized through Zionism. Lately, they’ve been trying to rid the Women’s March of radical affectations.

An Honest Living

What is it like to go from a tenured professorship to an hourly wage driving buses? This piece tries to make sense of an unusual transition.

About halfway to the lot, a ribbon of cobalt rises on the horizon; when it’s cloudy, a common occurrence in the mid-Atlantic, the darkness stays pure. The spectrum of color will change with the seasons, but now it is winter and the sun comes slowly, if it appears at all.

Upon arrival, I exit my car, leaving it unlocked, and strap on my hazel backpack, which holds a bottle of tap water, a book (usually detective or spy fiction), lens cleaner, Imodium, a pen (I hate being anywhere without one), cough drops, hand sanitizer, two granola bars, and a banana. Garden mat and flashlight in hand, I begin my safety check, circling the vehicle for anything suspicious. Then I inspect rims, lug nuts, and tire tread before kneeling on the pavement to check the frame, slack adjusters, fuel tank, steering linkage, bushings, shock absorbers, brake lining, and a bunch of other doohickeys, a task that age and temperature make especially unpleasant. I open the door, examine the stairs and handrail, click the interior lights, unlock emergency hatches, and walk the aisle to make sure seats are properly bolted, exiting again into the cold morning, its cobalt replaced by the lucent bloom of dawn, where I check tire pressure, light covers, and compartments. After lifting the hood, I shine the flashlight on belts and engine parts and fluid tanks, finally removing the floppy dipstick to verify proper oil level. An elaborate brake test, three more walk-arounds, some additional prodding and dickering, and I’m done.