NPR Plays Dumb: 'Nothing Terribly Ideological' About Saul Alinsky
People at National Public Radio boast about themselves as a network for the smart people. So why must they try to tell smart people that a man who writes a book called “Rules for Radicals” offered “nothing terribly ideological” in his activism?
In an attempt to "correct" Newt Gingrich on Monday night’s All Things Considered newscast, NPR correspondent Ina Jaffe became merely the latest in a line of liberal-media specialists in selling the Opposite of Reality: that Alinsky wasn’t a leftist, and that besides, the conservatives are the ones using Alinsky’s radical rules:
INA JAFFE: Barack Obama proudly talks about his days as a community organizer in Chicago. And the late Chicagoan Saul Alinsky wrote the book on community organizing. Two books actually. The most famous is "Rules For Radicals," published in 1971. Despite that title, there was really nothing terribly ideological about Saul Alinsky, says his biographer, Sanford Horwitt.
Stop. The other book is titled “Reveille for Radicals.” Could we please stop trying to imply he wasn’t a radical leftist writing to a radical audience? He wasn’t leftist, said the biographer, he just wanted to hand all the power to the lower-income people:
SANFORD HORWITT: He wanted to see especially lower income people who were getting pushed around to exercise some influence and even power over decisions that affected their lives.
JAFFE: Alinsky began that work in the 1930s and kept at it until his death 40 years ago. In an interview with the late Studs Terkel, Alinsky said he was much more concerned with the how of politics than the what.
Insisting Alinsky’s not ideological by citing Studs Terkel is like trying to claim Newt Gingrich is not ideological by citing Jonah Goldberg. Terkel was very bit as radical as Alinsky.
Like Soledad O’Brien and Melinda Henneberger, Jaffe suggested that Alinsky’s model of disrupting the powerful in their own neighborhoods is now a right-wing tactic: “The tactic is still used today and sometimes by conservatives. Opponents of abortion rights, for example, have picketed the homes of abortion providers.” How this makes Alinsky less radical is anyone’s guess.
How stupid does NPR think conservatives are? Answer: pretty stupid. Jaffe turned to Newt-phobic moderate Republican strategist Dan Schnur to suggest conservatives really don’t know this Alinsky fellow like the smart NPR people who know he’s somehow not a radical:
JAFFE: Dan Schnur, a political analyst at the University of Southern California, says when Gingrich mentions Alinsky's name, his audience doesn't know these details and doesn't particularly care. [!]
DAN SCHNUR: They know that he represents a liberal viewpoint and, from the context of Gingrich's remarks, they know that he's someone to disapprove of.
JAFFE: Schnur says Gingrich has two goals in mind when he brings up Alinsky.
SCHNUR: Not only does he get to link Obama to a noted liberal activist, but he gets to remind voters what Gingrich considers to be one of his own greatest strengths, his intellectual firepower.
JAFFE: But in a debate in Florida last week, Gingrich's claim to be the big ideas candidate was belittled as grandiose by rival Rick Santorum. Gingrich embraced the criticism.
GINGRICH: I accept the charge that I am an American, and Americans are instinctively grandiose because they believe in a bigger future. (Applause)
JAFFE: So, Gingrich took Santorum's attack and turned it into something positive for himself - a page right out of the Saul Alinsky playbook.
- Tim Graham's blog
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Comments
I have a feeling that...
Submitted by optimist on Tue, 01/31/2012 - 3:33pm.
...claiming that the conservatives are the ones using the radical rules is one of Alinksy's rules.
Right.
Submitted by Quasi-socialist on Tue, 01/31/2012 - 3:55pm.
Like Alinsky was the first person in history to turn around a criticism into a compliment? I'm pretty sure sophists of classical Greece taught that as as an oratory skill!
Quote from Wikpedia
Yeah, like all the dispossessed will magically have the same view of what the world "should be", so it will never end up a struggle of between peers trying to run the whole show.
Yeah, changing the world to what you want it to be, outside of what other people living in it, want, that's not ideological. Our word is "double-plus-good"! And in the titles to his rules, I'm sure he meant "the enemy" in a nice way.
Alinsky's "Quotes" Page
Submitted by BondPlainBond on Tue, 01/31/2012 - 5:39pm.
After Alinsky's "Dedication Page" in "Rules for Radicals", this page of quotations is next:
Citing Lucifer as one of his "go-to" guys says it all.
Who is Alinsky biographer Jaffe cites as an objective authority?
Submitted by tricityjdw on Tue, 01/31/2012 - 4:14pm.
Jaffe cites Alinsky biographer Sanford Horwitt as the ultimate objective authority on Alinsky. Who is Horwitt? He is a former speechwriter for the far-left Democratic congressman Abner Mikva, who as a federal judge leaked a draft court opinion in an attempt to sabotage Clarence Thomas' Supreme Court nomination, then worked as Clinton's White House Counsel, then was a big booster of Obama.
Horwitt also wrote a highly favorable biography of far-left Senator Russ Feingold. A book review by the liberal publication Publishers Weekly called the book, "a love letter to Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold" (with such things written by Horwitt in the book as "leadership reflected both his passion for the democratic ideals he had absorbed from his family, and his identification with American civil rights and the political heroes who sought to turn those ideals into reality," "represents the progressive side of the Democratic divide more clearly and authentically than any successful politician on the national stage," and "With Wisconsin progressives, efficient government and fiscal prudence were not empty slogans; they were simply the way government was supposed to work. And honesty and high ethical standards were practical, indispensable ingredients of efficient government because they curbed tendencies toward cronyism, graft, and other forms of corruption."). PW also writes that "his intent here seems to be one of preaching to the choir" for a "one-sided polit-bio."
Jaffe either didn't do her homework on Horwitt or didn't care about Horwitt's background.
It is NPR
Submitted by John21 on Tue, 01/31/2012 - 4:39pm.
I am sure they got someone to read it to them and skip all the radical parts (not that NPR would recognise radical) and the White House sent them the correct talking points for their report
They try and portray the feeling that they actually read it but we know that is quite impossible. They would only agree that it is the standard tactics of the liberals and there fore not remarkable at all.
Fox News' Odd Reporting on Alinsky
Submitted by BondPlainBond on Tue, 01/31/2012 - 5:22pm.
Believe Gingrich is correct in reminding America about Obama's radical connections which the media happily ignored in the 2008 election cycle.
Romney, in an interview with Hannity last night, hemmed and hawed about his doing the same thing, qualifying his "going after Obama" with "IF the truth is our standard", meaning he gives no credence to the Obama-Alinsky-Other Radicals connections and would focus on economy, jobs, and foreign policy issues. What a wimp!
Unable to find video of James Rosen's report, but, it was very strange and soft on Alinsky.
I kept waiting for Rosen to hit the high points of Alinksy's teaching of radical activism and to recount the top three "rules" for radicals; never happened.
Even the infamous photo of Obama at a blackboard with Alinsky's rules in flowchart form being taught to college kids as part of their liberal (Progressive) indoctrination was oddly missing.
Rosen's report was about as easy-going and lite and fluffy as he could make it.
Rosen is a Beatles authority, maybe latent hippie dippy ideology is hovering around his otherwise astute and erudite mind.
(FoxNews') James Rosen’s Strange Exoneration of Saul Alinsky
FrontPageMag.com
Posted by Mark Taps on | Jan 27th, 2012
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/01/27/james-rosens-strange-exoneration-of-saul-alinsky/
and
Gingrich Attacks on Obama Resurrect Saul Alinsky
by James Rosen Published
January 25, 2012 | FoxNews.com
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/01/25/gingrich-attacks-on-obama-resurrect-saul-alinsky/
The Connection Between Obama and Saul Alinsky
The O'Reilly Factor | FoxNews Jan 24, 2012
Alan Colmes and Monica Crowley break down the link between the President and the infamous Chicago community organizer http://video.foxnews.com/v/1412414278001/the-connection-between-obama-and-saul-alinsky
Monica hits all the highlights and Colmes, as usual, says there's nothing to it.
Vote Santorum in 2012!!!!!
NPR next week
Submitted by DirtyDave777 on Tue, 01/31/2012 - 5:56pm.
Hitler really wasn't Genocidal.
People just misinterpret his visionary concern of Golbal Over Population.
What is galling is the presumption that Conservatives don't read
Submitted by acaiguana on Tue, 01/31/2012 - 9:18pm.
So, we can say anything we want about the ignorant right.
check.
ACA
...
Quoted from: 'Acaiguana notes from the Underground' (Soon to be at theaters near you)
Interesting choice of words -
Submitted by killa37 on Tue, 01/31/2012 - 10:19pm.
Interesting choice of words - I'm guessing that there was 'nothing terribly idealogical' about Marx, Stalin, Lenin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, Phol Pot, the Japanese Imperial leaders, Genghis Khan, Attilla the Hun, or..................Mooooooooooohamed???? And I could go on and on about those 'non-idealogical' guys, I guess......................Alinsky was just a conservative guy who happened to be as American as apple pie.
Boy, they're sure doing a make-over on him these days, since his name (and agenda) has finally surfaced for the masses and the MSM. I guess 4 years ago, they never heard any of it - kinda like Boy Barry in Rev. Wright's church.