Saul Alinsky Should be the Tea Party Darling!

Newt Gingrich is now constantly using the name Saul Alinsky to describe what we'll get if President Obama is re-elected. Media pundits are saying that most people don't know what he means by that. Some in the media say that the Russian name is meant to get those ignorant of Alinsky to think of Obama as very far left and radical, without even understanding who Alinsky was.

Gingrich's stump speech includes this about Obama, “If you look at his background he is really a lot more Saul Alinsky and radicalism than he is with traditional American models.”

So, who is this Saul Alinsky character anyway?

It might surprise many, including Gingrich, that Alinsky was vehemently opposed to welfare handouts to the poor. In fact he said, in an interview with William F. Buckley Jr. on his show Firing Line, “... the Poverty Program was a prize piece of political pornography. “ He was talking about the War on Poverty. My take on those comments is that Alinsky actually thought that welfare handouts were a counterproductive force for the poor community and were instituted so that politicians could act like they were doing something about poverty.

In that same interview with Buckley, Alinsky said, “I find myself very much in agreement with the thinking of the early revolutionary leaders. I'm thinking of men like Madison, Jay, Hamilton et cetera, who I think were extraordinarily politically sophisticated and very well read and very thoughtful in terms of implications of their actions.”

He went on to describe how the founding fathers were very aware that the situation would change over time and that society would need to adjust. “Whatever future there was, the future of an open society, it rested in the fact of having as many people involved as citizens being able to act as citizens, able to have power.”

Alinsky's community organizing was based on getting people to participate in democracy and the political process. “I'm using political strictly in the Greek sense here, whereby through getting together, through having a convention, through having an election of officers, agreement on policies, and so forth, they can turn to other sectors of society and say: here are our representatives; these are the men for you to deal with in the democratic give and take and decision making, et cetera. Without this, which I think is a primary element in the democratic mix, the whole democratic society begins to founder.”

So what in all of this could the Tea Party and Newt Gingrich have a problem? Is it that when these principles are denied people, when their voting rights are not honored, when their voices are not heard, that they show up at city hall in Chicago and shut down the city government until they are heard? Is that Gingrich's problem with Alinsky? Perhaps the people could show up at the US Capitol lawn, or the tea ships in Boston harbor to demonstrate. See, we are right back to the Tea Party.

I went to a learned friend to try and understand how Newt Gingrich could benefit from comparing someone to Alinsky. Alan Abramowitz, Political Science Professor at Emory University, a Stanford PhD in Poli Sci wrote to me “I think Republicans like to use people like Alinsky as punching bags because it goes over well with their conservative base, even when it doesn't really make sense. Very few of them know anything about Alinsky but it's easy to pigeon-hole him as a left-wing rabble-rouser. The words 'community organizer' are enough to set these people off, as we saw when Palin used them to go after Obama.”

But perhaps we are being too easy on Gingrich here, perhaps we are not giving him enough credit. Yes, it could be that the Russian name, Alinsky, is enough to attract the most ignorant voters to support Gingrich. There could be more to it though, as Alinsky's powerless, whom he organized, on the most part were poor and even more so that they were minorities, people of color. Perhaps it is not the radicalism of Alinsky's methods that Gingrich is using for political gain, but rather subliminal racism to attract those who, otherwise, totally agree with and emulate the democratic theories espoused by the son of Jewish Russian immigrants, Saul Alinsky.

Flight 90 was the Beginning of the End

This evening makes 30 years since one of the pivotal moments in my journalism career, January 13, 1982.

I was a cameraman at WTSP-TV in Tampa. Just before the evening news we started getting reports that a plane had gone down in the Potomac River in Washington, D.C.. Shortly after the first reports, we learned that the plane was heading to Tampa International Airport. I raced to the airport.

On the way I radioed in and was told to meet a live truck there and reporter Dennis Roper. They were right at the drop-off curb. The truck operator was setting up, so I grabbed my sticks and camera and hustled over. We figured out where we were putting the camera and I started taping down cables across the sidewalk.

My hand radio was on my hip. The desk called. "Go ahead," I responded.

"Jim, we found out that the people waiting on the flight, up at the gate, haven't been told yet that it crashed. We want you to walk up rolling, inform them of the crash and get their reaction on tape."

I looked at Roper. He looked like he had just swallowed a cockroach, his eyes were like silver dollars and he coughed. I picked up my radio and keyed the mic. "Sorry you are breaking up. Say again."

The desk repeated their idea.

I responded, "Look we must be in a bad spot here, I really can't make out what you are saying." I proceeded to get the live shot ready. We did our live shot.

When I got back to the station, I was basically fired. The assistant news director screamed at me. "Well, young man. It might interest you to know that Channel 8 DID send a crew up to inform those waiting on the flight and got it on tape! You are on very thin ice!"

I walked out and went home.

A day or so later, the Tampa Tribune ran a blistering slam of Channel 8 and their coverage that night. The shooters at my station had been giving me their support by calling me and in the newsroom. My chief photographer was a little more job-scared than that and was testing the wind direction. He merely told me to keep my head down for a bit. A special session of the Press Club was called early that next week to discuss it and to come to the agreement that we do not do that in "the press."

I suppose that I was vindicated, but it took a week or so before the station management seemed to forget about it. I never did. It was the beginning of the end of TV News, from my personal perspective. The Fourth Estate Sale.