The Fourth Estate

Went across the river and I lay down to sleep
When I woke up, put the shackles on my feet
It takes a worried man to sing a worried song
I'm worried now, but I won't be worried long
--Worried Man Blues, A. P. Carter
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Yesterday I discovered my brother-in-law had been laid off from his erstwhile recession-proof job. My sis says they are paying over $1,000 to keep their COBRA health benefits for the time being.

They are Good Americans. He works a hard 40-hour-week; she volunteers at various charities, sitting on the board and trying to make a positive change in their community. Since she now has to work for pay, the volunteering is on the back burner.

Journalist Bill Moyers featured bloggers Glenn Greenwald and Jay Rosen on his Journal program last night, both of whom agreed that the Washington Press corps is complicit in maintaining the political staus quo. There is little separating Left from Right, and The Fourth Estate is on the inside every bit as much as the politicos they cover. They have a script which carries from one administration to the next.

Why is the economy not front and center every day of the week? Why are we inundated with Tom Daschle and the Octuplet mother? My sister doesn't care that elections were held in Afghanistan, she wants to know if her surgery will be covered.

As President Obama settles into a middle path after promising radical change, so too, the press follows its established role. Neither the press nor the politicians want to shake things up, lest they find themselves on the outside. Both guests agreed that the power of protest -- whether written or street-style -- is what is necessary to shake the powers that be out of their comfort zone.

But the press will not cover protest, so the public imagines everyone else is inert and impotent. Protesters, if given any ink at all, are portrayed as marginal elements. Moyers' impassioned closing remarks are noteworthy, especially coming as they do from a gentle man and a minister:

As Washington obsessed all week over the fate of one nominee to the cabinet, and as we watched hearings about the failure of watchdog agencies going to sleep on the job, we heard almost nothing of the people across the country suffocating in the wreckage of their lives. Some of us born in the Depression still remember the song made famous by the Carter Family singers, called the "Worried Man Blues".

"I went across that river and I lay down to sleep. When I woke up there were shackles on my feet."

The day my father was fired from his job at Manly's Appliance Store, he came walking home as if he had shackles on his feet. I still remember the look on his face. He wasn't yet 50, but had suddenly turned old, the way a lot of people look today who are losing their jobs. Their stomachs are knotted with fear as the life they had come to expect is fading fast. Not because of their own failures but because our political and financial elites rigged the economy for their own advantage.

John F. Kennedy famously said, "Life is unfair," and so it is. But it wouldn't feel as unfair if the shackles wound up instead on the well-heeled feet of Wall Street and Washington's elect. That's the change we need, the change we can really believe in.