[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 84 (Monday, June 10, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H6096]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                AMERICA'S ECONOMIC LULL BEFORE THE STORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Duncan] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I intend to get into something else, but 
just on what the gentlewoman from Ohio has just mentioned, let me say 
this: Some people think because the stock market is at record highs 
that that means that everything is OK, but I think we need to ask 
ourselves, are we really in the lull before the storm? Because in the 
last 3 years, 1.5 million people have lost their jobs due to corporate 
downsizing, and as one of the national newscasts reported a few days 
ago, almost all of the people, unlike in the eighties, almost all of 
the people who lost their jobs in the nineties have stayed out of work 
on average about twice as long as in the eighties and they have had to 
take jobs at far less pay than the ones they lost.
  In addition to that, we had a $153 billion trade deficit last year, 
and every leading economist will tell us that conservatively we lose 
20,000 jobs per billion dollars. So that means we lost over 3 million 
jobs due to poor trade policies just in the last year.
  And then, even more importantly than that, Mr. Speaker, our 
unemployment rate is relatively low but our underemployment rate is 
terrible. We have millions of college graduates who cannot find jobs in 
the fields for which they were trained, and we are ending up with the 
best educated waiters and waitresses in the entire world. We need to 
work on these things if we are going to straighten this country out and 
make it a land of opportunity again, as if should be.


                     liberal bias of national media

  Mr. Speaker, tonight I wanted to get into the very liberal bias of 
the national news media.
  Mr. Speaker, a couple of weeks ago, the superintendent of the Prince 
Georges County, MD school system revoked an invitation to U.S. Supreme 
Court Justice Clarence Thomas to speak at a graduation ceremony.
  Another high-ranking Prince Georges official called this action the 
``epitome of intolerance and bigotry.''
  She was certainly correct.
  Today, in the U.S.A. Today newspaper, columnist Richard Benedetto, 
has written an outstanding column about this and about the very unfair 
way in which the liberal national news media treats conservatives.
  In fact, this liberal bias, this double standard, is so obvious that 
longtime CBS correspondent Bernard Goldbert, wrote recently that ``the 
old argument that the networks, and other media elites have a liberal 
bias, is so blatantly true that it's hardly worth discussing anymore.''
  In fact, the Freedom Forum and U.S.A. Today recently conducted a poll 
of Washington reporters and Bureau chiefs and found that only 2 percent 
classified themselves as conservatives.
  At any rate, back to today's column by Mr. Benedetto.
  Mr. Speaker, I submit the following article for the Record.

                 [From the U.S.A. Today, June 10, 1996]

                     Media Silent on Right's Rights

                         (By Richard Benedetto)

       Picture this:
       Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is invited to 
     speak at an awards ceremony at a suburban Washington, D.C., 
     school. A member of the school board who is also a member of 
     the Christian Coalition objects because Ginsburg supports 
     abortion rights.
       The board member threatens demonstrations. The school 
     superintendent, seeking to avoid a messy scene, withdraws the 
     invitation.
       Of course, this never happened. But imagine it did.
       Women's groups would have been outraged. The American Civil 
     Liberties Union would have denounced it as an egregious 
     breach of free speech. The hue and cry in the media would 
     have made it a national cause celebre. Liberal politicians 
     would have been incensed.
       A similar incident did occur last month, except the Supreme 
     Court justice was not Ginsburg--it was Clarence Thomas, a 
     conservative and the only black member of the nation's 
     highest court.
       Remarkably absent from the debate were the free-speech 
     groups that usually rush to the defense of those being 
     prevented from legitimately expressing their views, no matter 
     how controversial. Black and civil rights groups also took a 
     pass.
       And the national news media largely ignored or played down 
     the story.
       It's the kind of thing that provides ammunition to anyone 
     who believes the media are in the clutches of liberals. In 
     this case, the complaint wouldn't be that a liberal bias 
     crept into how the story was reported, but that it influenced 
     how the story was played--or not played.
       Why hasn't more attention been paid? Maybe it's because 
     Thomas doesn't hold the ``right'' opinions.
       In the lexicon of political correctness, support of 
     abortion rights is good; opposition to affirmative action is 
     bad. And for those with the temerity to go against the grain, 
     the laws of free speech and rules of civility apparently 
     don't apply.
       One of the few national columnists to defend Thomas was 
     Richard Cohen of The Washington Post. While he doesn't 
     subscribe to all the jurist's views, he argued Thomas has a 
     right to be heard. ``The black inner city has gone to hell in 
     a handbasket while (Thomas' critics) have been leading the 
     African-American community,'' Cohen said. ``If they are so 
     sure that their path is the correct one, they should spend 
     less time vilifying Clarence Thomas and more time engaging in 
     a battle of ideas.''
       The invitation for Thomas to speak at the school followed a 
     student field trip to the Supreme Court. There, Thomas was 
     the only justice to invite the students into his chambers. 
     For 90 minutes he patiently spoke and answered questions. The 
     invitation was extended by the PTA as a thank you.
       Thomas, unlike the other justices, routinely visits with 
     students when they tour the court.
       These days we walk around wondering why our young people 
     seem to be in the grip of a moral and spiritual crisis. When 
     public officials, community leaders and news media 
     demonstrate such double standards, the reasons why should be 
     clearer.

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