[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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