Media criticism from American left-wing with window of opportunity in 1989 . . . High Trajectory?

And the case of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. It was really more age discrimination since Allan Bakke was 33 when he first applied to medical school, which might seem almost like an ideal age since the person has some life experience and maturity, but medical schools sure didn't look at it that way back then.

So, the only way you could get at the case was by going after the university's affirmative action program. The Supreme Court ruled that race or background could be a plus factor but no hard quota.

One of the things which I find humorous about the case is that when Allan finally graduated from medical school in 1982, he was smack dab in the middle of his class! :) I mean, so much for these super professional admission decisions.
 
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In a mid-90s affirmative action case, Hopwood v. Texas, there was an aspect in which Hopwood was clipped by Univ. Texas admissions based on the average LSAT score from her college. That is, she was punished for going to an average college* in this weird way. This had a bigger effect than the affirmative action program,

and yet, apparently, the only thing you could get at legally was the affirmative action program.

===============

You could even argue that she showed a lot of potential by personally getting a good LSAT coming from an average college. But that is not the formula admissions used.
 
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Of all the things students could validly complain about college,

That some full professors just aren't interested in teaching, that adjunct professors are way underpaid, that we're required to buy these super expensive textbooks some of which are written by the professor, that in addition we're sometimes required to buy "course packets" from the copy center,

that being required to take two courses in government, two in American history, English lit, etc, etc, only about a fourth of my courses can be in my major, that you have to drop a class super early to get any kind of refund, that the dorm is badly run, that some RAs don't take their job at all seriously, that some of the people at the computer center aren't very good or don't even try, that some professors are badly organized, don't tell in advance how they grade

that I'm required to take PE. Shouldn't that be my personal decision?

all this and somehow in the early '90s we latch onto "political correctness" And really, it was these older adults making this charge, not the students themselves.
 
and yet, if there's an overly polite description and someone says, "that's being politically correct," people laugh nervously and there's kind of an aspect of shared thought crime.

the psychology runs pretty deep
 
Political correctness: how the right invented a phantom enemy
The Guardian [UK], by Moira Weigel, 30 Nov 2016

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/30/political-correctness-how-the-right-invented-phantom-enemy-donald-trump


' . . . As Jane Mayer documents in her book, Dark Money: the Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, [Allan] Bloom and [Dinesh] D’Souza were funded by networks of conservative donors – particularly the Koch, Olin and Scaife families [Emphases added] – who had spent the 1980s building programmes that they hoped would create a new “counter-intelligentsia”. (The New Criterion, where Kimball worked, was also funded by the Olin and Scaife Foundations.) In his 1978 book A Time for Truth, William Simon, the president of the Olin Foundation, had called on conservatives to fund intellectuals who shared their views: “They must be given grants, grants, and more grants in exchange for books, books, and more books.” . . . '
potential POD: Some of the maneuvers of these billionaires are exposed. Heck, no one likes being played like a cheap fiddle.

And then, Bill Simon, pres. of the Olin Foundation, and his goal of "books, books, books" ? ? ? Although some of us here at AH may be an exception, at least for some seasons of our lives, the majority of our fellow citizens don't read all that many books on any kind of regular basis.

another potential POD: American liberals and lefties don't concede AM talk radio to conservatives and the right.

That's a lot more important. Conceding talk radio was a dreadful mistake, I'm not sure how it happened.
 
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...Conceding talk radio was a dreadful mistake, I'm not sure how it happened.
Murphy's Golden Rule I imagine. "Whoever has the gold makes the rules." In this case, broadcast media were under traditional regulation for fairness that privileged a technocratic, basically pro-corporate but with a veneer of civility and pretense of balance letting opinions to the left of the Wall Street Journal get a word in edgewise, as long as they weren't too far left anyway. Moderate Democrats versus moderate Republicans with the occasional pretty far right conservative to shake things up a bit. Thus it was before Reagan ripped up the Fairness Doctrine. That was a OneTwoThreeGO! uttered in the middle of the Reagan years when corporate and generic right wing was riding pretty high, and only a handful of media of any kind--a few radio networks on a small scale (mainly Pacifica) and no TV to speak of was in hands that could reasonably be called left wing. The rest of it was for profit but owned by people with strong right wing interests. So a liberal and fair minded owned conglomerate would stick to the tried and true pablum of the regulated era, but a right wing cowboy owned conglomerate would jump right in with what they wanted to hear, and take extra credit for being controversial, edgy, bold, breaking the mold, etc. A bunch of leftists could agitate all they wanted to put Jim Hightower or Molly Ivins or Noam Chomsky on the air--you could hear Chomsky on Pacifica sometimes. But who has the clout with the station owners to make a pitch that a left wing audience will pull in advertisers who will pay, when the lefties are constantly denouncing the morals and practices of both the station owners and the ad biz, not to mention wealth in general and urging employees at all levels to rise up and get uppity? Only by scraping up the money to purchase broadcast licenses plus all the bric a brac and personnel to run a radio station can a left wing network exist; the corporate world even if too cynical to be actively hostile (as they would be if they took the lefties seriously, and quite a few do take us seriously) will anyway do no favors, and neither will the government. Especially not the mid-80s Reagan administration!
 
You'd need a less neoliberal left. Cuomo or even Brown in '92 with Bill Clinton being out of the picture, somehow.
I respectfully disagree. Clinton was all about jobs and the economy. The only problem is that these are big, systemic issues hard to make that much progress on.

Plus, Clinton lost a lot of momentum on the shoals of overly complicated healthcare reform.
 

youtube: 1992 Bill Clinton Campaign Ads (around October 1992)

These are great ads! :) If Clinton had been able to do even a third of this on the economic front, he would have been more popular than Reagan.
 
I respectfully disagree. Clinton was all about jobs and the economy. The only problem is that these are big, systemic issues hard to make that much progress on.

Plus, Clinton lost a lot of momentum on the shoals of overly complicated healthcare reform.
Clinton's approach was to implement Reaganism while going to the voters with a combination of the old icons and GOP-lite economics.
 
Political correctness: how the right invented a phantom enemy
The Guardian [UK], by Moira Weigel, 30 Nov 2016

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/30/political-correctness-how-the-right-invented-phantom-enemy-donald-trump

' . . . After 2001, debates about political correctness faded from public view, replaced by arguments about Islam and terrorism. But in the final years of the Obama presidency, political correctness made a comeback. Or rather, anti-political-correctness did.

'As Black Lives Matter and movements against sexual violence gained strength, a spate of thinkpieces attacked the participants in these movements, criticising and trivialising them by saying that they were obsessed with policing speech. Once again, the conversation initially focused on universities, but the buzzwords were new. Rather than “difference” and “multiculturalism”, Americans in 2012 and 2013 started hearing about “trigger warnings”, “safe spaces”, “microaggressions”, “privilege” and “cultural appropriation”.

'This time, students received more scorn than professors [Emphases added]. If the first round of anti-political-correctness evoked the spectres of totalitarian regimes, the more recent revival has appealed to the commonplace that millennials are spoiled narcissists, who want to prevent anyone expressing opinions that they happen to find offensive. . . '
And it's worth asking if there was an earlier round of anti-PC like in the 1970s?
 
. . . Only by scraping up the money to purchase broadcast licenses plus all the bric a brac and personnel to run a radio station can a left wing network exist; . . .
Well, George Soros is a rich guy who supports liberal causes. The liberals and lefties may not have as many rich supporters as the conservatives and righties have, but they do have some.

The UK, at least for a time, had ships doing aptly named "pirate" broadcasts off the coast, I think primarily rock-n-roll.

Here in the states, Mbanna Kantako did his Zoom Black Magic Liberation Radio on microradio in Springfield, Illinois. And when he started broadcasting interviews with residents about police brutality, that's about when the FCC moved in. The FCC said they were in favor of microradio, but so many procedural hurdles, not really. This was about a year or two before the 1991 video of the beating of Rodney King by LA police officers, so maybe an earlier start to the Black Lives Matter movement?
I think there were potential PODs
 
. . A bunch of leftists could agitate all they wanted to put Jim Hightower or Molly Ivins or Noam Chomsky on the air . .
I like Molly and Jim, find Noam to be a little dour and pessimistic for my tastes! ;)

Seriously, and even though I myself once wrote a timeline which included rock stars and country music stars doing fundraisers for homeowners fighting toxic waste, this star system is probably one of the problems.

Notice from The Guardian article that the right-wing think tanks were financing and building careers for younger conservatives, almost like a baseball team having a farm system. The liberals probably should have done something similar.
 
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That'd require a left that was socialist or at least labor influenced ant not mcgovernite/clinton(either clinton) new left/progressive.
 
Clinton's approach was to implement Reaganism while going to the voters with a combination of the old icons and GOP-lite economics.
Reagan should get credit for at the very least allowing the end of the cold war to happen.

And Clinton should get credit for at the very least allowing the economic good times of the 1990s to happen.
 
http://peoplefirstwv.org/old-front/history-of-people-first/

‘ . . On January 8, 1974, the People First movement began in Salem, Oregon, with the purpose of organizing a convention where people with developmental disabilities could speak for themselves and share ideas, friendship and information. In the course of planning the convention, the small group of planners decided they needed a name for themselves. A number of suggestions had been made when someone said, “I’m tired of being called retarded – we are people first.” The name People First was chosen and the People First self-advocacy movement began. The first People First Convention was held in Oregon in October 1974 and 560 people attended. . ’
People who can probably do a heck of a lot if we merely give them half a chance. And yes, people who in former times may have been called retarded.

And please notice, this is a lot earlier than the early ‘90s.
 
And yet around 1993, I remember a column in a student newspaper referring to an administrator as “horizontally challenged,” meaning the guy was fat. Well, it’s funny, and it’s doubly funny since it’s the cover and illusion of being polite.

But notice in this case you’re kind of puncturing a stuffed shirt, you’re going after someone in a position of power.
 
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Reagan should get credit for at the very least allowing the end of the cold war to happen.

And Clinton should get credit for at the very least allowing the economic good times of the 1990s to happen.
The end of the cold war was only a good thing if you're involved in the finance sector. There being no other large-scale economic models to choose from enabled neoliberal abuses of the sort we've seen in the 1990s and onwards. Notice nothing like Bill Clinton's destroying the US industrial base with free trade or welfare reform of the sort recommended by Charles Murray was able ot even be seriously proposed in the 80s. You know, the same one who wrote 'The Bell Curve".
 
basically reactionaries could always play the "goddam Commie!" card against left-wing "extremists", but since they feared a real Communist takeover they had to keep the productive economy in working order. Remove the Soviet threat and idiotic right wingers can be let loose to go to town with their various heart's desires that have been restrained by prudence hitherto. It doesn't have to happen but it can.

And shoving the USA rightward in a fashion that causes spiraling economic domestic collapse works brilliantly to undermine and thus preempt potential left wing backlash if the process can be blamed on foreigners somehow.
 
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