My friend who’s Just Muttering disagrees with me about Pinter’s diatribe. She wrote in an email:
About Pinter, I hope you don’t mind if I disagree? I don’t think America is as manipulative nor as heinous nor as nasty as he says. Not to mention who is he to be so smug and all-knowing, anyway. I was surprised by your “bravo” cuz agreeing wouldn’t necessarily mean championing the tone.
I’d agree with her easily if I thought that America was “we the people,” but sadly I don’t think we people have any say anymore. We vote for laws that never get put into practice, and ever since the last two presidential elections I have serious reservations about the process of tallying of votes anyway. George Bush doesn’t act for the good of the majority of the people, so in my view he doesn’t represent us, but the world sees him as “America” and his policies, not to mention his attitudes (talk about smug), have seriously hurt our country’s reputation all over the world. I think it is a good thing for people of stature to speak out when given an international platform. In fact, I think it is absolutely necessary. And that goes double for the media, which is what I was getting at with my post about Mike Wallace.