This week's Bill Moyers NOW - FCC update, Max Cleland re: 911 report, more

[Wonk]

http://www.pbs.org/now/thisweek/index.html

This week on NOW:

Will Congress stop big media from getting even bigger? In light of Wednesday's 400-21 vote in the House to overturn part of the FCC's ruling to further deregulate the media industry, NOW goes to Capitol Hill to take the pulse of lawmakers on what has turned into a stunning political event in CHANGING CHANNELS.
http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/mediaconsol.html

Go inside some of the most hotly debated topics of a new age, including stem cell research, gene therapy, and cloning, as Bill Moyers talks to Leon Kass, a scientist, physician, and scholar wrestling with contemporary ethical issues.
http://www.pbs.org/now/transcript/transcript_kass.html

The findings of the congressional investigation into the 9/11 attacks are out, and NOW interviews former Senator Max Cleland about what his own organization, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, has to say about what led up to 9/11.
http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/september11.html
http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/911commission.html

Updates on the stories covered on NOW.
http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/updates.html
http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/pryorupdate.html

Check your local listings.
http://www.pbs.org/now/sched.html

[Dover]

1. Thanks for the reminder Wonk. Looks like a good one!..........n/t

..
Don't miss PBS's program on Watergate next week.

[Wonk]

2. Time zone kick. Frank Sesno is hosting this week. nt

[Wonk]

3. Time zone kick. Don't miss Max Cleland!

[Wonk]

5. Max Cleland mp3

3.4 M

[Wonk]

10. transcript and a link to the other threads on this

transcript

LBN thread

another GD thread

Have I mentioned lately how I like it when all the discussion about a subject can be kept to one thread for clarity's sake?

[hedda_foil]

11. Thanks, Wonk! I knew you'd come through.

What a great interview! We don't get the show until Sunday morning in Chicago so I count on your MP3 files to hear it while it's hot.

hedda

[Wonk]

12. You're welcome. More mp3s from the show here.

FCC update, 2.4 M

Pryor update, 1 M

[Wonk]

13. Max Cleland quicktime video

45 M

[ianbruce]

15. THANKS WONK!

Max and Wesley Clark.

[stlsaxman]

18. What a beautiful photo! i nearly wept. n/t

[okieinpain]

16. I don't understand how georgia could not have re-elected cleland

.

[revcarol]

4. I can hardly wait

to see Kass, that anti-stem cell guy that Bush appointed to be in charge of "ethics!!"<heavy sarcasm>

Nothing like stacking the deck.

[julka]

6. anybody see Leon Kass?

not just a scientist......as a matter of fact, he's not a scientist at all.....used to be, but hasn't been for a LONG time.

what he IS...is head of George W. Bush's Council on Bioethics, which is, of course, the reactionary panel standing in the way of stem cell research, among other things

http://www.prospect.org/print/V12/17/mooney-c.html

on Kass:

He has crafted and promulgated, as a core aspect of his philosophy, an entire pseudo-intellectual defense of "yuck" reactions, which he terms "the wisdom of repugnance." Kass's eponymous 1997 anticloning article in the New Republic is a grand piece of anti-intellectualism, complete with digs at "philosophical cleverness" and "philosophisms." To a large degree, this was a way of covering up the fact that Kass didn't have a rational argument. "Repugnance," he contended, "is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason's power to express it." And again: "We are repelled by the prospect of cloning human beings not because of the strangeness or novelty of the undertaking, but because we intuit and feel, immediately and without argument, the violation of things that we rightfully hold dear."

A sampling of what some academic ethicists think of this "reasoning" shows how far afield Kass really is. "In my view, it doesn't have any intellectual content," comments Brown University bioethics philosopher Dan Brock. The medical ethicist and former Syracuse University dean of arts and sciences Samuel Gorovitz, who debated Kass as early as the 1970s, elaborates: "Feelings are signals, they are signals worthy of respect. But what one then must do is ask in what the repugnance is rooted, and is it something that one might be well advised to overcome?" After all, lots of people feel repugnance toward, say, interracial marriage. But we don't automatically condone their repugnance, much less cite it as a basis for public policy, the way Kass does with cloning.

[Wonk]

8. Thanks for that post to put it in better context. mp3 here.

4.6 M

[Wonk]

17. quicktime of that segment here

59 M

[leftyandproud]

7. wow

what would we do without PBS?

[Athame]

9. I always appreciate these weekly reminders

This week looks especially important. Thanks, Wonk.

:bounce:

[GregW]

14. Just caught it on the west coast - wow!

Max Cleland - a true American hero.