http://www.shalomctr.org/index.cfm/action/read/section/iraq/article/article789.htmlRabbi Arthur Waskow, Mitch Potts, & Chris Tennant , 02/01/2005
It started this way: I was invited to bring a religious voice to Ted Koppel's Town Meeting show on January 27 to address the Iraq war. It was held in the same place, St. John's Church across from the White House, as his Town Meeting had been held in March 2003, two weeks before the invasion of Iraq.
But at the show itself, the producers asked for a written card summarizing the comments I intended to make. They had invited me knowing in general what my views were. So — with honesty but perhaps a whiff of naivete — I wrote that I intended to speak about a power-addicted Presidency that is bringing down plagues upon our heads, reminiscent of the archetypal power-addicted Pharaoh whose downfall is at the heart of our tradition.
Nothing doing! — They made clear I wouldn't get to speak at all.
I don't take kindly to being silenced, especially when I have been specifically invited to speak, and to spend five hours on a train at my own expense to bring my voice.
And especially when I discover that what had been called a Town Meeting has been rigged to silence almost every voice ready to call for an end to the occupation of Iraq.
And when I discover that the rescinding of my invitation to speak was connected with a decision to give much more time to "the military" - but not to surviving soldiers, or the families of the fallen, who wanted the war to end.
So I spoke anyway. Out of politeness and some measure of respect for Koppel's past work, I waited till a commercial break to stand up and say my piece, off camera. But I think we should all be aware how much even this last sector of what was relatively independent network news has become flackery for the Pharaoh.
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