December 21 is the birthday of talk tv pioneer Phil Donahue (b.1935). How perfect that this guy with the wintery hair was born of a winter solstice.
This won’t be a celebration, per se, because the door Donahue opened is too unspeakably awful. I do think it’s unfortunate that the stampede of monsters who clambered through that door have obscured his name and place in history, though. It’s like…
The Last Word didn’t last long: ABC canceled the news program in April of ’83, just six months after it debuted. One on One, also hosted by Gregory Jackson, replaced The Last Word in the network’s late-night lineup; it was canceled three months later.
"Now I hope I've made these two aspects of living organisms clear to you. In the case of the coelacanth, we have a species which became stabilised over two hundred million years ago, in the form you see here. But in the case of man, we have a recent species which is not stabilised at all. Man is not only capable of change but man alone, among all living creatures, can choose the direction in which that change will take place. In other words, man can use his knowledge to destroy all spiritual values and reduce the race to bestiality, or he can use his knowledge to increase his understanding to a point far beyond anything now imaginable."
Washington has long applied double standards when it comes to the rule of law, particularly in relation to Israel.
In this 1983 video, actor Paul Newman brings up another hard-to-argue-against example. The U.S. downplayed Israel’s downing of Libyan-Arab Airline Flight 114 in 1973, but caused an uproar when the Soviet Union downed Korean Airlines Flight 007 in 1983. The incident was used to justify astronomical US defence spending.
Well, forward wind to today and not a lot has changed. While demanding Russia’s president is prosecuted for war crimes in Ukraine, the US defends Israel’s war on Gaza, despite the ICJ warning of plausible genocide.
Watch Paul Newman get a round of applause on the Phil Donahue show, as he highlights Washington’s selective moral outrage.
Washington #DoubleStandards #RuleOfLaw #Israel #Libya #Korea
The Late Night with David Letterman show from March 19, 1987: featuring Dave's monologue, Top Ten list, viewer mail (with Phil Donahue and Flunky the clown), Guests Bill Murray and Jerry Seinfeld.