No, absolutely not. I think he has an opinion based on years of experience
in journalism and as President Johnson's press secretary. There's a
difference between opinions based on knowledge and bias, which is opinion
based on personal prejudice. All opinions are not equal.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Richard Driscoll
Sent: Friday, January 13, 2017 9:51 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: The 'Hidden Figures' Jeff Sessions Wants to
Keep in the Shadows
All:
Do you think Mr. Moyers is biased?
Richard
On 1/12/2017 4:52 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
The 'Hidden Figures' Jeff Sessions Wants to Keep in the Shadowshead.
Published on Thursday, January 12, 2017 by Common Dreams The 'Hidden
Figures' Jeff Sessions Wants to Keep in the Shadows A new movie
reminds us of past racial injustice as a new administration tries to
roll back the clock by Bill Moyers
A scene from Hidden Figures. (Image: Courtesy 20th Century Fox) As the
Senate hearings for Jeff Sessions' nomination as attorney general ran
into their second day, I kept thinking about the movie Hidden Figures,
which my wife Judith and I saw three days earlier. The film is based
on a book by Margot Lee Shetterly about three African-American women
in the early 1960s who lived in the segregated South while working on
NASA's first manned space missions.
These women were educated engineers and mathematicians - one a prodigy
with an extraordinary capacity for calculating numbers and theorems in her
When astronaut John Glenn prepared to become the first American todid in real life.
orbit the Earth, calculations for his re-entry into the atmosphere
require an urgent adjustment. Glenn knows whom to ask for: "the smart
one," he says of Katherine Johnson, played in the movie by Taraji P.
Henson. Sure enough, she gets it exactly right - in the film just as she
"Benign in manner, soft of voice but hard at the core, Jeff Sessionssegregation between the races.
is the perfect figurehead for the resurgent white nationalists who now
aim not to make history but reverse it."
Yet for all her skill and talent - for all her genius - Johnson and
the other black women are routinely subjected to humiliation and
insults, to the condescension and cruelty that were the common lot of
black Americans when "Whites Only" and "Colored Only" signs - and
burly state troopers enforcing Jim Crow laws - maintained strict
Despite several white restrooms in the NASA control center where sheplayed by Kevin Costner.
works, whenever nature calls Johnson has to run half a mile to the
colored bathroom in another building. She is the only black and the
sole woman among an all-white team who will not even allow her to
share the coffee machine. When she is called out for taking such
lengthy breaks, her suppressed anguish at the second-class treatment
suddenly erupts. You can feel her pain - and then the shame of her boss,
While her friend Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) oversees 30 or moreAmerican apartheid.
black "computers," as the women officially were identified, she is
consistently and rudely denied the title and pay of white supervisors.
Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae), the third woman, is barred from
attending engineering courses at the town's all-white school until a
judge reluctantly agrees she can attend - the night class. Somehow
these three survived the malice, meanness and pervasive oppression of
everyday life to carry on successful lives with dignity intact.
Washington, DC in the mid-'60s glowed with pride over America's
besting of the Soviets up in the heavens, and there I got to know NASA
Administrator Jim Webb. I attended meetings on space policy over which
he presided, shared in moments of celebration at the agency's
successes and relished his boisterous remembrances of the first
thrilling but precarious days of the space program. I never heard
these women mentioned. There were no shout-outs to them, no newspaper
features, no official recognition. They were swallowed back into
anonymity and invisibility - into the suffocating holding pen that was
The civil rights movement was then beginning to gain force, a powersee you."
that would bring change, and at the end of Hidden Figures, we see
photographs of the real women and learn they finally earned
recognition through intelligence, skill and hard work. As we left the
theater we saw tear-stained faces throughout the auditorium, and we
ran into several friends who had unabashedly wept both in joy for the
three women and their "ultimate triumph," as one said, and in sadness
at "the long neglect through which they had to pass."
I thought again of those photographs later that evening during the
Golden Globe Awards, when Tracee Ellis Ross of the TV series Black-ish
dedicated her award "for all of the women, women of color and colorful
people, whose stories, ideas, thoughts are not always considered
worthy, and valid and important. But I want you to know that I see you. We
Finally.As Americans.
If he could, Jeff Sessions would take back all the racial progress.
Now he will at last have the chance to turn the clock back, which is
why Donald Trump chose him. I watched Sessions feint and evade during
the hearings and thought what an insult his appointment is to a
half-century of history in which the civil rights movement helped end
overt oppression and won for Johnson, Vaughan, Jackson and countless
others the standing and recognition they earned and deserved as citizens.
So much struggle and sacrifice over the years, so many burningtheir votes.
churches, mutilated bodies, ticking bombs and bloodshed - so much
venomous human behavior before we finally began to get it right.
Racism still remains a powerful toxic stream flowing through American
life. Too many people are still unseen.
Through his career as a prosecutor in Alabama and as a US senator Jeff
Sessions has done what he could to frustrate the gains of all the
"hidden figures" among us by attempting to disenfranchise or suppress
He called the Voting Rights Act of 1965 "an intrusion" before"good news. for the South."
cynically voting to reauthorize it and then quickly signing on to a
Republican effort to undermine it. When the conservative Supreme Court
eventually gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, Sessions said it was
Since then he has championed voter-ID laws and remained indifferent as"the smart one,"
Republican state legislatures undertook a massive campaign of
repression against black voters.
In the 1980s he prosecuted civil rights activists on dubious charges -
behavior that when coupled with an allegation that he'd called a black
colleague "boy," cost him a Reagan-era appointment as a federal judge.
The NAACP, which Sessions once called "un-American," describes his
record on voting rights as "unreliable at best and hostile at worst,"
and also notes "a failing record on other civil rights; a record of
racially offensive remarks and behavior; and [a] dismal record on
criminal justice reform issues."
And he opposed reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act.
Benign in manner, soft of voice but hard at the core, Jeff Sessions is
the perfect figurehead for the resurgent white nationalists who now
aim not to make history but reverse it - by a hundred years or more if
they can. This is the man to whom Donald Trump is handing the
enforcement of our laws from civil and voting rights to environmental
protection, antitrust enforcement, housing, employment and all the rest.
Expect new laws but little justice, and be vigilant as America's
shadows become ever more crowded with hidden figures of every shade.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike
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The 'Hidden Figures' Jeff Sessions Wants to Keep in the Shadows
Published on Thursday, January 12, 2017 by Common Dreams The 'Hidden
Figures' Jeff Sessions Wants to Keep in the Shadows A new movie
reminds us of past racial injustice as a new administration tries to
roll back the clock by Bill Moyers
. 1 Comments
.
. A scene from Hidden Figures. (Image: Courtesy 20th Century Fox)
. As the Senate hearings for Jeff Sessions' nomination as attorney
general ran into their second day, I kept thinking about the movie
Hidden Figures, which my wife Judith and I saw three days earlier. The
film is based on a book by Margot Lee Shetterly about three
African-American women in the early 1960s who lived in the segregated
South while working on NASA's first manned space missions.
. These women were educated engineers and mathematicians - one a
prodigy with an extraordinary capacity for calculating numbers and
theorems in her head. When astronaut John Glenn prepared to become the
first American to orbit the Earth, calculations for his re-entry into
the atmosphere require an urgent adjustment. Glenn knows whom to ask for:
he says of Katherine Johnson, played in the movie by Taraji P. Henson.segregation between the races.
Sure enough, she gets it exactly right - in the film just as she did
in real life.
. "Benign in manner, soft of voice but hard at the core, Jeff Sessions
is the perfect figurehead for the resurgent white nationalists who now
aim not to make history but reverse it."
. Yet for all her skill and talent - for all her genius - Johnson and
the other black women are routinely subjected to humiliation and
insults, to the condescension and cruelty that were the common lot of
black Americans when "Whites Only" and "Colored Only" signs - and
burly state troopers enforcing Jim Crow laws - maintained strict
Despite several white restrooms in the NASA control center where sheplayed by Kevin Costner.
works, whenever nature calls Johnson has to run half a mile to the
colored bathroom in another building. She is the only black and the
sole woman among an all-white team who will not even allow her to
share the coffee machine. When she is called out for taking such
lengthy breaks, her suppressed anguish at the second-class treatment
suddenly erupts. You can feel her pain - and then the shame of her boss,
While her friend Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) oversees 30 or moreAmerican apartheid.
black "computers," as the women officially were identified, she is
consistently and rudely denied the title and pay of white supervisors.
Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae), the third woman, is barred from
attending engineering courses at the town's all-white school until a
judge reluctantly agrees she can attend - the night class. Somehow
these three survived the malice, meanness and pervasive oppression of
everyday life to carry on successful lives with dignity intact.
Washington, DC in the mid-'60s glowed with pride over America's
besting of the Soviets up in the heavens, and there I got to know NASA
Administrator Jim Webb. I attended meetings on space policy over which
he presided, shared in moments of celebration at the agency's
successes and relished his boisterous remembrances of the first
thrilling but precarious days of the space program. I never heard
these women mentioned. There were no shout-outs to them, no newspaper
features, no official recognition. They were swallowed back into
anonymity and invisibility - into the suffocating holding pen that was
The civil rights movement was then beginning to gain force, a powersee you."
that would bring change, and at the end of Hidden Figures, we see
photographs of the real women and learn they finally earned
recognition through intelligence, skill and hard work. As we left the
theater we saw tear-stained faces throughout the auditorium, and we
ran into several friends who had unabashedly wept both in joy for the
three women and their "ultimate triumph," as one said, and in sadness
at "the long neglect through which they had to pass."
I thought again of those photographs later that evening during the
Golden Globe Awards, when Tracee Ellis Ross of the TV series Black-ish
dedicated her award "for all of the women, women of color and colorful
people, whose stories, ideas, thoughts are not always considered
worthy, and valid and important. But I want you to know that I see you. We
Finally.As Americans.
If he could, Jeff Sessions would take back all the racial progress.
Now he will at last have the chance to turn the clock back, which is
why Donald Trump chose him. I watched Sessions feint and evade during
the hearings and thought what an insult his appointment is to a
half-century of history in which the civil rights movement helped end
overt oppression and won for Johnson, Vaughan, Jackson and countless
others the standing and recognition they earned and deserved as citizens.
So much struggle and sacrifice over the years, so many burningtheir votes.
churches, mutilated bodies, ticking bombs and bloodshed - so much
venomous human behavior before we finally began to get it right.
Racism still remains a powerful toxic stream flowing through American
life. Too many people are still unseen.
Through his career as a prosecutor in Alabama and as a US senator Jeff
Sessions has done what he could to frustrate the gains of all the
"hidden figures" among us by attempting to disenfranchise or suppress
He called the Voting Rights Act of 1965 "an intrusion" before"good news. for the South."
cynically voting to reauthorize it and then quickly signing on to a
Republican effort to undermine it. When the conservative Supreme Court
eventually gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, Sessions said it was
Since then he has championed voter-ID laws and remained indifferent as
Republican state legislatures undertook a massive campaign of
repression against black voters.
In the 1980s he prosecuted civil rights activists on dubious charges -
behavior that when coupled with an allegation that he'd called a black
colleague "boy," cost him a Reagan-era appointment as a federal judge.
The NAACP, which Sessions once called "un-American," describes his
record on voting rights as "unreliable at best and hostile at worst,"
and also notes "a failing record on other civil rights; a record of
racially offensive remarks and behavior; and [a] dismal record on
criminal justice reform issues."
And he opposed reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act.
Benign in manner, soft of voice but hard at the core, Jeff Sessions is
the perfect figurehead for the resurgent white nationalists who now
aim not to make history but reverse it - by a hundred years or more if
they can. This is the man to whom Donald Trump is handing the
enforcement of our laws from civil and voting rights to environmental
protection, antitrust enforcement, housing, employment and all the rest.
Expect new laws but little justice, and be vigilant as America's
shadows become ever more crowded with hidden figures of every shade.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike
3.0 License
