DISSECTOR'S DIARY:
FRIDAY, AUGUST 18th: SPEAKING BACK TO THE MEDIA
Danny Schechter
News Dissector
Mediachannel.org
There used to be something called equal time and the right to reply to TV editorials and coverage. I am reminded of this by the publication, in a thin booklet called Poems for the Nation, of a previously unpublished television address delivered in l972 at a local TV station in Charlotte North Carolina. It was delivered by a citizen upset about the way the protests at the Republican convention were covered that year on TV. (Some of those protests would later be restaged by Oliver Stone in his film, "Born on the 4th of July.")
I happened to have been there, in Miami, reporting on voices critical of President Nixon
Something in the cutting honest tone of these words inspires me to poetry...thank you.
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I've seen his face illuminate the masks of gold
While the serpent god sleeps waiting for a wake up call
To unleash serpent rivers beneath old mountain walls
Of new worlds in I...of a falcon rise on fire
I've been an arrow shooting derision through the wind
A river-fall that pounds the stubborn stone
On wings of intent, and dove
In the humble abode of the great ocean soul
At the feet of the beloved, below the bee-lover
Breathed the sigh of my life
Cried who, who, who...as a chant in the night
Through smoke-skin layers and sulfer fogs
In Billabongs moaning...how long...how long...
In a gentle song that lulls me to dream
A silent stream these things that I think
Be plagiaries from Akashic seed
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With love for Alan Ginsburg