Saul Landau, progreso-weekly.com, 13 November 2008
In the 1970s, Martin Agronsky, a weekend talk show host in Washington, finally invited the venerable I.F. (Izzy) Stone to join the establishment “pundits.” From the early 1950s through the early 1970s, Izzy had raised the basic issues to a readership — no more than 100,000 — of Stone’s Weekly.
Izzy treated inequality of income as both an axiom of capitalist economic relations and as a phenomenon sustained by the annual U.S. budget — that is, built into the “democratic” political system. He also questioned the veracity of the official U.S. version of the Cold War, with the USSR portrayed as the world fortress of evil seeking to spread its nefarious doctrine everywhere; thus the need for ever more money for “defense” of the free world. Such “dangerous” views, which he supported with fact and argument, won for Stone a position of avoidance by the establishment media — until he stopped publishing his weekly. Then, establishment journalists heaped accolades on his “heroic and imaginative journalism.” (See Myra McPherson, All Governments Lie: The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I.F. Stone, 2006)
As the TV panel discussed the budget that morning, the mainstream pundits went as usual straight for the periphery. After they had offered their banalities, Izzy said the budget reflected the class propensities of Congress. Thus, he continued, the large corporations and banks would as always be its major beneficiaries. Silence — for a seemingly endless second! In TV terms: disaster. Izzy’s first appearance as a Washington expert also became his last. Some things you cannot say in the major media or in political discourse — that is, if you hope to become a TV regular or a major candidate.