Corporate Media Smears the Late Sen. Mike Gravel...
...And Supposedly Leftist Commentators Excuse Their Neutrality on Slander Against Courageous Reporters
(Senator Mike Gravel died at the age of 91 on June 26)
If you’d like to watch one of the internet’s most popular political commentators indulge himself for over a half hour complaining about how he’s sleepy, doesn’t want to be making this video, how he has a flight to catch to D.C. in the morning, and how his viewers should understand why he didn’t want to previously comment on his friends at The Young Turks smearing investigative journalist Aaron Mate because it was awkward for him, check out the below and give him some additional plays.
If you do, I only implore you to consider rejecting his framing of this situation as a personal beef between his friends and instead realize what the real issue is - The Young Turks program, led by hosts and producers Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian taking a break from cheering on our bombing of Syria to outright lie about Mate because they didn’t like him calling out a bigoted post from Uygur about Palestine, or his incredible and lonely work uncovering one of the biggest international scandals in recent history - the OPCW cover-up which helped paved the way for our current illegal war against the Syrian people.
Rest in Power, Senator Mike Gravel
Senator Mike Gravel recently died at the age of 91. I’ve been told that he was at peace and surrounded by loved ones after lots of end of life planning, which is wonderful to hear.
Gravel is one of the most demonstrably courageous and ethical American politicians of the past century, willing to put a target on his own back, breach pointless Senate customs and rules of decorum to speak out for marginalized peoples and against the U.S. Empire’s war machine. So, of course, the corporate media that so dutifully propagandizes on behalf of empire has attempted to reduce Gravel’s history-making career to spectacle.
Gravel was willing to risk his own career, personal safety, and possible legal consequences in order to get the entire Pentagon Papers - the classified documents taken by whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg detailing the scope and illegality of our war against Vietnam - out in their entirety for the first time into the public’s hands. Later, as a two-time Presidential candidate, Gravel blasted establishment candidates like Joe Biden who had led us into our genocidal wars against the Afghan and Iraqi people and who continued to threaten nuclear war, further ostracizing himself from the power elite.
In their obituary of Gravel, the New York Times called him merely “unconventional.” The Washington Post called him a “gadfly” in theirs, and implicitly criticized him for his courageous reading of The Pentagon Papers into the Congressional record, revealing U.S. war crimes, claiming that he did it to get attention for himself.
The depravity of the courtier mainstream media truly knows no depths, just as Gravel’s own courage seemed to know no upward limits. Senator Gravel is the rare elected official that we can truly and sincerely thank for his service because he used his platform and power on behalf of those who had none, and did not succumb to the siren song of elite belonging that the United States Senate uses to enrapture almost everyone who has ever entered its chambers.
So far some of the current U.S. Congress’ most visible so-called progressives have all but ignored Gravel’s death and the opportunity to praise this giant on whose shoulders they are free to stand on. This is in stark contrast to the effusive praise the likes of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez heaped on bigot and enthusiastic war criminal Sen. John McCain when he recently died.
Gravel’s name and legacy live on in the institute bearing his name, The Gravel Institute, started and run by young people inspired by his career and who successfully drafted him to campaign for President a second time in 2020.
For a much more appropriate remembrance of Gravel, may we suggest the following: