Open Letter about KQED Forum to Dr. Philip Zimbardo

Dear Dr. Philip G. Zimbardo,

I seldom listen to KQED Forum anymore because over time I have noted its propensity to limit debate, toss plain facts down the memory hole, and frame issues in ways that have gratuitously helped support the brutal onslaught by the neocons and their stooges on our freedoms and on innocent peoples for the sake of U.S. hegemony in the world, particularly in the Middle East.

However I did listen today because I noted that you would be a guest on a program discussing Academic Freedom. 

I have the highest regard for your legendary contributions to the study of psychology, particularly about how average people can be enticed into committing deplorable acts largely because of the situational framework within which they can be unwittingly placed.

I called in to comment after I heard Dave Iverson's disingenuous and grossly tendentious intro.

When the screener asked me what my comment would be, I told him that I was opposed to the way this program was being framed-- most notably by saying nothing about Andrew Meyer the student who was tasered (tortured!) in Florida this week for simply asking questions at a university.

The screener told me that he already had people waiting to talk about the student.  (Thank goodness! I thought. I was not the only one who noticed the glaring error.)

I told the screener that I also wanted to comment that it was deplorable that the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should be framed as "a monster" for things he might have said-- and not for things that he has actually done.  I told him that Donald Rumsfeld is a monster-- because of things he has done.  (I agree with you that he should not be given an honorific as a "distinguished" scholar at Stanford's Hoover Institution.)

I did not mention to the screener that many scholars and language experts (Juan Cole notable among them), have raised doubts about the literalness of Ahmadinejad's statements. I did not mention that it is less likely a visit of Ahmadinejad to an American university that backers of the Bush regime fear-- but rather his professed interest in visiting ground zero where the World Trade Towers were destroyed-- ostensibly to pay his sincere respects for the massacred and to disavow any support for terrorists.  While such a visit might be considered tasteless, or unwise-- I thought it curious that 9/11 was studiously avoided as part of the discussion.

I did not mention to the screener that we are now poised on the brink of war with Iran-- which may occur for the same reasons that we allowed the Bush administration to take us to war with Iraq: chief among those reasons being the inability of the media (including our public media) to ask questions or allow debate about the need or necessity for war. 

I did not mention to the screener anything about the thousands of American casualties or the recent estimate that over a million Iraqi civilians have perished in a war that former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has said was for oil, and which George W. Bush continues to arrogantly insist makes Iraqis better off and keeps Americans safe from future 9/11 style attacks. 

I also said nothing to the screener about how Dr. Norman Finkelstein was denied tenure and forced to resign at DePaul University because he had courageously argued his views that the lessons of the Holocaust have been manipulated in ways that do not honor its victims.

I did not expect to be able to mention any of those things-- I only hoped that the screener might allow me a chance to express that the program's topic was poorly framed.

Without holding illusions that I would actually get a chance to speak, the screener did not hang up on me, and I was allowed to listen to the evolving conversation.

What I heard continued to shock and appall me. 

First-- no mention of Andrew Meyer was ever made.  (Is it possible that you also were waiting for someone to bring him up in the conversation?)

Second, Forum's host and the other panelists continued to frame President Ahmadinejad as a danger to world peace-- something that scholars have debated-- outside of the ken of the establishment media which appears hell-bent to keep make certain that America's option to use nuclear weapons against any target stays "on the table."

Third, academic freedom and its importance was never mentioned in its context to how it protects and enlivens the broader Constitutional freedoms we expect as Americans. 

Lastly, I was shocked that you were allowed very little time to expand upon your views-- partly because the others monopolized the time with propagandistic diatribes that included trying to spin Donald Rumsfeld's reputation into a one of being a hero (who, one said, took action against the torturers at Abu Ghraib!)-- and also because the program allowed in callers who tossed red herrings-- such as the caller who asked if anyone on the panel would be supporting Ron Paul for president in 2008! 

Maybe I am wrong, but I imagined Dave Iverson pouting with exasperation as if he could hardly endure the pithy moments you were allowed to speak. But then, wasn't he magnanimous to you when shortly cutting off for the KQED pledge break he allowed you the briefest of moments to "chime in"?  I would have certainly liked to have heard you contest the picture they painted of Donald Rumsfeld as a hero.  But then, didn't you once get your chance to talk about heroes on Forum? 

Am I wrong to think that for much of the program you were on the ropes-- outnumbered by foes who wish to rewrite Donald Rumsfeld's legacy?  Am I wrong to conclude that you indicated such by your need to repeatedly express your own desire for fairness by admitting that you were a liberal with a capital "L"?

Like the callers who were waiting to mention Andrew Meyer, I was ultimately never allowed to comment on the program today.  At one point the screener came back on the line and briefly asked me, "What did you want to talk about?"  (I had answered that I wanted to say that the program was poorly framed.)

I hope you don't mind that I am making this letter to you public by posting it as a news item at indybay.org-- but I believe it is imperative to do so.

I do not like the depth of this Orwellian world we now find ourselves in.  Somehow I believe that had I sent this letter to you privately, you might well agree with some or even all of the points I have made-- but our opinions would be contained and the criminals and those who help them would be let off the hook.  By default, they would be allowed to continue to frame future discourse in ways which arrogantly disregard its dissidents who wish to inform their fellow citizens.

The media's greatest task in a democracy is to provide its citizens with information so that they can make wise decisions.  When it neglects the truth and promotes only propaganda-- then we will soon no longer be a free people.  We should expect to see more needless bloodshed and strife. We will be "good Germans."

In the words of the great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr:

"History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people."

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends."

I would add to his thoughts that we should also deplore the silencing of our friends. (By whatever means.)

Whereas some can muzzle those of us who wish to see truth proclaimed, I hope we will still have an opportunity to resist them.  That can begin by realizing when their offers of fairness are illusory. We must eschew and boycott them.

My best regards,

Robert B. Livingston
San Francisco