Here are some excerpts from the October edition of the Harper's Index:
• Portion of the world’s female prison population that is incarcerated in the United States: 1/3
• Percentage of elected U.S. prosecutors who are white men: 79
• Who are women of color: 1
• Percentage of people living in Turkey who say they are “very concerned” about the Islamic State: 33
• Of people living in Israel: 44
• In the United States: 68
• Portion of African lions killed for sport that are sent to the United States as trophies: 2/3
• Portion of black-white biracial Americans who have no contact with their white family members: 2/5
• Date on which Catholic priests in Mexico performed an exorcism on the entire country: 5/20/2015
Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2010—Study: Sunday talk tilts right, white and male:
Anybody who still watches the Sunday morning political talk-show line-up is likely to say, "yeah, so what else is new?" in response to that headline. But it's always surprising to have confirmation of work done at Daily Kos from a branch of the mainstream media.
Brian Seltzer at The New York Times Media Decoder homed in recently on a study put together by law student Alex B. Mitchell for The Green Bag, a quarterly journal at George Mason University. Mitchell looked solely at guests who were also members of Congress who appeared on the five major Sunday talk shows - Meet the Press (NBC), This Week (ABC), Face the Nation (CBS), Fox News Sunday, and State of the Union (CNN) Collectively, the shows averaged 11.6 million viewers each Sunday during the 10 1/2 months of his study from February-December 2009, roughly equivalent to the first session of the 111th Congress [...]
In short, the answer is that in 2009 the talk shows told us (by their selection of congressional guests) that the people who matter are disproportionately white, male, senior, and Republican—disproportionate not just when compared to the American population overall, but also when compared to the population of Congress itself.
To be more precise: 14.6 percent of members of Congress were minorities, but 2.5 percent of the guests were minorities; 16.9 percent of members were female, but only 13.5 percent of the guests were; "30 white, male U.S. senators in office six plus years,” 5.6 percent of Congress, but 61.4 percent of the guests.
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David Waldman is off today for Rosh Hashanah, but
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Kagro in the Morning has often addressed the move from “stakeholder” to “stockholder” capitalism. Robert Reich offers backup. Liberal arts college Cooper Union’s mission of providing a free high-quality education to a small, dedicated group of students was betrayed, and destroyed. Did you know you could loot a college?
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