By John Ballard
Aphorisms, one-liners and quickies from Jim Hightower as recalled by Michael Winship.
Michael Winship is senior writer of the weekly public affairs program �Bill Moyers Journal,� which aired Friday night on PBS.
The Tea Party movement has generated a lot of media talk about �populism,� which gets defined as the battle between Big Government and the Common Folk... So, by targeting government, not corporatism, the Tea Partiers serve essentially as �faux populist� front-men for corporate interests...�
[During the 1899 Democratic Convention Jim Hightower described Bush as] a "toothache of a man... born on third base and thought he hit a triple... He is threatening to lead this country from tweedle-dum to tweedle-dumber."�
...it is his steadfast advocacy of progressive politics, his unyielding embrace of the old time gospel of populism, that made [Jim Hightower] an especially appropriate guest on the final edition of the PBS series, �Bill Moyers Journal.�
"Here's what populism is not," he told my colleague Bill Moyers. "It is not just an incoherent outburst of anger. And certainly it is not anger that is funded and organized by corporate front groups, as the initial tea party effort [was], and as most of it is still today - though there is legitimate anger within it, in terms of the people who are there.
�But what populism is at its essence is just a determined focus on helping people be able to get out of the iron grip of the corporate power that is overwhelming our economy, our environment, energy, the media, government. �
"One big difference between real populism and... the tea party thing is that real populists understand that government has become a subsidiary of corporations. So you can't say, 'Let's get rid of government.' You need to be saying, 'Let's take over government.'"
As Hightower's fond of saying, the water won't clear up until we get the hogs out of the creek.�
"What created democracy was Thomas Paine and Shays Rebellion, the suffragists and the abolitionists and on down through the populists and the labor movement, including the Wobblies. Tough, in your face people... Mother Jones, Woody Guthrie... Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez. And now it's down to us.
"These are agitators. They extended democracy decade after decade. You know, sometimes we get in the midst of these fights. We think we're making no progress. But... you look back, we've made a lot of progress...
�The agitator after all is the center post in the washing machine that gets the dirt out. So, we need a lot more agitation....
"We can battle back against the powers. But it's not just going to a rally and shouting. It's organizing and it's thinking. And reaching out to others. And building a real people's movement."
Here's one Winship left out but came early in the program...
You know, my mama told me that two wrongs don't make a right, but three left turns do.
Hightower's interview takes the first twenty minutes of Moyers' final program.
It is followed by one of the clearest, most impressive journalistic credos of our lifetime.
Bill Moyers is one of America's Living National Treasures.
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