Give voice to the billyclub

What's Bob Greene's gig at CNN? To give sympathetic interviews to reactionaries.

Look, being a Marxist, much less being a war protester with no revolutionary impulses, is not sufficient reason to have your skull bashed for the "crime" of free speech. Taunting comedically doesn't deserve assault. It's not even illegal to be an asshole, as some of the protesters surely were. Look, these cops getting back together is definitely not a reunion of the Waffen SS. I'm sure most of the cops had long and honorable careers. But they're not heroes for their police riot.

The cops weren't in the right in August 1968. Never mind whether one or two of them now "remember" that they opposed the Vietnam War, they brutally defended the existing pro-war Establishment order. Greene says that their defense of their riot here in 2009 was only attention-getting. Oh bullshit.

The reason there's no healing from this is that journalists like Greene continue to help with the rationalization of brutality. In forty years, someone will take this role to excuse the Constitutional crimes of the Bushist regime.

The lesson: As long as there is no accountability, there's no learning, no progress, no resolution.