Now that Germany is getting in line with the European parliament, trying to fight and backing their new champion — Edward J. Snowden, President Barack Obama’s favorite anti-American hero or alleged outlaw — leftie filmmaker Michael Moore won’t have to hold hands with right-wing crazy Glenn Beck any longer. The chorus against the United States’ surveillance state at home and abroad keeps getting louder.
As outrage against the least transparent president (okay, not the least, but he’s gaining stature as he gets more and more opaque) escalates, pundits of the far right and the bold left will no longer have to sing Snowden’s praises alone at home. And perhaps, just perhaps, the editors of the three outlets giving voice to Snowden’s leaks could get a rest from all the Anglo-American governments bullying and intimidation.
Too bad Angela Merkel doesn’t ask President Barack Obama to meet her on the dais of the fine German public university for a publicly staged friendly handshake when the university awards Edward his first honorary doctorate.
Barack could bury this legacy-tarnishing surveillance-state scandal by the academic year’s end if he would only start listening to the bipartisan or non-partisan chorus of complaints against his NSA’s spying. But then again, maybe the president of this public university already asked Angela to ask Barack to start honoring Snowden back in June or July (academics do move at a glacial pace), and in listening in, Barack decided to duck this invitation.
Professor Ruth O’Brien, who earned her Ph.D. in political science at UCLA, joined the Graduate Center’s doctoral faculty in 1997 and, in 2004, founded the “Writing Politics” specialization in political science. She also serves as an adjunct affiliated scholar with the Center for American Progress. In her research and books, she focuses on American politics, law, political theory without national borders, globalism, and American/global dichotomy. She edits the award-winning “Public Square” series for Princeton University Press, showcasing public intellectuals such as Jill Lepore, Jeff Madrick, Anne Norton, Martha Nussbaum, and Joan Scott. O’Brien is also launching “Heretical Thought,” an Oxford University Press political-theory series that is global in outlook. Her latest book, Out of Many One: Obama and the Third American Political Tradition (2013), with a foreword by journalist Thomas Byrnes Edsall, distinguished professor at Columbia’s School of Journalism, was honored with a 2013 “Author Meets Critic” American Political Science Association convention session. She also wrote Bodies in Revolt: Gender, Disability, and a Workplace Ethic of Care (2005), Crippled Justice: The History of Modern Disability Policy in the Workplace (2001), which received an honorable mention from Gustavus Meyers Center for the Study of Human Rights and Bigotry (“Meyers Center”), and Workers’ Paradox: The Republican Origins of the New Deal Labor Policy, 1886–1935 (1998). “Writing Politics” emanated from two books she contributed to and edited: Telling Stories out of Court: Narratives about Women and Workplace Discrimination (2008) and Voices from the Edge: Narratives about the Americans with Disabilities Act (2004), which earned another honorable mention from the Meyers Center. O’Brien’s controversial blog led Rush Limbaugh to dub her a “professorette.”
Now that Germany is getting in line with the European parliament, trying to fight and backing their new champion — Edward J. Snowden, President Barack Obama’s favorite anti-American hero or alleged outlaw — leftie filmmaker Michael Moore won’t have to hold hands with right-wing crazy Glenn Beck any longer. The chorus against the United States’ surveillance state at home and abroad keeps getting louder.
