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Todd Gitlin

Todd Gitlin is a professor of journalism and sociology at Columbia University and the author of Letters to a Young Activist. He is currently working with Liel Leibovitz on a book about chosen peoples.

Recent Articles

Swifter Than Truth

Todd GitlinOct 17, 2004

Historians of the mad pageant in which Americans chose their president in 2004 will someday note with astonishment that the quote-unquote Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, many of its members inveterate liars more swift than truthful, succeeded in hijacking the presidential campaign for the better part of the month of August, nearly one-third of the total time left to John Kerry after his apparently triumphal convention.

Unmistaken

Todd GitlinOct 15, 2004

Conventional wisdom says that George W. Bush flip-flopped (you might say) in the debates from petulance in Miami to belligerence in St. Louis to grins in Tempe. True enough, but the consensus story line of Bush's inconsistency masks the more significant invariant pattern: The president's idea of resolve is to repeat slogans.

This is, as Republicans like to say, a matter of character.

Channel Surfing

Todd GitlinSep 02, 2004

Quacking like a canard

On Wednesday evening, Karl Rove was ushered to the roundtable of PBS, where he wiped all but angelic fingerprints off the Swift boat liars. Along the way, he repeated the canard that in his April 1971 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Ho Chi (sorry, John) Kerry called all American soldiers war criminals.

New York Minutes

Todd GitlinSep 01, 2004

Nobody here but us good cops

On most channels, the Republican funfest shines forth as a genial display of red-white-and-blue, on-message sincerity. Everyone is so earnest, everyone exudes optimism, all virtues are on parade. Only good cops pass through these pearly gates. When Senator Lindsey Graham introduced John McCain, saying that McCain had always respected other veterans (wink wink), no august commentator was heard to say that this was a dig at John Kerry.

Dumbing Him Down

Todd GitlinJul 28, 2004

Is it a huge surprise that American multitudes say they don't know what John Kerry and the Democrats stand for? How would they know? And who bears responsibility?

First point about the attention that's being paid: An ABC representative took to The New York Times (July 28) to brag that the network had made the right -- that is, the commercially correct -- call in deciding to cut convention coverage to the bone. “The figures released Tuesday by Nielsen Media Research,” wrote Neil A. Lewis and Bill Carter, “suggest that the number of total viewers for the Democratic convention's first night fell to about 13.5 million this year from about 17 million four years ago.”

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