The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them – Amy Goodman and David Goodman

The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them – Amy Goodman and David Goodman, Hyperion (2004) 342pp. (S) ***

Amy Goodman has been a reliable constant on radio and satellite television, broadcasting the news of the day, five days a week, on the Pacifica network. Now, with the assistance of her brother, David, she has written a book, taking a sober look at those in power while relaying some of her experiences over the years. In the first pages, she comes out swinging in describing the Bush administration, “politicians who never met a war they didn’t like (and in the case of Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, never fought in any of them) . . . ”(p.8) This is the essential key to understanding the neo-con set – the chickenhawk factor. For if any of them had actually experienced first hand the horrors of war, it’d be safe to assume that more of them would have the reticence of Colin Powell when it came to initiating armed conflict.

In the run-up to the Iraq invasion, the Iraqi government in the end of 2002, submitted its 10,500 page weapons declaration to the United Nations. Strangely, this document was intercepted by the Bush administration and was subsequently whittled down to 3,500 pages after being heavily redacted. Perhaps the world will never know the content of those 7,000 missing pages, but nonetheless, it is important to document yet another example of how the Bush administration executes information control to advance its own goals, and Goodman must be praised for pointing this out. Unfortunately, Goodman doesn’t continue to exclusively level her guns at the neo-fascist Bush regime, the greatest threat in itself to American democracy and international order.

It is not only Republicans that come under Goodman’s fire. “The Republicans and Democrats establish the acceptable boundaries of debate. When those groups agree – which is often – there is simply no debate.”(p.206) Later, she describes a spontaneous interview with president Clinton, in which she laid into him with difficult questions regarding the Iraq sanctions, the death penalty, racial profiling, NAFTA, and other unpleasantries. This appears to be Goodman at her self-righteous worst. Couldn’t she at least give the guy some credit and deference for making himself available to begin with, not to mention in an informal media format. Could anyone imagine George W. Bush doing anything remotely of the like, risking exposure to the unfamiliar, outside the realm of scripted and choreographed press conferences? In her zealous drive to demonstrate her journalistic independence, Goodman goes for the jugular, rather than recognizing a good faith effort of outreach on election day, made in the interest of getting the “get out the vote” message out.

There are two other instances noted by Goodman of persons exhibiting ideological intransigence to absurd levels. She describes an incarcerated American by the name of Allan Niarn making a statement denouncing by name his captors (among them high ranking Indonesian generals) for atrocities in East Timor and elsewhere. It’s hard to believe that this person actually survived his self-righteous posturing. The other example comes at the end of the book, where Democracy Now co-worker Jeremy Scahill attempts to shout down Richard Holbrooke at an awards ceremony. Again, there’s a sanctimonious tone here, as if nothing else is good enough for these people on the sidelines, that one will find upsetting. It’s easy to imagine that if everyone abided by all their criticisms, nothing in this world would ever get done. I suppose this is where this reviewer has major differences with Goodman. It’s a hell of a lot easier to hold your nose on the sidelines, incessantly repeating that nothing is good enough, than to take a risk of faith, demonstrate a little good-humored compromise, and join the rest of humanity

In the final analysis, the Goodmans have put together a fair work. But when Amy berates Bob Kerrey over his service in Vietnam, telling him that by contrast an eighty year old Dan Berrigan has no regrets, she is going over the top. Instead of recognizing her position of privilege and using it sympathetically, she repeatedly takes the path of the overly-sanctimonious. And in the end , this is what makes The Exception to the Rulers a disappointing work.