Chris Hayes: Why America's Meritocracy Is Just a Myth

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http://www.alternet.org/books/155857/chris_hayes%3A_why_america%27s_meritocracy_is_just_a_myth/

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***SNIP

H: I want to talk about the book, but first I feel almost duty-bound to ask about this recent fracas you got into after noting something entirely obvious to my viewpoint -- that not every soldier who loses his or her life is a hero. You said this very respectfully, but it ignited a kind of 'two minutes of hate' against you. Was that an eye-opener as far as the constraints of the discourse on cable television versus if you’d written that column in the Nation? I don’t think there would have been the same reaction.

CH: I think it was an eye-opener and kind of a reminder that I do have a pretty big platform now. People are listening and paying attention, and that’s a privilege I take incredibly seriously. We talk about difficult and sensitive topics, complex and loaded topics on the show. It’s one of the things that we try to do intentionally, because those are topics that need to be talked about. So with the nature of that -- and talking unscripted and mostly off the prompter for four hours live every week -- that comes with the territory. I knew that abstractly, but I’d say I now know it more concretely in these last few weeks.

JH: Again I think that what you said was both respectful and obviously accurate. You apologized for it in the days that followed. Did you come under pressure to do so?

CH: No. I don’t say things that I don’t believe, as a rule. I wouldn’t say something that I didn’t believe. I stand by what I said in the statement and I stand by what I said on the show. I said those things because I felt those things. But I want to be very clear: we’re not going to be cowed, intimidated or bullied away from having difficult conversations. I think we showed that by how we went about the show the next weekend.

People are paying attention and words mean a lot. They have a certain power and a force. They have a power and a force specifically to individuals who have been on the receiving end of some terrible life experiences. One of the requirements of journalistic empathy -- and just empathy as a general human being -- is to take care about that, to keep that in mind. That’s something we’re also going to keep doing. We have a lot of issues in this country that don’t get the airing they need to get. We want to keep trying to discuss them.

[Enrique]

1. "we are not going to be cowed"

But I want to be very clear: we’re not going to be cowed, intimidated or bullied away from having difficult conversations. I think we showed that by how we went about the show the next weekend.

I noticed that. It was the weekend after the "heroes" controversy that Hayes had Jeremy Scahill on as a guest, who said that Obama's drone strikes are "murder". Definitely a controversial statement, but it oddly didn't get any attention in the MSM.

[nashville_brook]

2. i just got his book this morning -- woohoo!!