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The Leonard Lopate Show / April 18, 2008 / Cokie Roberts on the Ladies of Liberty

Cokie Roberts on the Ladies of Liberty

Friday, April 18, 2008

ABC and NPR’s Cokie Roberts talks about America’s founding mothers – women like Abigail Adams and Sacagawea, who helped shape the country in its earliest years. Her new book is Ladies of Liberty.


Comments

  • [1] AWM from UWS April 18, 2008 - 09:56AM

    Why do we still not only excuse but revere people who accepted, encouraged and embraced a society that enslaved other human beings?


  • [2] Ken from Upper West Side April 18, 2008 - 12:11PM

    How nice that we have the crack NPR analyst, Cokie Roberts, on the show! Why don't you ask her how her news "analysis" -- which actually is just mindless parroting of received Washington opinion -- helped shape our disastrous involvement in Iraq?
  • [3] megan from Park Slope April 18, 2008 - 12:14PM

    Angry Ken - bring some examples...just one....
  • [4] megan from Park Slope April 18, 2008 - 12:18PM

    Ken, you may prefer to listen to an even more liberal station than WNYC where you can here some mindless analyst parroting received anti-American

    "wisdom" ala the Noam / Ceasr Chavez cabal...

    I think WNYC is about as fair as balanced as you will get on and off the radio
  • [5] Andrew Dark from Nyack, New York April 18, 2008 - 12:21PM

    Laundry hung in the press interview room! Now, that's just a blast...


  • [6] Lloyd from Manhattan April 18, 2008 - 12:22PM

    I wonder what Ms. Roberts thinks of the shameless performance of her ABC colleagues Gibson and Stephanopoulos in squandering much of the Pennsylvania debate on trivial "gotcha" questions that no one cares about.
  • [7] jd from ny April 18, 2008 - 12:22PM

    Why not ask Cokie Roberts if she's proud of her role in electing GWB in 2000, what it is about her political observations and her packaging of beltway orthodoxy that advances the national discourse, and whether her erudition and unique insight qualifies her to opine on a national stage?

    Or is this yet another soft-soap interview to help "authors" sell books, and the audience is regarded as the customer, with no rights to the truth, if it doesn't help sell the book?

    If a Nazi war criminal writes a book on horticulture, will you only talk about daffodils?
  • [8] megan from Park Slope April 18, 2008 - 12:23PM

    AWM - which society pre-1950 in the world did NOT

    accepted, encouraged and embraced slavery?

    Do you think African societies didn't have slavery?

    so none of the billions of people who lived pre-1950 can ever be celebrated unless they explicitly condemned slavery?

    let's throw out 90% of all books....
  • [9] megan from Park Slope April 18, 2008 - 12:25PM

    so now Cokie Roberts is compared to a Nazi

    war criminal....wow! that is chilling...and sad.
  • [10] Lou from Brooklyn April 18, 2008 - 12:29PM

    They should play the song "Abigail Adams" by the Brooklyn indie-pop band, The City and Horses. It's a love song from John Adams to Abigail.

    http://www.myspace.com/thecityandhorses

    It's quite a touching tune.

    :)

    Lou
  • [11] Tom from NYC April 18, 2008 - 12:30PM

    John Jay was the first Chief Justice, Marshall was the fourth
  • [12] AWM from UWS April 18, 2008 - 12:33PM

    "Do you think African societies didn't have slavery?"

    I don't "think" this, I know this. But she isn't waxing poetic about African queens in pre-Europe Africa. Who does? If they do, how many books do they sell?

    "so none of the billions of people who lived pre-1950 can ever be celebrated unless they explicitly condemned slavery?"

    Not if they were in positions of power or influence, no. Their story is incomplete if it doesn't take into account that their era of power and influence was in the midst of the most profound type of inequality known to man.


  • [13] AWM from UWS April 18, 2008 - 12:44PM

    ...I meant to say that I know that African societies had slavery
  • [14] chestinee from Midtown April 18, 2008 - 01:00PM

    The idea of equality was new and fledgling to the known world in the time of the founding fathers. It it still is, but not as wobbly as it was then.

    Cokie irritates me when she refers to Barack as Senator Obama and Hillary as MRS. Clinton. But she is a fifties era gal (graduated from college in 1964.)
  • [15] lee gorelick from new york city April 18, 2008 - 01:03PM

    in your conversation with Cokie Roberts it was stated that John Marshall was the first chief justice...it was in fact John Jay
  • [16] jp from ny April 18, 2008 - 02:22PM

    No, Megan, Cokie Roberts is not being compared to a Nazi. The rhetorical technique used is called "analogy". It's not a literal or metaphoric comparison.

    The case against Cokie was offered in some detail. It did not include charges of Nazism -- just the same ignorance, depravity and arrogance which characterizes most American "opinion journalism".

    And in this respect, Cokie is among the worst on TV, and Cokie on Gore in 2000 was particularly shameless. But she's at WNYC to sell her book, so banish the thought that anything critical of her might be said, because it might interfere with book sales, and WNYC would have trouble attracting more talentless "authors" who in many cases don't even write their own books.

    Does no at the station every get good and sick of it?

This thread is closed.


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