An interesting piece by Chris Hedges at TruthDig.com in which he interviews Ralph Nader and quotes the veteran corporate watchdog as claiming he has been passed over more than not lately by the press.

“Ralph Nader's descent from being one of the most respected and powerful men in the country to being a pariah illustrates the totality of the corporate coup,” the piece begins. “Nader's marginalization was not accidental. It was orchestrated to thwart the legislation that Nader and his allies-who once consisted of many in the Democratic Party-enacted to prevent corporate abuse, fraud and control. He was targeted to be destroyed. And by the time he was shut out of the political process with the election of Ronald Reagan, the government was in the hands of corporations. Nader's fate mirrors our own.”

He later quotes Nader as saying: “The pressure of these meetings by the corporations like General Motors, the oil companies and the drug companies with the editorial people, and probably with the publishers, coincided with the emergence of the most destructive force to the citizen movement-Abe Rosenthal, the editor of The New York Times. Rosenthal was a right-winger from Canada who hated communism, came here and hated progressivism. The Times was not doing that well at the time. Rosenthal was commissioned to expand his suburban sections, which required a lot of advertising. He was very receptive to the entreaties of corporations, and he did not like me. I would give material to Jack Morris in the Washington bureau and it would not get in the paper.”

Reality or sour grapes?