`Parade' Magazine's Hidden History

(The following article first appeared in the 11/18/92 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative newspaper Downtown)

Parade was founded in 1941 by a Chicago media mogul named Marshall Field III (whose grandfather had founded the Marshall Field department stores) and, within five years, two million copies were being distributed by 15 U.S. newspapers each Sunday. To make Parade more profitable, however, Field appointed a publisher named Arthur “Red” Motley to be its president in 1946 and Motley started to help newspapers secure local ads which tied-in to Parade’s national advertising. By 1956, seven million copies of Parade were being distributed by 52 U.S. newspapers. And its yearly advertising sales had increased from $1.8 million in 1946 to $14 million ten years later.

After Marshall Field III died in 1958, Parade was sold to New York media mogul John Hay Whitney. In October 1959 it became part of his Whitney Communications Corporation. By 1960, 65 U.S. newspapers were distributing over 9.5 million copies of Parade ever week and the magazine was selling around $25 million worth of advertising space annually. Its president was still Arthur “Red” Motley, who was also elected president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 1960. In 1973, however, Motley and other members of the Whitney Communications corporate board decided to sell Parade to the Booth Newspapers media conglomerate.

Although its name was still not printed on the magazine’s masthead in the early 1990s, the Newhouse Dynasty has owned Parade since 1976, when Samuel Irving Newhouse I purchased Parade and eight daily newspapers in Michigan from Booth Newspapers for around $305 million. Parade’s weekly circulation in 1976 was 19 million.

By 1981, Parade’s weekly circulation exceeded 21 million, it was charging advertisers $170,000 per full page of advertising each week, and it was providing the Newhouse Dynasty’s media holding company, Advance Publications, with over $140 million a year in advertising sales. Of all U.S. magazines in 1981, Newhouse’s Parade magazine charged the most for a full-page ad. And of all Newhouse-owned magazines in 1981, Parade magazine was the biggest money-maker in terms of total advertising sales.

In the early 1990s, 344 U.S. newspapers distributed over 36 million copies of Parade to around 70 million readers each Sunday. And the magazine—whose editorial offices were then located at 750 Third Avenue in Midtown Manhattan—charged advertisers over $420,000 to publish a full-page color ad in an individual issue of Parade in the 1990s because of its enormous number of readers.

[Today, 470 U.S. newspapers distribute 33 million copies of Parade to around 73 million readers each Sunday].

(Downtown 11/18/92)

`Parade' Magazine's Newhouse/`Vogue' Connection

(The following article first appeared in the 11/18/92 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative newspaper Downtown)

“A late 19th-century institution, the Sunday newspaper magazine, showed renewed signs of life in the eighties…Parade remains the largest Sunday supplement in America.

“Several of these Sunday magazines are advertising gold mines, drawing on both local and national advertisers…” (The Magazine In America: 1741-1990 by John Tebbel and Mary Zuckerman)

“Also in the Advance lineup is Parade, distributed as a Sunday supplement in 314 newspapers to a massive 64.8 million people. (The Last Days of The New Yorker by Gigi Mahon in 1988)

“At one point 64 Newhouse cousins, brothers, in-laws and other assorted relatives were on the payroll.” (Everybody’s Business in 1990)

“…The several million readers of the chain’s 26 newspapers doubtless would find instructive an exploration of the government’s accusation that the Newhouse family had dodged more than $1 billion in taxes.” (The Nation magazine on March 13, 1989)

Every Sunday, newspapers like the Washington Post and the Boston Globe distribute the magazine with the largest circulation in the United States: Parade magazine. But Parade is published by neither the Washington Post nor the Boston Globe. Parade is actually owned by the Newhouse media conglomerate—Advance Publications—that also markets magazines like Vogue, Glamour, Self, GQ, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Details, as well as daily newspapers in Newark, Jersey City, Trenton, Staten Island, Syracuse, Harrisburg, Cleveland, Michigan, Massachusetts, Oregon, Alabama, Mississippi and New Orleans. If the family which owns Parade magazine paraded representatives of its magazines and newspapers up Fifth Avenue, more than 30 publications would be represented in the Newhouse Dynasty’s line of march.

Asked by Downtown in a Fall 1992 telephone interview to characterize the Newhouse company’s relationship to Parade, its then-public relations spokesperson, Catherine Hemlepp, replied at that time: “Parade is owned by Advance Publications. Our chairman reports directly to S.I. Newhouse.”

The Parade spokesperson also noted in 1992 that, despite the U.S. economic downturn, Parade’s advertising income was still increasing in the 1990s.

(Downtown 11/18/92)

`Kunstler On Your Side'

(chorus)

He was known as a “People’s Lawyer”
Although he got on TV
And when William Kunstler argued
The judge said: “Not guilty!”

(verses)

If you like to sing some folk songs
And you’re bothered by the F.B.I.
Then my advice for all you folk fans
Is to have Kunstler on your side.

If you’re trapped in Alabama
Where a sheriff took you for a ride
Then my advice for all you folk fans
Is to have Kunstler on your side. (chorus)

If you’re fighting against the War Machine
And you’re jailed for exposing lies
Then my advice for all you folk fans
Is to have Kunstler on your side.

If you’ve led a protest march
Where the police beat you ‘till you cried
Then my advice for all you folk fans
Is to have Kunstler on your side. (chorus)

If you’re charged with “conspiracy”
And “illegally crossing state lines”
Then my advice for all you folk fans
Is to have Kunstler on your side.

If you’re revolting in a prison
Against guards that brutalized
Then my advice for all you folk fans
Is to have Kunstler on your side. (chorus)

The original version of the public domain Kunstler On Your Side biographical protest folk song about the now-deceased civil rights attorney was written in the 1980s.

In his 1999 biography of William Kunstler, William M. Kunstler: The Most Hated Lawyer In America, a law school professor named David Langum indicated which kind of private practice clients Kunstler would not represent in the 1980s and 1990s:

“Like all lawyers in private practice, Kunstler also took cases for no more exalted reason than to earn a fee. Political selectivity continued, although a more realistic statement of Kunstler’s later position was that given to a reporter in 1994:…He would not have taken on O.J. Simpson `because it’s a wife killing case.’ Nor would he have represented the hotel mogul Leona Helmsley, who, `although she has the same civil rights as anyone, is a rather detestable character with few redeeming qualities.’”

For more information about William Kunstler’s life, you might want to check out the new documentary film, William Kunstler: Disturbing The Universe, or the www.disturbingtheuniverse.com web site.

To listen to some other biographical protest folk songs, you can check out the “Columbia Songs for a Democratic Society” music site at the following link:

http://www.myspace.com/bobafeldman68music

Iran History Revisited: Part 30

(See parts 1-29 below)

On April 14, 2009, the World Jewish Congress’s website noted that “Israeli president Shimon Peres has warned that military action against Iran would still be needed if U.S. president Barack Obama’s new diplomatic initiative fails” and “warned that if talks do not soften Ahmadnejad’s approach, ` we will strike him.’…”

And an article by Sheera Frenkel that was posted on the London Times website on April 18, 2009 also stated:

“The Israeli military is preparing itself to launch a massive aerial assault on Iran's nuclear facilities within days of being given the go-ahead by its new government.

“Among the steps taken to ready Israeli forces for what would be a risky raid requiring pinpoint aerial strikes are the acquisition of three Airborne Warning and Control (AWAC) aircraft and regional missions to simulate the attack.

“Two nationwide civil defence drills will help to prepare the public for the retaliation that Israel could face.

“`Israel wants to know that if its forces were given the green light they could strike at Iran in a matter of days, even hours. They are making preparations on every level for this eventuality. The message to Iran is that the threat is not just words,’ one senior defence official told The Times…

“`We would not make the threat [against Iran] without the force to back it. There has been a recent move, a number of on-the-ground preparations, that indicate Israel's willingness to act,' said another official from Israel's intelligence community.

“He added that it was unlikely that Israel would carry out the attack without receiving at least tacit approval from America...”

Yet much of the hidden history of Iran since the CIA helped the Shah of Iran set up a police state in Iran prior to the 1979 Iranian Revolution still remains unknown to many U.S. voters in 2009.

By 1997, young people in Iran composed 25 percent of Iran’s population of 67 million; and the number of university students in Iran had grown from only 160,000 in 1977 to 1.25 million in 1997, as a result of the Iranian government’s increased investment in Iranian higher education.

During the 1990s, however, the Iranian government began to privatize Iran’s economy more by transferring control of state-run enterprises to Islamic clergy-controlled private foundations, thus turning these foundations into powerful business corporations, according to the 2006 Democracy In Iran book.

The size of Iran’s college-educated middle-class also began to increase in the 1990s; and this seemed to lead to increased political support for Iranian electoral candidates who favored more liberalization and more democratization of Iranian society.

The conservative clerical political leadership in Iran, however, responded to the 1990s electoral success of candidates favoring more democratization and liberalization by shutting down 19 pro-reformist newspapers in Iran in May 1999; and by disqualifying 3,600 candidates who favored more democratization, including 80 incumbent candidates, from participating in the 2004 Iranian parliamentary elections.

Although U.S. Secretary of State Clinton’s husband-—former Democratic President Bill Clinton--signed an executive order banning all U.S. trade and investment in Iran in May 1995, European governments have adopted less hostile economic policies in relation to Iran than has the U.S. government, in recent years.

In Iran, “European multinational companies” have “formed business partnerships in various sectors of the economy—including oil and gas, telecommunications, consumer electronics and automotive—especially after a bill in 2002,” passed by Iran’s parliament, “eased some of the restrictions on foreign investments,” according to the Democracy In Iran book.

After the former Mayor of Tehran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was elected president of Iran in June 2005 with 62 percent of the Iranian popular vote, on a platform of pledging to redistribute more of the wealth of Iran to the most impoverished people in Iran, both the Republican Bush Administration and the Israeli government seemed more eager to launch a military attack on Iran.

But, as this revisiting of Iran’s history has shown, people in Iran have suffered, historically, as a result of U.S. intervention in Iran’s internal political affairs since World War II. And a U.S. government-supported Israeli military attack against Iran in 2009--regardless of which pretext is used by the Obama-Clinton Administration or the Netanyanu Israeli government--will likely create additional suffering for people in Iran.

So it’s not surprising that a February 2007 statement issued by the political committee of The Union of Iranian Socialists in North America declared that “The people of Iran vehemently oppose the intervention of any foreign power in their country” and “any kind of aggressive actions by the U.S. and its allies, either military or economic, should be condemned by progressive anti-war activists.” (end of article)

Iran History Revisited: Part 29

(See parts 1-28 below)

On April 14, 2009, the World Jewish Congress’s website noted that “Israeli president Shimon Peres has warned that military action against Iran would still be needed if U.S. president Barack Obama’s new diplomatic initiative fails” and “warned that if talks do not soften Ahmadnejad’s approach, ` we will strike him.’…”

And an article by Sheera Frenkel that was posted on the London Times website on April 18, 2009 also stated:

“The Israeli military is preparing itself to launch a massive aerial assault on Iran's nuclear facilities within days of being given the go-ahead by its new government.

“Among the steps taken to ready Israeli forces for what would be a risky raid requiring pinpoint aerial strikes are the acquisition of three Airborne Warning and Control (AWAC) aircraft and regional missions to simulate the attack.

“Two nationwide civil defence drills will help to prepare the public for the retaliation that Israel could face.

“`Israel wants to know that if its forces were given the green light they could strike at Iran in a matter of days, even hours. They are making preparations on every level for this eventuality. The message to Iran is that the threat is not just words,’ one senior defence official told The Times…

“`We would not make the threat [against Iran] without the force to back it. There has been a recent move, a number of on-the-ground preparations, that indicate Israel's willingness to act,' said another official from Israel's intelligence community.

“He added that it was unlikely that Israel would carry out the attack without receiving at least tacit approval from America...”

Yet much of the hidden history of Iran since the CIA helped the Shah of Iran set up a police state in Iran prior to the 1979 Iranian Revolution still remains unknown to many U.S. voters in 2009.

The economic destruction caused by the eight year Iraq-Iran War and the generally unfriendly policy of the U.S. government towards Iran during the years since the U.S. embassy was seized by Iranian students (except during the “Iran-Contragate Scandal” period of the Republican Reagan Administration when the U.S. government arranged for weapons to be shipped to the Islamic Republic of Iran) hurt the post-revolutionary Iranian economy, prior to the death of Ayatollah Khomeini on June 3, 1989. But Iran’s oil wealth has enabled the Islamic Republic to apparently satisfy the economic needs of some people within Iranian society--although many other people in Iran still seem to be having economic difficulties.

By 1989, 80 percent of the Iranian economy was controlled by the Iranian government and banks, insurance companies and all major industries in Iran were now nationalized. Although one-third of Iranian workers were provided jobs by Iran’s public sector in 1988, during that same year about 30 percent of all Iranian workers were still apparently unemployed.

In 1989, the average inflation rate in Iran’s economy also apparently exceeded 23 percent; and by 1993 the annual inflation rate in Iran had increased to 40 percent. As a result, when the Iranian government announced cuts in price controls and government subsidies of basic necessities during the 1990s, street protests broke out in Tehran and other Iranian cities. (end of part 28)

Iran History Revisited: Part 28

(See parts 1-27 below)

On April 14, 2009, the World Jewish Congress’s website noted that “Israeli president Shimon Peres has warned that military action against Iran would still be needed if U.S. president Barack Obama’s new diplomatic initiative fails” and “warned that if talks do not soften Ahmadnejad’s approach, ` we will strike him.’…”

And an article by Sheera Frenkel that was posted on the London Times website on April 18, 2009 also stated:

“The Israeli military is preparing itself to launch a massive aerial assault on Iran's nuclear facilities within days of being given the go-ahead by its new government.

“Among the steps taken to ready Israeli forces for what would be a risky raid requiring pinpoint aerial strikes are the acquisition of three Airborne Warning and Control (AWAC) aircraft and regional missions to simulate the attack.

“Two nationwide civil defence drills will help to prepare the public for the retaliation that Israel could face.

“`Israel wants to know that if its forces were given the green light they could strike at Iran in a matter of days, even hours. They are making preparations on every level for this eventuality. The message to Iran is that the threat is not just words,’ one senior defence official told The Times…

“`We would not make the threat [against Iran] without the force to back it. There has been a recent move, a number of on-the-ground preparations, that indicate Israel's willingness to act,' said another official from Israel's intelligence community.

“He added that it was unlikely that Israel would carry out the attack without receiving at least tacit approval from America...”

Yet much of the hidden history of Iran since the CIA helped the Shah of Iran set up a police state in Iran prior to the 1979 Iranian Revolution still remains unknown to many U.S. voters in 2009.

In addition to providing the Iranian government with a pretext to repress secular anti-imperialist proponents of more democratization of Iranian society during the 1980s, the 1980 to 1988 Iraq-Iran War that Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath regime in Iraq started in September 1980 also produced great suffering for the people of both Iran and Iraq. Almost one million Iranians were maimed or killed, for example, as a result of the Iraq-Iran War of the 1980s; and many Iranian cities were extensively damaged during this war.

But on July 18, 1988, the Iranian government agreed to accept UN Security Council Resolution 598 which called for a cease-fire with Iraq; and the 1980 and 1988 Iraq-Iran War finally ended. Six days later, however, the People’s Mojahadeen guerrilla group launched a military incursion into Iran.

Iranian government authorities apparently then used this military attack as a pretext to carry out another round of mass executions of both imprisoned secular anti-imperialist left Iranian activists and imprisoned People’s Mojahadeen activists. According to the Human Rights Watch web site:

“In 1988, the Iranian government summarily and extra-judicially executed thousands of political prisoners held in Iranian jails…The majority of those executed were serving prison sentences for their political activities…Those who had been sentenced, however, had not been sentenced to death….”

Dissident Iranian activists and Amnesty International estimated that between 2,800 and 4,481 Iranian political prisoners were then executed in 1988 by Islamic Republic authorities. Although most of the executed Iranian political prisoners in 1988 were members and supporters of the People’s Mojahadeen group, hundreds of imprisoned members and supporters of the Tudeh Party, the Peoples’ Fedayeen group and the Kurdish Democratic Party were also apparently executed by the Iranian government authorities in 1988. (end of part 28)

Iran History Revisited: Part 27

(See parts 1-26 below)

On April 14, 2009, the World Jewish Congress’s website noted that “Israeli president Shimon Peres has warned that military action against Iran would still be needed if U.S. president Barack Obama’s new diplomatic initiative fails” and “warned that if talks do not soften Ahmadnejad’s approach, ` we will strike him.’…”

And an article by Sheera Frenkel that was posted on the London Times website on April 18, 2009 also stated:

“The Israeli military is preparing itself to launch a massive aerial assault on Iran's nuclear facilities within days of being given the go-ahead by its new government.

“Among the steps taken to ready Israeli forces for what would be a risky raid requiring pinpoint aerial strikes are the acquisition of three Airborne Warning and Control (AWAC) aircraft and regional missions to simulate the attack.

“Two nationwide civil defence drills will help to prepare the public for the retaliation that Israel could face.

“`Israel wants to know that if its forces were given the green light they could strike at Iran in a matter of days, even hours. They are making preparations on every level for this eventuality. The message to Iran is that the threat is not just words,’ one senior defence official told The Times…

“`We would not make the threat [against Iran] without the force to back it. There has been a recent move, a number of on-the-ground preparations, that indicate Israel's willingness to act,' said another official from Israel's intelligence community.

“He added that it was unlikely that Israel would carry out the attack without receiving at least tacit approval from America...”

Yet much of the hidden history of Iran since the CIA helped the Shah of Iran set up a police state in Iran prior to the 1979 Iranian Revolution still remains unknown to many U.S. voters in 2009.

In their 2006 book Democracy In Iran: History and the Quest for Liberty, University of San Diego Professor of History and Political Science Ali Gheissari and Vali Nasr described how the religious, anti-communist supporters of Khomeini’s Islamic Republic regime apparently also started to violate the democratic rights of leftist Iranian supporters of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, after the Democratic Carter Administration refused to extradite the deposed Shah of Iran and the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was seized:

“Fundamentalists began to constrict the Left’s room to maneuver, purging their members from positions of power, attacking their offices, gatherings, and demonstrations, and intimidating or arresting their members and supporters. For instance, they attacked university campuses, intimidated and arrested students and faculty, and in June 1980 set in motion a `cultural revolution’ to cleanse the universities of the Left. Fundamentalists permanently occupied Tehran University by making its grounds the site for the official Friday Prayers…”

In an article that appeared in the June 21, 2003 issue of the Asia Times, B Raman also asserted that in Iran “after seizing power with the help of the communist students, the clerics ruthlessly suppressed the communists, arresting and executing many of them;” and “those who escaped arrest and death at the hands of the clerics managed to flee to West Europe and started organizing their activities from there.” According to the 2006 Democracy In Iran book, the secular Iranian leftist activists “were portrayed by fundamentalists as American stooges, and resistance to religion’s prominence in society was depicted as a Western ploy to destabilize the revolution.” (end of part 27)