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Short biography of Franz Kafka, German-language writer, who was born into a middle-class, Jewish family on July 3, 1883 in Prague, Bohemia, now the Czech Republic.

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Synopsis

Born on July 3, 1883, in Prague, capital of what is now the Czech Republic, writer Franz Kafka grew up in an upper middle-class Jewish family. After studying law at the University of Prague, he worked in insurance and wrote in the evenings. In 1923, he moved to Berlin to focus on writing, but died of tuberculosis shortly after. His friend Max Brod published most of his work posthumously, such as Amerika and The Castle.

Early Years

Writer Franz Kafka was the eldest son of an upper middle-class Jewish family who was born on July 3, 1883, in Prague, the capital of Bohemia, a kingdom that was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Tragedy shaped the Kafka home. Franz's two younger brothers, Georg and Heinrich, died in infancy by the time Kafka was 6, leaving the boy the only son in a family that included three daughters (all of whom would later die in Nazi death camps or a Polish ghetto).

Kafka had a difficult relationship with both of his parents. His mother, Julie, was a devoted homemaker who lacked the intellectual depth to understand her son's dreams to become a writer. Kafka's father, Hermann, had a forceful personality that often overwhelmed the Kafka home. He was a success in business, making his living retailing men's and women's clothes.

Kafka's father had a profound impact on both Kafka's life and writing. He was a tyrant of sorts, with a wicked temper and little appreciation for his son's creative side. Much of Kafka's personal struggles, in romance and other relationships, came, he believed, in part from his complicated relationship with his father. In his literature, Kafka's characters were often coming up against an overbearing power of some kind, one that could easily break the will of men and destroy their sense of self-worth.

Kafka seems to have derived much of his value directly from to his family, in particular his father. For much of his adult life, he lived within close proximity to his parents.

Education

German was his first language. In fact, despite his Czech background and Jewish roots, Kafka's identity favored German culture.

Kafka was a smart child who did well in school even at the Altstädter Staatsgymnasium, an exacting high school for the academic elite. Still, even while Kafka earned the respect of his teachers, he chafed under their control and the school's control of his life.

After high school Kafka enrolled at the Charles Ferdinand University of Prague, where intended to study chemistry but after just two weeks switched to law. The change pleased his father, and also gave Kafka the time to take classes in art and literature.

In 1906 Kafka completed his law degree and embarked on a year of unpaid work as a law clerk.

Work Life

After completing his apprenticeship, Kafka found work with an Italian insurance agency in late 1907. It was a terrible fit from the start, with Kafka forced to work a tiring schedule that left little time for his writing.

He lasted at the agency a little less than a year. After turning in his resignation he quickly found a new job with the Workers' Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia.

As much as any work could, the job and his employers suited Kafka, who worked hard and became his boss's right-hand man. Kafka remained with the company until 1917, when a bout with tuberculosis forced him to take a sick leave and to eventually retire in 1922.

Love and Health

At work Kafka was a popular employee, easy to socialize with and seen as somebody with a good sense of humor. But his personal life still raged with complications. His inhibitions and insecurities plagued his relationships. Twice he was engaged to marry his girlfriend, Felice Bauer, before the two finally went their separate ways in 1917.

Later, Kafka later fell in love with Dora Dymant (Diamant), who shared his Jewish roots and a preference for socialism. Amidst Kafka's increasingly dire health, the two fell in love and lived together in Berlin. Their relationship largely centered on Kafka's illnesses. For many years, even before he contracted tuberculosis, Kafka had not been well. Constantly strained and stressed, he suffered from migraines, boils, depression, anxiety and insomnia.

Kafka and Dora eventually returned to Prague. In an attempt to overcome his tuberculosis, Kafka traveled to Vienna for treatment at a sanatorium. He died in Kierling, Austria, on June 3, 1924. He was buried beside his parents in Prague's New Jewish Cemetery in Olsanske.

Body of Work

While Kafka strove to earn a living, he also poured himself into his writing work. An old friend named Max Brod would prove crucial in supporting Kafka's literary work both during his life and long after it.

Kafka's celebrity as a writer only came after his death. During his lifetime, he published just a sliver of his overall work.

His most popular and best-selling short story, "The Metamorphosis," was completed in 1912 and published in 1915. The story was written from Kafka's third-floor room, which offered a direct view of the Vltava River and its toll bridge.

"I would stand at the window for long periods," he wrote in his diary in 1912, "and was frequently tempted to amaze the toll collector on the bridge below by my plunge."

Kafka followed up "The Metamorphosis" with Mediation, a collection of short stories, in 1913, and "Before the Law," a parable within his novel The Trial, written between 1914 and 1915.

Even with his worsening health, Kafka continued to write. In 1916 he completed "The Judgment," which spoke directly about the relationship he shared with his father. Later works included "In the Penal Colony" and "A Country Doctor," both finished in 1919.

In 1924, an ill but still working Kafka finished A Hunger Artist, which features four stories that demonstrate the concise and lucid style that marked his writing at the end of his life.

But Kafka, still living with the demons that plagued with him self-doubt, was reluctant to unleash his work on the world. He requested that Brod, who doubled as his literary executor, destroy any unpublished manuscripts.

Fortunately, Brod did not adhere to his friend's wishes and in 1925 published The Trial, a dark, paranoid tale that proved to be the author's most successful novel. The story centers on the life of Joseph K., who is forced to defend himself in a hopeless court system against a crime that is never revealed to him or to the reader.

The following year, Brod released The Castle, which again railed against a faceless and dominating bureaucracy. In the novel, the protagonist, whom the reader knows only as K., tries to meet with the mysterious authorities who rule his village.

In 1927, the novel Amerika was published. The story hinges on a boy, Karl Rossmann, who is sent by his family to America, where his innocence and simplicity are exploited everywhere he travels. Amerika struck at the same father issues that were prevalent in so much of Kafka's other work. But the story also spoke to Kafka's love of travel books and memoirs (he adored The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin) and his longing to see the world.

In 1931, Brod published the short story "The Great Wall of China," which Kafka had originally crafted 14 years before.

Legacy

Incredibly, at the time of his death Kafka's name was known only to small group of readers. It was only after he died and Max Brod went against the demands of his friend that Kafka and his work gained fame. His books garnered favor during World War II, especially, and greatly influenced German literature.

As the 1960s took shape and Eastern Europe was under the fist of bureaucratic Communist governments, Kafka's writing resonated particularly strongly with readers. So alive and vibrant were the tales that Kafka spun about man and faceless organizations that a new term was introduced into the English lexicon: "Kafkaesque."

The measure of Kafka's appeal and value as a writer was quantified in 1988, when his handwritten manuscript of The Trial was sold at auction for $1.98 million, at that point the highest price ever paid for a modern manuscript.

The buyer, a West German book dealer, gushed after his purchase was finalized. "This is perhaps the most important work in 20th-century German literature," he said, "and Germany had to have it."

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Born on July 3, 1883, in Prague, capital of what is now the Czech Republic, writer Franz Kafka grew up in an upper middle-class Jewish family. After studying law at the University of Prague, he worked in insurance and wrote in the evenings.

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an overview of this absurd space

Since 1996, The Existential Primer has provided an introduction to existentialism and the related Continental philosophies. As a primer, the website explores connections between many individuals, works, and concepts instead of offering narrow specialization. Scholars appreciate the need for both narrow and broad analyses, which serve different purposes. When you read each section, do not expect narrowly focused depth - by definition, this website offers a survey of the topics and individuals important to existentialism. To locate book-length analyses of one thinker - or one work by that individual - use the complete bibliography.

My passion is creative writing and how "creative" works affect social change. The existentialists interest me because many of them appreciated the power of artistic expression to advance knowledge and understanding. To explore how Kafka's fiction relates to philosophy, I must read literary and philosophical scholarship. Scholars interested in how thinkers influence each other rely on the works of highly-specialized researchers. As we tell students, knowledge and understanding are socially constructed. Creative works embody that social process.

As a playwright, I appreciate that art reaches wider audiences than most scholarship. However, scholarship influences policy makers, especially on issues without mass appeal. Sometimes, I address an issue in both genres.

How do we construct meaning as societies if existence is meaningless? Existentialism attempts to describe our desire to make rational decisions despite existing in an irrational universe. Many existentialists develop model for decision making, with varying degrees of success. Some thinkers use formal, academic philosophy to explore existential questions. Others turn to creative forms, an equally valid approach to me in light of existentialism's view that we create meaning.

Unfortunately, life might be without inherent meaning (existential atheists) or it might be without a meaning we can understand (existential theists). Either way, the human desires for logic and immortality are futile. We are forced to define our own meanings, knowing they might be temporary. In this existence...

The Individual Defines Everything.

Existentialism is a philosophy that takes as its starting point the individual's existence. Everything that it has to say, and everything that it believes can be said of significance - about the world we inhabit, our feelings, thoughts, knowledge, ethics - stems from this central, founding idea.
- Existentialism: A Guide for the Perplexed ; Steven Earnshaw, p. 1

Existentialism: The Hip Outsider

Existentialism stands on the outside of philsophy departments, cool and hip, listening to an eclectic mix of music while secretly wanting to be respected by the academic elites. It is Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, rebels looking to the past. It is Sartre and de Beauvoir, political activists with academic credentials. Existentialism is the outsider, Camus, rejecting the label "existentialist" and traveling uneasily between and within journalistic, literary, theatrical, political, and philosophical cliqués.

Was, or is, existentialism an influential movement within philosophy? I could argue that existentialism had minimal influence within the academic discipline of philosophy, and at least in the Anglo-American traditions scholars appear to concur. The textbooks commonly assigned for introductory philosophy courses barely mention existentialism, including the texts I have assigned. But do we limit "influence" to a scholastic metric? That runs counter the very ideals embraced by the existentialists.

As of May 2014, our local bookstore had two shelves dedicated to philosophy. Kierkegaard was granted the most shelf space, followed by Nietzsche. A couple of Sartre classics lingered, out of alphabetical order. A copy of Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian was next to Batman and Philosophy . The remaining texts included the Greek thinkers ( Aristotle, Plato, Socrates) and a lone Roman ( Marcus Aurelius).

If we reconsider influence in terms of popular culture and awareness beyond the ivory towers, then existentialism occupies a rather unique position. Although existentialism doesn't match the influence of other, better defined philosophical movements in academic circles, it exceeds others in the most basic way: the general public is curious about it. My students know, vaguely and sometimes incorrectly, what existentialism might mean. High school World literature courses include Kafka, Camus, and Sartre, at a minimum. There is something appealing about existentialism to the contemplative teen mind.

Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger are more influential than the existentialists within philosophy, but many (most) of my undergraduate students know nothing of these thinkers. Then again, beyond the ancient Greeks, few philosophers are well-known. What people do remember are people with interesting lives.

The thinkers most commonly labelled existential, correctly or not, had interesting lives. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche embraced their roles as outcasts, offering prophet-like aphorisms embraced by other outcasts. Sartre was complex, especially his personal life. And Kafka? His life defines tragedy in the twentieth century, his literary alienation expressed just before the Holocaust. A boring existential thinker surely exists... unread by most students and scholars.

Revising Never Ends, Nor Should It...

Do not use this site as a study guide in insolation. The Existential Primer is a living academic project, unlike a static text. I revise these pages often because the scholarship never ends. Consult the citations within these pages. Read the works of many scholars! I implore you to read the original works of the thinkers profiled.

NOTE: Citations are not in MLA or APA format to prevent "borrowing" from The Existential Primer. Full lists of citations appear at the end of each page. Present tense is used when referencing a published work, while past tense is favored on these pages because the major figures are... dead. Inline citations take the form (Author p. page) with no year. A title is included if there might be confusion as to the work. Quoted long passages appear indented with the <blockquote> tag and cited in the format:

-Work; Author, p. Page

Primer News and Updates

2014 May 19

Yet another redesign as I seek to make The Existential Primer more device-friendly for phone and tablet users.

2011 September 14

We are now on Facebook! Please "like" The Existential Primer as a fan.

In response to visitor questions and requests, I do plan to add more biographies and criticisms - after I finish what I consider to be the primary pages. The placeholder pages created include: Karl Barth, Martin Buber, Viktor Frankl, Rollo May, Paul Tillich and several others. Please be patient while I continue efforts to complete "first drafts" of other pages.

Primer Contents

Organizing The Existential Primer required arbitrary choices, grouping information and analyses under imprecise headings. Since a long list of ramblings without order would annoy readers, I organized thinkers based on their primary contributions to human knowledge (or confusion). Jean-Paul Sartre was a philosopher, a literary writer, a playwright, a politician, and more. Still, philosopher seemed the best choice.

The nice thing about a hypertext document: links interconnect documents, so many paths lead to the same materials. Follow the links, and then follow the citations within the pages. Ideally, the primer compels you to read more, especially the works of the thinkers mentioned and profiled.

Overview: Basic introduction to existentialism and its place within philosophical schools of thought.

Lexicon: Dictionary of terms and phrases used by the thinkers associated with existentialism.

History: Guide to how history shaped the development of existential philosophy.

Divisions: Short discussion of divisions within existentialism.

Sources: List of sources consulted for and cited in The Existential Primer.

Hopefully, this site offers some useful information and encourages readers to learn more on their own about both existentialism and philosophy in general.

Sources and Reliability

The Existential Primer is more than a static academic paper. Ideally, it improves every time someone offers a suggestion or I read yet another work about or by one of the profiled thinkers.

The nature of the Web allows one to maintain a "living" research project with an infinite number of internal links. The Existential Primer should be explored as the hypertext collection it is. In a traditional academic paper, which The Existential Primer is not, it would be considered bad form to include citations without including background on the source and its context nearby within the paper. I do not omit such information, but I assume you will follow the many links provided. Online, more information is merely a click or a tap away. Of course, I cannot force you to meander link to link.

I offer background on the Sources Cited page, along with explanations of why I selected various scholars for inclusion. Because pages of the primer are often read in isolation, I would have had to introduce sources repeatedly - each page being an "article" of sorts. Admittedly, because pages of The Existential Primer are in various stages of completion, some entries resemble what professors call "quilt" papers. A quilt is a shallow work that merely glues together outside sources with minimal original transitions. In time, the quilted pages evolve into thoughtful reflections.

Much of The Existential Primer content has been reviewed by authors, journalists, and professors with expertise. However, neither I nor these experts can or should tell anyone what thinkers of the past "really meant" in particular works. Please learn more about The Existential Primer, but do not assume anything you read here is more than a shallow introduction to the thinkers profiled. If you have a suggestion or find an error, contact me.

The Existential Primer will expand and improve as long as I am alive and able to type. I encourage you to read on. The Introduction to Existentialism offers more detail on the history and meaning of existentialism.

Sources

Earnshaw, Steven. Existentialism: A Guide for the Perplexed. London; New York: Continuum International Pub. Group, 2006. [ 0826485294, 9780826485298 (hc); 0826485308, 9780826485304 (pbk)]

Note: Please visit the complete bibliography for source materials consulted.

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an overview of this absurd space Since 1996, The Existential Primer has provided an introduction to existentialism and the related Continental philosophies. As a primer, the website explores connections between many individuals, works, and concepts instead of offering narrow specialization. Scholars appreciate the need for both narrow and broad analyses, which serve different purposes.

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Western industrial civilisation is eating itself stupid. Cookery programs bloat the television schedules, cookbooks fill the bookshop windows, and celebrity ...

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Somebody is reading your Google search history. It's me.

But don't feel the need to jump quickly into justifying why you've spent a good deal of time Googling 'hedgehog bath time" or, you know, other things...because this is public knowledge in the form of Google trends.

Used worldwide by researchers, businesses, and social media marketers like myself, Google Trends is a dive into the population's collective brain; the digital equivalent of hovering over somebody's shoulders as they browse the net. And this is one set of eyes that we can't swat away, Google has been watching patiently as we turn to the search bar for answers. And it turns out we're all asking the same questions, again and again.

The top charts of Google Trends read like the best and the worst of humanity. The worst ranging from deeply painful questions that speak towards immensely complicated and distressing issues to shamefully embarrassing trends like the Kylie Jenner lip challenge.

Weighty questions like "what is ISIS?" or "what is Ebola?" sit at the top of the 2015 stats representing a global desire to make sense of the world, to leave the cushy comfort of ignorance behind. Sandwiched together in the top charts, the superficial and the earth-shattering, I can only imagine that one day these trends will be unearthed like a time capsule containing our darkest secrets and awkward obsessions.

Where things get weird however, and yes it does get weirder than the Kylie Jenner lip challenge, is that over the years the deepest questions of our existence have snuck into the list too. We might be wondering "how to twerk?", or "who is Gossip Girl?", but we've also been Googling "what is the meaning of life?" and "what is love?"

Every year these questions sneak into the top trending searches worldwide, exposing that at some point in time, a good many of us have turned to Google with our existential questions; questions that we might have once taken to a mentor, a parent, or an elder. What a testament to our dedication towards the internet.

Instead of turning towards elders in the community, people who have actually lived and loved, we've taken to sitting cross-legged at the feet of a search engine as we try and turn web pages and information into something meaningful or life-altering.

In any case, individuals are turning towards the internet to answer life's biggest questions and I'm curious to know why. Is it simply boredom? Or are people trying to shortcut their way through life?

Instead of following the steps most of us take in order to find meaning, such as, travel, exploring spirituality, spending time time with people, the world first turns toward the internet. Are they expecting a Wikipedia page (there is one), or a quick blogpost (we uncover the meaning of life so you don't have to!) or was God going to reach through the screen offering up a stone tablet of answers?

Exactly what is it that we are looking for at the end of a desperation-laden Google search? " We wouldn't survive if people didn't trust us", Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google said about the company. And certainly, it seems like they have that. Not only are we trusting Google with a great pancake mix or a new hairstyle, but our humanity too.

So what exactly comes up when you Google "what is the meaning of life?" A Wikipedia article, a handful of motivational quotes, and a smattering of religious/philosophical websites. Searching for "what is love?" brings up Haddaway's 1992 hit song (You know the one: "what is love, baby don't hurt me"). Besides Haddaway's questionable relationship, there are also a couple of articles trying to capitalize on Google stats and algorithms, not exactly the answer a disheartened Googler is searching for.

Despite my cynicism, I'm pretty sure that at some point, perhaps after an eight-hour Netflix binge where my brain has turned fleecy and my eyes swollen, that I have typed a similar plea into Google. I asked myself why I would do that, perhaps I was hoping for justification that life is in fact meaningless and that my Netflix binge was A-OK, or that what I was doing was all wrong and that I should be frolicking through SE Asia or spending all my time outdoors.

Regardless, thinking about it now, it was a desperate move. A lonely move. It's sad to think that those same feelings of seeking connection or meaning are behind those questions at the top of Google trends every year. Especially when the answer ironically lies in friendship, family, and human connection -- all of which cannot be found at the end of a 0.61 second search.

So, it turns out we've all been sitting behind the shield of the internet furiously Googling the questions of Plato and Aristotle. It is a search that turns up a truckload of information, a catchy 90's song, and a sprinkling of quotes, but unsurprisingly little in the way of meaning and connection. As to what is fueling this silent search -- I don't know -- but regardless of what the motivation is, I'm fairly confident the meaning of life or love, can't be found by a search engine.

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The Meaning of Life Can't Be Found by a Google Search

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Somebody is reading your Google search history. It's me. But don't feel the need to jump quickly into justifying why you've spent a good deal of time Googling 'hedgehog bath time" or, you know, other things...because this is public knowledge in the form of Google trends.

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Ladies and gentlemen, I added the bits from candidate Trump as a reminder of the peril we face. I actually hoped that once President-elect, all that that would change, and I still do. But I was chilled when the first tweet after the election was about "professional protesters incited by the media."

We're not there. But postcard from the world: This is how it goes with authoritarians like Sisi, Erdoğan, Putin, the Ayatollahs, Duterte, et al.

As all the international journalists we honor in this room tonight and every year know only too well: First the media is accused of inciting, then sympathizing, then associating -- until they suddenly find themselves accused of being full-fledged terrorists and subversives. Then they end up in handcuffs, in cages, in kangaroo courts, in prison -- and then who knows?

Just to say, Erdoğan has just told my Israeli colleague Ilana Dayan that he cannot understand why anyone's protesting in America, it must mean they don't accept -- or understand -- democracy! And he thinks America like all great countries needs a strongman to get things done!

'An appeal to protect journalism'

A great America requires a great and free and safe press. So this above all is an appeal to protect journalism itself.

Recommit to robust fact-based reporting without fear nor favor -- on the issues. Don't stand for being labeled crooked or lying or failing. Do stand up together -- for divided we will all fall.

The historian Simon Schama, in the house tonight, told me early on that this was not just another election, and we cannot treat it as one.

And he says if ever there's a time to celebrate, honor, protect and mobilize for press freedom and basic good journalism, it's now.

At the start of this campaign, a network news president said this phenomenon may not be good for America but damn good for us.

During an interview on my program this summer, the filmmaker and historian Ken Burns asked me what would Edward R. Murrow do?

First, like many people watching where I was overseas, I admit I was shocked by the exceptionally high bar put before one candidate and the exceptionally low bar put before the other candidate.

It appeared much of the media got itself into knots trying to differentiate between balance, objectivity, neutrality, and crucially, truth.

We cannot continue the old paradigm -- let's say like over global warming -- where 99.9% of the empirical scientific evidence is given equal play with the tiny minority of deniers.

I learned long ago, covering the ethnic cleansing and genocide in Bosnia, never to equate victim with aggressor, never to create a false moral or factual equivalence, because then you are an accomplice to the most unspeakable crimes and consequences.

'Stop banalizing the truth'

I believe in being truthful, not neutral. And I believe we must stop banalizing the truth.

And we have to be prepared to fight especially hard for the truth in a world where the Oxford English Dictionary just announced its word of 2016: "post-truth."

We have to accept that we've had our lunch handed to us by the very same social media that we've so slavishly been devoted to.

The winning candidate did a savvy end run around us and used it to go straight to the people. Combined with the most incredible development ever -- the tsunami of fake news sites -- aka lies -- that somehow people could not, would not, recognize, fact check, or disregard.

One of the main writers of these false articles -- these lies -- says people are getting dumber, just passing fake reports around, without fact checking. We need to ask whether technology has finally outpaced our human ability to keep up. Facebook needs to step up. Advertisers need to boycott the lying sites.

Are journalists facing an 'existential crisis?'

Wael Ghonim, one of the fathers of the Arab spring, dubbed the social media revolution, now says:
"The same medium that so effectively transmits a howling message of change also appears to undermine the ability to make it. Social media amplifies the human tendency to bind with one's own kind. It tends to reduce complex social challenges to mobilizing slogans that reverberate in echo chambers of the like-minded rather than engage in persuasion, dialogue, and the reach for consensus. Hate speech and untruths appear alongside good intentions and truths."
I feel that we face an existential crisis, a threat to the very relevance and usefulness of our profession.

Now, more than ever, we need to commit to real reporting across a real nation, a real world in which journalism and democracy are in mortal peril, including by foreign powers like Russia paying to churn out and place false news, and hacking into democratic systems here and allegedly in upcoming crucial German and French elections too.

A quick anecdote from out there: In the 1997 Iranian elections, the reform candidate won and the establishment ayatollahs were caught totally off guard. One of them asked me later how I was so sure and when did I know that Khatami was going to win. I told him, as soon as I got on the ground and started talking to people! Just saying.

Fighting against a 'post-values world'

We must also fight against a post-values world.

And let me hit back at this elitist backlash we're all bending over backwards to accommodate.

Since when were American values elitist values? They are not left or right values. They are not rich or poor values, not the forgotten-man values.

Like many foreigners I have learned they are universal. They are the values of every American from the humblest to the most exalted. They form the very fundamental foundation of the United States and are the basis of America's global leadership. They are brand America. They are America's greatest export and gift to the world.

So yes, like so many around the world, I was shocked -- very few ever imagined that so many Americans conducting their sacred duty in the sanctity of the voting booth, with their secret ballot, would be angry enough to ignore the wholesale vulgarity of language, the sexual predatory behavior, the deep misogyny, the bigoted and insulting views.

Gov. Mario Cuomo said you campaign in poetry and govern in prose. Perhaps the opposite will be true this time around.

If not, I will fight as a journalist -- as we all must -- to defend and protect the unique value system that makes these United States -- and with which it seeks to influence the world.

'We must fight against normalization of the unacceptable'

The conservative radio host who may be the next white house press secretary says mainstream media is hostile to traditional values.

I would say it's just the opposite. And have you read about the "heil, victory" meeting in Washington, DC this past weekend? Why aren't there more stories about the dangerous rise of the far right here and in Europe? Since when did anti-Semitism stop being a litmus test in this country?

We must fight against normalization of the unacceptable.

A week before the heated Brexit referendum in the UK, the gorgeous, young, optimistic, idealistic, compassionate MP Jo Cox, a remainer, was shot and stabbed to death by a maniac yelling "Britain first." She was particularly sensitive to the plight of Syrian war refugees.

At his trial, the court was told the accused had researched information on the SS and the KKK.

Just a few weeks ago, her husband, Brendan, now raising their two tiny toddlers, expanded for me on an op-ed he'd written:
"Political leaders and people generally must embrace the responsibility to speak out against bigotry. Unless the center holds against the insidious creep of extremism, history shows how quickly hatred is normalized. What begins with biting your tongue for political expediency, or out of social awkwardness, soon becomes complicity with something far worse. Before you know it, it's already too late."
So now the solutions!!

The media's role in the world

Somehow, the war of attrition in this country has to end. You've all seen the results of this election. It's very close. The nation is very divided, and angry. Are we in the media going to keep whipping up that war -- or are we going to take a deep breath and maybe have a reset?!

It matters to us out there abroad too. For better or for worse, this is the world's only superpower. Culturally too. The political example, the media example set here, are quickly emulated and rolled out across the world.

We, the media, can either contribute to a more functional system or to deepening the political dysfunction. Which world do we want to leave our children?

In the same way, politics has been driven into poisonous partisan and paralyzing corners, where political differences are criminalized, where the zero sum game means in order for me to win, you have to be destroyed. What happened to compromise and common ground?

That same dynamic has infected powerful segments of the American media.

Like it has in Egypt and Turkey and Russia, where journalists have been pushed into political partisan corners as we see here tonight -- delegitimized, accused of being enemies of the state.

Stop journalism from becoming 'weaponized'

Journalism itself has become weaponized. We have to stop it. We all have a huge amount of work to do, investigating wrongdoing, holding power accountable, enabling decent government, defending basic rights, actually covering the world -- Russia, Syria, North Korean nukes.

Can't we have differences without killing each other off? As a profession, let's fight for what is right. Let's fight for our values Bad things do happen when good people do nothing.

In the words of the great civil rights leader, congressman John Lewis: "Young people and people not so young have a moral obligation and a mission and a mandate to get in good trouble."

So let's go out and make some. And especially -- let's fight to remain relevant and useful.

Perhaps contemplating the long weekend ahead, let's resolve not to be turkeys voting for thanksgiving!

Happy holidays, everyone.

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journalism faces an 'existential crisis' in trump era - cnn

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Christiane Amanpour, Chief International Correspondent, CNN

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Journalism faces an 'existential crisis' in Trump era

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Ladies and gentlemen, I added the bits from candidate Trump as a reminder of the peril we face. I actually hoped that once President-elect, all that that would change, and I still do. But I was chilled when the first tweet after the election was about "professional protesters incited by the media."