CommonPrejudice

The Campaign's Worst Moment (for the media)

In today's Miami Herald there is a good column by journalism professor Edward Wasserman about the Howard Dean "scream speech" and the abysmal job the media did in covering it. Of course in the blogosphere the following was well-publicized even before the New Hampshire primary.

...Last year, a young cable news producer attended one of our twice-yearly Ethics Institutes at Washington and Lee University, in which students and journalists gather to discuss newsroom wrongdoing. He brought two clips.

• The first was the familiar pool footage of Dean in Iowa. The candidate filled the screen, no supporters were visible. Crowd noise was silenced by the microphone he held, which deadened ambient sounds. You saw only him and heard only his inexplicable screaming.

• The second clip was the same speech taped by a supporter on the floor of the hall. The difference was stunning. The place was packed. The noise was deafening. Dean was on the podium, but you couldn't hear him. The roar from his supporters was drowning him out.

Dean was no longer scary, unhinged, volcanic, over the top. He was like the coach of a would-be championship NCAA football team at a pre-game rally, trying to be heard over a gym full of determined, wildly enthusiastic fans. I saw energy, not lunacy...

This is truly a disgraceful example of shoddy journalism and testimony to the absurdity of labeling the mainstream media liberal. This is even clearer when one compares the coverage of Dean, which very well may have changed the course of history in the most powerful nation on the earth during a critical time of wars, WMDs and a deteriorating environment with the meaningless controversy over Dan Rather on CBS. As Wasserman notes on the Rather scandal; "The story itself was old, the dubious evidence was of dubious importance, and the broadcast had no discernible effect. It became a major scandal anyway."

So now the 'in the know' elites of American journalism routinely refer to any White House ambitions Dean may have as far fetched due to his 'I have a Scream Speech' while the right wing loons of the blog world take credit for bringing down another mainstream 'liberal' journalist.

What the hell is wrong with this picture?

Tell It Like It Is

Exactly:

...The entire GOP and its mainstream media sympathizers have a lot of nerve. We're talking about a hooker getting special access to the White House, the president, and intelligence information, and somehow everyone has suddenly discovered a conscience about homosexuals and hookers. Oh how I wish that conscience were real. But it's not. Bash a fag, bash a whore, and the GOP eats it all up. They throw us to their hateful, bigoted religious right buddies for votes with glee, while Mary Cheney cowers in the corner and Ken Mehlman runs for the shelter of the off-the-record quote.

Well newsflash Washington. The GOP is the one that rose gay-bashing and gay-baiting and sex-baiting to an art, and JeffJimGuckertGannon willingly joined the family values parade in print and in passion. They're trying to ban condoms, pornography, AIDS education. They take children away from gays, and want to make our very lives a crime. GOP Senators compare us to kleptomaniacs, alcoholics, and man-dog sex. And they can't even handle a bronze breast on a statue...

It is absolutely unfathomable to imagine this lack of an uproar if a hooker, lobbing up incredibly lame questions in support of the president, was found out to have regular access in the Clinton White House. (never mind access to classified documents)

Another sterling example of that 'liberal' media at work.

(BTW Daily Kos and Americablog are doing bang up jogs in covering the Jeff/Jim Gannon/Guckert fiasco)

update: see Sidney Blumenthal at Salon for a good account of the whole story. He sums it up as follows:

...Thus a phony journalist planted by a Republican operation, used by the White House press secretary to interrupt questions from the press corps, called on by the president for a safe question, protected from FBI vetting by the press office, disseminating innuendo and smears about critics and opponents of the administration, some of them gay-baiting, was unmasked not only as a hireling and fraud but as a gay prostitute, with enormous potential for blackmail...

Protecting a Source?

On Tuesday a federal appeals court ruled that two reporters, Judith Miller (NYTimes) and Mathew Cooper (Time), must provide their sources or face jail time. The sources relate to an investigation into who illegally and extremely recklessly supplied the identity of an undercover CIA agent, Valerie Plame, to reporters as political payback for Plame's husband Joe Wilson's attack on Bush's prewar claim that Iraq had dealings with Niger regarding nuclear weapons. 

To be clear: the reporters received information from someone connected with or in the Bush White House to purposely damage the life and career of a political opponent, damn the consequences. And considering that it involved leaking the name of a CIA agent and endangering her life along with many others (a treasonable offense), there can be no justification whatsoever in viewing this case as simply one of maintaining the confidentiality of a source. The source was breaking the law and using the reporters in the most cynical matter.

This, however, has not stopped the USA Today from getting on its soapbox and proclaiming the dangers to society when journalists can't protect their sources.

Consider: What if all potential whistleblowers or public employees feared exposure if they went to a reporter confidentially with evidence of wrongdoing? The public would know a lot less about government, and government officials could hide a lot more.

... If potential sources fear speaking to the press, and reporters are hampered in exposing the truth, the public would lose more than it gains. A new federal law can assure that won't happen.

To say they miss the point is the equivalent of saying that Miller got a couple of facts mixed up in the run up to the war.

Of course "whistleblowers" must be protected. Are they so dense at USA today that they don't see the difference between the Plame case and that of a typical source divulging information against the wishes of their superiors for the public good?

As Kos said a couple of days ago:

They are not protecting a whistleblower, or a broader high-minded appeal to the truth. They are protecting a treasonous liar who used them for political vengeance.

Frankly it strikes me as incredibly simplistic that some leading "news" organization would treat this as a case of solely protecting the sources of a journalist.  They must like getting abused, manipulated and lied to.

That's funny

Poorman (via Martini Republic):

The story is that God exists.

Think about it: what are the chances that a media whore like Gannon would turn out to be an actual whore? It's impossible. It boggles the mind how infinitely unlikely this is. It's like if you found someone pirating CDs, and it turns out he actually had a peg leg and a parrot on his shoulder and sailed around the Caribbean saying "arrrrrr!" and plundering booty. You wouldn't believe it. But there it is: impossible, but true. Impossible truths are miracles, and only God can work miracles. Ergo, God exists. Q.E.D.

Where's the outrage?

Recently in the news there has been some controversy about 9/11. Unfortunately it has mostly been about an obscure Colorado professor named Ward Churchill. The wingnuts have their panties in a knot that someone dare say  unpopular, negative things about the America the beautiful..the key word here being 'say.'

I will briefly address the Churchill controversy in a moment. However, that is not the main point of this post. Last week I noted how the Bush White House blocked the release of very significant parts of the 9/11 commission's report until after the election, and that the report itself indicates that there were many warnings and signs that an al-Qaeda attack was on the way.

Let's state this as clearly as we can. 9/11 was preventable and the Bushies purposely hid the report that demonstrates this until after they were reelected.

If you consider this seriously and are still angry over Churchill then you are an authentic true blue nutjob.

In today's Los Angeles Times Robert Scheer does a good job in reminding us what has been at stake.

...according to the newly released section of the 9/11 report, an astonishing 52 of the 105 daily intelligence briefings received by the FAA — and available to Rice — before the Sept. 11 attacks made specific reference to Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden...

...what we do know calls into question our government's explanation that a diabolical international terrorist conspiracy exploited our liberal, naive society. What has emerged, instead, is a portrait of an often bumbling terrorist gang allowed to wreak havoc because the top tiers of the administration were so indifferent to the alarms, which former CIA Director George Tenet described so graphically: "The system was blinking red."

Had the business-friendly administration put safety first and ordered a full complement of air marshals into the air, over the obscene objections of airlines loath to give up paid seats, nearly 3,000 people might not have died that day. And had the president of the United States taken some time from his epic ranch vacation that August to order a nationwide airport alert, two bloody wars abroad, as well as an all-out assault on civil liberties in this country, probably would not have happened...

Leaking the name of one of your own covert intelligence agents for political payback is no problem with this assortment of criminals but getting the information out about the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history before the electorate has the opportunity to vote just can't be done... I'm sorry that's too kind..the information WAS out, they just suppressed anything that made them look bad.

Words fail me that suffice to describe behavior so disgraceful. 

So now on the Churchill 'scandal'... After checking out a fair amount of articles on the controversy I'll opine the following.

Churchill is obviously free to say what he thinks and should not be censured for that.

Much of his argument in “’Some People Push Back’: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens” , whether you agree or disagree with it, is legitimate and worthy of debate.

Dahlia Lithwick's article about him in Slate is worthwhile and informative despite him making such silly comments such as labeling Churchill an "Annoying Blowhard ... Who Ha[s] Come To Embody Important Policy Questions."  There is no need, in fact, a great harm is done, when one who puts forward unpopular opinions is branded a wacko without a serious consideration of what is actually being said. (How many out there now know who Ward Churchill is and also know that they hate him but have not read the article in question ... or anything else by him?) A brief perusal of Churchill's work is sufficient to realize that he is a serious thinker. John Nichols, whom I consider to be a very credible source, says the following about one of Churchill's previous works on pacifism:

I read the book with interest, and found it to be a credible statement of a controversial point of view. It made me think. It forced me to reconsider some of my own presumptions - although, instead of changing my thinking, Churchill's critique ultimately reinforced my faith that Thoreau, Gandhi, King and their followers are the real change agents. And, while I don't appreciate its premise any more than I do George Bush's doctrine of pre-emptive war making, Churchill's book remains on the shelf of serious books to which I return for information and insight...

Nevertheless there are important questions regarding Churchill's academic qualifications which Lithwick brings up. Also it appears Churchill has gotten his tenured teaching position as a result of his alleged Native American ancestry which Paul Campos calls into question in an article in the Rocky Mountain News.

A few of Churchill's comments in the aforementioned essay on 'roosting chickens', particularly, “If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I’d really be interested in hearing about it,” were obviously purposely inflammatory and not at all well thought out. Moreover, besides being extremely hurtful and demonstrating an incredible insensitivity to the families of the victims, if you assume for the sake of argument that unrestrained U.S. foreign policy constitutes a threat to humanity, as many radicals do, there is still no justification for advocating violence by the other side without considering who the other side is. As Robert Jensen succinctly states:

Osama bin Laden and others in networks like al-Qaeda criticize those policies, but that does not mean they are the voice of the dispossessed or constitute a national liberation movement. Their own political program is grotesque, not just by the standards of a secular leftist in the United States, but by the standards of progressive movements around the world. While they attack U.S. targets because they want to end U.S. domination of the Muslim world -- a reasonable goal -- they don’t seek the justice denied to them by the United States. They seek to impose a different kind of authority and control.

As well Jensen noted that to justify responding violently one must be able to imagine a result where justice can prevail and he notes "Can anyone imagine a scenario in which such attacks have a reasonable chance of leading to real justice in the world? I cannot..."

And for a bit of comic relief I present a comment from a column by a right wing hack named Doug Hagin:

See in Ward Churchill's twisted and demented mind, America is an evil, racist land where we all delight in subjugating other nations, and targeting and massacring innocent women and children by the millions. Now to a reasoned, educated student of history such claims are easily dismissed as asinine and baseless. Now not to say this nation is perfect or has always been perfect in its actions. Certainly America, like every other nation, has stains in it's past. However, Ward Churchill, like Robert Jensen, and other fanatical anti-American zealots do not stop at talking of our faults as a nation. Instead, they distort our history, lie about our nation, and attempt to poison the minds of those foolish enough to listen to their rantings and ravings.

Gee I looked everywhere for a quote by Churchill or Jansen stating that all Americans delight in targeting and massacring innocent women and children by the millions... I'm sure it's there somewhere...

And just compare the passage from Jensen with Hagin's comment. Which is a collection of 'rantings and ravings' and which is (whether you agree with it or not) a thoughtful constructed passage meant to inform? Apparently Hagin "dreams of having a political column nationally syndicated." Given his tendency for bombastic exaggerations and willful deceptions he is most certainly on his way.

In considering the causes and ramifications of 9/11 I believe, as is the case with most issues, achieving some sort of reasonable balance and perspective is necessary. To deny America's complicity in some of the darker more sinister moments in recent history is equivalent to portraying the country as solely a force for evil. Neither perspective is accurate nor useful and should be dismissed post haste.

So finally, let's not forget to forget about what is really important; a government that will do or say anything to maintain power, even if it means playing politics with the one of the worst disasters in the nation's history.

Missed Opportunities

Quite the bummer we didn't get in on all that killing and mayhem in Iraq.

But what about all the economic consequences of defying your closest neighbour and trading partner?(note the spelling of neighbour,see I'm Canadian). From Robert Kraljii at a site called Vive le Canada.

Funny what you find in the gossip column of the business section of the Globe and Mail.
Why isn't this front page news?
***
We're not in Iraq -- and the sky hasn't fallen, either

The Chicken Littles appear to have got it wrong when they warned that Canadian businesses would lose U.S. contracts because of Ottawa's decision not to join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. So says Michael Kergin, just winding up a 4½-year term in the diplomatic hot seat as Canada's Ambassador to the United States.

Kergin told me yesterday that only a few weeks after the March, 2003, invasion, he met members of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives. "My old boss, Derek Burney [a former senior diplomat turned businessman], and a lot of the guys were saying, 'Holy crow, we've already had a sense that we're losing contracts, people are mad at us,' and so on."

But apart from some American consumers not buying maple syrup for a while, Kergin said, the council could provide no evidence, even a year later, that "contracts, military or otherwise, had been affected by the decision of Canada not to go to Iraq" -- mainly because U.S. corporations make their decisions "on bottom-line economics, not on political attitudes or disappointments."

Is there anything, anything at all, that the chickenhawks were right about? No need to answer that.

Logic or the lack thereof

Freidman:

...those who suggest that the Iraqi election is just beanbag, and that all we are doing is making the war on terrorism worse as a result of Iraq, are speaking nonsense.

Here's the truth: There is no single action we could undertake anywhere in the world to reduce the threat of terrorism that would have a bigger impact today than a decent outcome in Iraq.

Come on Tommie, give us a break. The REASON that the outcome in Iraq is so important today was because of the RESULT of  Bush's war policy.

He'll say anything to justify his pro-war pre-war stance.

What an idiot.

Right Quote Wrong Decade

If I were American I'd vote for him in a heartbeat. Franken for Senate

Minnesota, get your Franken 2006 bumper stickers ready... Stay tuned for more.

It seems that the eighties have finally arrived, so to speak.

People are going to stop thinking about themselves and start thinking about me, Al Franken. That's right. I believe we're entering the Al Franken decade. Oh, for me, Al Franken, the eighties will be pretty much the same as the seventies. But for you, when you see a news report you'll be thinking "I wonder what Al Franken thinks about this?" "I wonder how this inflation thing is hurting Al Franken?" And you women will be thinking "What can I wear that will please Al Franken?" or "What can I not wear?" A lot of you are probally thinking "Why Al Franken?" Well, because I thought of it, and I'm on TV.

Update: Too bad, not going to happen, at least not yet.

"Not running for the Senate in 2006," he told reporters and his Air America Radio audience. "Minnesotans are very serious about their politics and it would be silly. I don't live there."

..."I have been looking at the 2008 Senate seat, people know that," he said. "If I go in 2008, you're going to see me moving back there."

Win At All Costs

Good thing this didn't come out before the November election or we might have been distracted from finding out whether 30 odd years ago John Kerry crossed the Cambodian border or was only close to it.

In the months before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal aviation officials reviewed dozens of intelligence reports that warned about Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, some of which specifically discussed airline hijackings and suicide operations, according to a previously undisclosed report from the 9/11 commission...

The Bush administration has blocked the public release of the full, classified version of the report for more than five months, officials said, much to the frustration of former commission members who say it provides a critical understanding of the failures of the civil aviation system. The administration provided both the classified report and a declassified, 120-page version to the National Archives two weeks ago and, even with heavy redactions in some areas, the declassified version provides the firmest evidence to date about the warnings that aviation officials received concerning the threat of an attack on airliners and the failure to take steps to deter it.

...Among other things, the report says that leaders of the F.A.A. received 52 intelligence reports from their security branch that mentioned Mr. bin Laden or Al Qaeda from April to Sept. 10, 2001. That represented half of all the intelligence summaries in that time.

Really what to say?

Who cares about the failures of the civil aviation system, we've got an election to win...  and if terrorists strike and kill a few thousand we'll just blame it on the Democrats for not being 'tough enough.'

Unconscionable does not nearly state how cynical, dangerous and repulsive this is.

And let's not forget those wise words by the current secretary of state.

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile." – Condoleezza Rice, May 16, 2002

Thou shall not be a hypocrite

Zell ‘ya want a piece of me?’ Miller is coming out with a book on decency. (Later this month Dick Cheney will come out with a book on humility, Donald Rumsfeld on how to admit you were wrong and Condoleezza  Rice on straight talking)

In it he notes one of the main reasons he left abandoned his lifelong party, the Democrats, during the campaign:

... I also came to be repelled by the secularism that had engulfed its [The Democratic Party] thinking and smothered its soul.

Meanwhile down in the heart of Jesusland it appears some state senators missed that class on the separation between church and state:

The committee voted 6-3 for a bill by Sen. Curt Lee, R-Jasper, that would require each public school in Alabama to display framed or mounted copies of the Ten Commandments, Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights.

Lee said the documents provide the foundation for American government and they should be on display daily in every public school in Alabama.

But it is the left’s fault for the advancement of fundamentalism according to that master of civil discourse and rational thought, Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens last November noted how it is Bush bringing secularism to the world while the left has been out fund raising for Bin Laden and extolling the virtues of Islamic theocracies… or something like that.

Only one faction in American politics has found itself able to make excuses for the kind of religious fanaticism that immediately menaces us in the here and now. And that faction, I am sorry and furious to say, is the left… The forces of al-Qaida and the Taliban represented as misguided spokespeople for antiglobalization...

But what is good the goose I guess is not so good for the gander. According to Hitchens it is only in other countries where we should worry about religious fanaticism. (I thought guys like Hitchens despised moral relativism)

Secularism is not just a smug attitude. It is a possible way of democratic and pluralistic life that only became thinkable after several wars and revolutions had ruthlessly smashed the hold of the clergy on the state. We are now in the middle of another such war and revolution, and the liberals have gone AWOL.

Does this mean the United States can look forward to more wars and revolutions at home while smashing the hold the clergy has on this nation?