Posted on 08/21/2004 1:29:53 PM PDT by unspun
- by Arlen Williams, guest media critic
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It is time now to see what is churned out on the inky pages from our community of typecasting journalists.
"Community," did I say? More like communal organism it seems, each human-journalist cell semi-autonomous, yet acting in coordinated liberal conjunction with the others - not unlike a jellyfish.
Any objective reporters and tokenized conservative columnists can swim separately.
Keyes has let his light shine. But the journalistic jellyfish is at work to wrap its tendrils around image “Alan Keyes” in readers’ minds, to allow only a distorted portrayal to appear through its cloudy, enfolding flesh.
Yet, even when it does, Keyes’ luminescence shows through - to readers who reflect upon the context of this struggle to let reality’s light shine.
And while the portrayed candidate is stung over and over again, the real Keyes is hardly paralyzed. Not this one.
In Chicago, the Tribune and Sun-Times have attacked with two designated tendrils of this beast, columnists Eric Zorn and Mary Mitchell, respectively.
Zorn’s Obama: just an innocent champion of abortion
In his August 17 Chicago Tribune column, Zorn announced a grand and fallacious assumption with which he intended to deconstruct the entire Keyes campaign: that Alan Keyes' preeminent reason for opposing Barack Obama (Obama's extreme pro-abortion record in the Illinois Senate) was unfounded!
Zorn skated past Obama's hideous vote against the Partial Birth Abortion bill to focus solely upon defending his equally despicable vote against the Born Alive infanticide bill -- the vote Keyes more often brings up.
The column called that vote proper, purporting that present Illinois law already covers infants born alive during atrocious late term abortions.
That provoked an online debate with IllinoisLeader.com columnist Jill Stanek, recognized for her somber experience in this subject.
The back-and-forth is published on Zorn’s Tribune Web log. There, he maintained the Born Alive bill was a Trojan horse for those seeking to save human beings earlier in their gestational lives - and Obama, well he just could not stand for such an… injustice.
Yet, Zorn himself related that the courts had already nullified a 1975 act still on record, which was intended to protect those younger fetal, human beings.
In the course of her follow-up, Stanek reported details demonstrating current law is inadequate.
In principle, where such a problem exists, enacting additional law is common practice. This is done to: further define the matter, motivate law enforcement, and provide direction for adjudications of the law. Such directions are especially necessary when judges buck the law, deciding instead to legislate.
O, Zorn, where is thy sting?
Zorn did cost Stanek the time required to demonstrate the need for legislation, while he inadvertently reminded readers of the human atrocity of such infanticides. But now, as to his column’s undue influence upon voters, will he write a retraction?
Mitchell’s Keyes: inauthentic black lamb to slaughter
Sun-Times columnist Mitchell would strain to see Alan Keyes through black colored glasses. She declares he was drafted just for the black-on-black match.
Never mind Keyes relates a contradictory precedent of merit, having been asked before to run for Senate from a state not Maryland. Her August 5 column’s title reads in black and white: “In drafting Keyes, GOP reduces contest to a show.”
Without Mitchell’s explaining the rationale behind this charge, the jellyfish reaches to envelope the Keyes she depicts, “And why is Keyes willing to play this game? Obviously, it isn't about wanting to serve Illinois.”
Well, that’s a wrap on Keyes then, eh? Somehow the leap is made that Keyes is a “sacrificial lamb,” not a proper candidate for the match. Alan Keyes? Lamb?
It seems the problem purported in Mitchell’s venting isn’t really that Republicans have matched up African-American Keyes against Kenyan-Hawaiian Obama, but that the black person invited was Keyes.
And just what invalidates the authenticity of “black conservative” Keyes, as he opposes leftist Obama? That Keyes is black? No, that he is conservative, she lets on.
Toward her column’s end, Mitchell spills the beans, claiming, “Although Keyes and others of his ilk oppose affirmative action or any other race-based initiative, he was being drafted for this contest solely because of his race. How ironic is that?”
Again, she offers no substantiation of her claim of race being a major factor, the only factor in picking Keyes; just an implied charge of being an inauthentic kind of African-American, due to his principles.
More spilling the beans: “He gets votes from the religious right. Certainly he has no relationship ideology to the black community." He is, “anti-abortion, anti-gay….” Hmm….
The above excerpts are Mitchell’s words and those of a black Democrat consultant she quoted. Her screed about Keyes continued in columns on August 8 and 15.
Believing her version of an ensnared Keyes, it would follow that being truly, truly black is not a genetic trait, but an ideology, and being African-American is not about having our history’s slaves for ancestors, but about wearing the face of racially charged liberalism.
No room is now left, to exhibit reports - from the Daily Herald’s campaigning to suburban moms against “scary” Keyes to Copley News’ Mike Ramsey playing Keyes downstate in woeful, minor scales.
Each cell in the organism has its designated function.
What can stop Illinois’ nettles from teeming to engulf the light of truth? Perhaps the effect Keyes is having now. And one longer-term solution for the conservative mammas who allow life for their babies: let them grow up to be journalists.
[Arlen Williams is a La Grange-based Illinois media hound.]
© 2004 IllinoisLeader.com -- all rights reserved
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Be an Obama fan! 8-o Encourage our Socialist Rock Star Barack! Don't back down! Do those 6 Lincoln/Douglas style debates with that 'right-winger'Alan Keyes!: info@obamaforillinois.com & bobama@aol.com
Well, I guess I won't want to post my own article, in FR's news forum again.... 8-o
thank you for posting this article. Very good read it would be something I would be proud of writing.
Well, maybe I can trust you so that can make two of us. ;-` Hope it does some good. Eric Zorn seems so full of his ungrounded self that one would hope he merely stayed that way, instead of bursting every few days.
This is the latest LIBUNE stooge to come out with an anti-Swift-Boat vets story.
COASTAL SQUADRON ONE
Swift Boat Crew Directory
(Last updated 8/16/2004)
http://swiftboats.net/
William B. Rood Jr, LTJG,
OinC
WRood@aol.com
7/68-7/69 DaNang Naperville, IL
WRood@tribune.com
Metro Assistant Content Editor
Call Signs
Thanks, KL. Something for us to look further into....
The irony is that the attacks by these two columnists were quite unnecessary. Keyes' worst wounds during this campaign have been self-inflicted.
Low blow.
Now you are comparing Keyes to Kerry.
Is he too conservative or too liberal for your taste?
Bingo.
Where are the usual anti-Keyesters?
Thanks. Must not want to be found in Zorn and Mitchell's company.
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