See, this is my overarching problem with the Bush Administration.so in this case (and probably others that don't instantly come to mind) Bush and his administration are attacked - and in "defending" themselves, damn themselves with faint praise. It is one thing for Mr. Bush, and for the members of his Administration at his direction, to do the "new tone" thing and accept being unjustly pilloried. It is quite another thing for people who never even met Mr. Bush and yet have supported him - yea, even unto volunteering into the military under Mr. Bush's command - to get tarred with the faint praise of a Bush Administration "defense" of itself.
- Just like in the case of the "sixteen words,"
- just like in the case of the entrapment of Scooter Libby,
- just like in the case of Hurricane Katrina,
- just like in the case of the fired US Attorneys,
In all those cases establishment journalism lies have been allowed to metastasize into "truth." This is Bush Derangement Syndrome, and the trouble is that it is no different from what happened to Joseph McCarthy back in the Eisenhower years. For two succeeding generations, "McCarthyism" has been a smear - a smear simultaneously of whoever is accused of it, and of Senator Joseph McCarthy (rest his soul) himself. The Army had information, whether the Eisenhower Administration knew it or not, which proved that McCarthy was understating the problem for which he was demanding an investigation.
- In the case of the "sixteen words," Bush spokesmen cowered when attacked for having said something which is in context absolutely true.
- In the Scooter Libby entrapment, it was known from the start that someone other than Mr. Libby was responsible, and that there was no crime to investigate in the first place.
- In the case of Hurricane Katrina, it was patent from before landfall that Bush was urging the people having the authority to act - the elected governor of Louisiana and the elected mayor of New Orleans - to take action to save lives. And that those unworthies did nothing but panic, and then scapegoat the president for their own inaction.
- In the case of the fired US Attorneys, those people served at the pleasure of the president and they had no right to any review of the actions of the Attorney General (unless, as was true in the case of the US Attorney fired in Arkansas in 1993, those attorneys were in the midst of an investigation close to members of the administration itself).
With those facts now known, at some point a Republican administration must take the offensive against the alliance of journalists who call themselves "objective" (thereby proving that they are no such thing) and who call the politicians who hold getting along with journalism as their highest principle "progressives" or "liberals" (as if they actually favored the peoples' liberty, or anything else besides their own perquisites and power).
It actually traces back to the 2000 election, which Gore came within a hair's breadth of stealing in Florida when his allies in broadcast journalism declared him the victor while the polls in Florida were still open in the Republican-leaning Florida Panhandle. Broadcast journalism proved itself tendentious and lacking in any legitimate civic justification for broadcast licenses, and hence for their very existence. The Bush Administration and the Republican Party should have sued them into oblivion. The fact that they didn't do that marked them as weak, and has lead to their being picked on mercilessly ever since.
And it is not just Mr. Bush, and not just his administration, but everyone who voted for him and everyone who serves in the military under him who pays the price. Not to mention the people of Iraq who suffer there from the effects here of the rump government known as "objective journalism."
“Pinch”, among others, think of us as “subjects”. Or, is it as “objects”?
Communism pays those willing to sell their souls.
Oh, and Christine from Fairfax, Virginia....THANK YOU!
BTTT
I’m all for setting a new tone, but time and time again the Democrats play by different rules. Setting a new tone should not be confused with allowing Democrats to lie and misreprent the truth and go unchallenged.
Quite.But how different is it here in the US, where people listen to National Public Radio and think that they are being told the whole truth?
The reality is that here we talk the king's english, but the "king" is Big Journalism and its version of english is a form of Newspeak. In that language, journalists are objective journalists - meaning that they toe the comfortable establishment line that second guessing is legitimate because actual performance "in the arena" is in no way superior to journalism's criticism thereof.
In that language those who toe the line that journalists' criticism is the important thing, but who themselves are not (presently) employed as journalists, are good guys who are called "liberals," or "progressives," or "moderates." They can have any label they want, except "objective," which is reserved to working journalists and not just those (such as Walter Cronkite) whose attitudes are indistinguishable from those of working journalists.
In that language those who oppose the line that journalists' criticism is more important than performance and that second guessing is legitimate are objects of calumny. The only labels applicable to them are negative, such as "right wing," or "extreme," or - even though they prefer innovators to innovation-inhibiting bureaucrats - "conservative."