53 Comments

1. Clio:

Anyone else have the urge to take out their red pen and correct the appalling grammar and spelling of this professional wordsmith? How about writing in complete sentences?

Are no news organizations capable of reasoned self-criticism anymore? Are they all guilty of believing their own hype about impartiality, a unique mission to serve the public (fearlessly, bravely, without so much as thank you)?

Kerry’s little “distortions” include a dismissal of legitimate allies as dupes, a blanket denunciation of our anti-terror, Afghan and Iraqi policies as failures, a deliberate misreading of economic statistics and the Duelfer Report alike–but since his reading matches that of Halperin in appears not to qualify as noteworthy in any way.

The problem, Roger, is that while those of us crazy and/or dedicated enough to self-education can overcome the institutional barriers the MSM has put in our way, we cannot get others to follow us.

The question I put to you and your readers is this: how do we get our friends and family to follow us out of the cave? I think nothing else is so important right now.

Oct 11, 2004 - 8:27 am 2. megapotamus:

“upended and destroyed” Indeed, they must. How these liars intend to perpetuate their fraud is quite beyond me. As you say, only an idiot would put such sentiments, even if fervently held, into a medium that was forwardable and traceable. This Helprin is as incompetent at his tasks assigned by the DNC as Bill Burkett, Mapes and Rather. If the lofty, sainted inhabitants of the Institutional Left are this stupid I guess it is no surprise that their footsoldiers are as ignorant, arrogant, violent and sub-literate as we have found them to be on our streets and in our workplaces.

Oct 11, 2004 - 8:27 am 3. jedrury:

Halperin was on Sunday with George Stephenopoulos.

There was not a peep about the memo controversy.

Oct 11, 2004 - 8:34 am 4. Texas Tom:

If Kerry loses on Nov. 2, he’ll be expected to deliver a concession speech. Since many mainstream media organizations have been extensions of the Kerry campaign, I think we should demand that a mainsteamer spokesperson also deliver a concession statement. It will help news consumers keep score.

Oct 11, 2004 - 8:42 am 5. flenser:

Recent polling data on the media.

On Media & Politics:

Both CNN and Fox News appear be leading as favorites — 26.6% and 22.4% — when respondents anticipated who they plan to turn to for election 2004 coverage and reporting. These cable networks were followed by ABC News (11.7%), NBC News (10.5%), Local News (9.5%), PBS News (7.4%), CBS News (7.1%), MSNBC News (3.7%), CNBC (0.7%), and CBN (0.4%).

Only 13.0% suggest they believe “all” or “most” of media news reporting. Another 60.0% suggest they believe only “some,” while 25.2% indicated they believe “little” or “none” of media reporting.

A large majority of survey respondents, 83.9%, suggest they strongly (51.2%) or somewhat agree (32.7%) that the news media have their own political and policy positions and attempt to influence public opinion.

One quarter of all respondents, 26.8%, suggest news media journalists are mostly moderate while 13.9% suggest they are mostly conservative and 40.1% indicated they are mostly liberal. Some, 19.2% were unsure.

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/041005/nytu201_1.html

Of course, even with this huge amount of skepticism, the media are still able to skew peoples perceptions, simply by not reporting news that does not fit their preferred storyline. Which is why you never hear that the economy is doing very well, that John Howard won re-election in Australia, or that Sadr agreed to disband his militia. And the questions about Christmas in Cambodia, magic hats, and so on never even get asked. It would be amusing if Bush could work in a magic hat joke in the next debate. Most people will not have a clue what he is talking about, but it would put the MSM in an awkward spot; pretend he never said it, or explain what he meant?

Oct 11, 2004 - 8:47 am 6. ForNow:

Whiskey at Captain’s Quarters blog thinks that the memo is “almost too accurate to be true.” She says: “Since all other products coming out of ABC are filled with blatant bias, this seems too accurate to be genuine.” But ABC isn’t denying it, as yet.

Oct 11, 2004 - 8:51 am 7. Rick Ballard:

Surely you’re being too harsh, Roger. Archbishop Halperin is a trusted priest within the hallowed confines of one of journalism’s greater temples. His instructions to the temple prostitutes were not meant for eyes still shielded from the revealed truth. There has been entirely too much light cast on the inner workings of the glorious institutions dedicated to the promotion of undying faith in the one true party. Cardinal Rather’s amusing foibles concerning the veracity of sacred texts and now this simple instruction to unseasoned acolytes. I don’t see why you can’t do the right and decent thing and ignore these petty indiscretions. If the temple prostitutes slaving at their keyboards within the MSM have been willing and able to give up every concept of ethics, morals and honor in unquestioning support of the received wisdom of their betters, why can’t you?

It’s such a little thing, really.

Oct 11, 2004 - 8:55 am 8. WichitaBoy:

Isn’t all writing fiction? And isn’t every statement, at least to a degree, inaccurate? If so, to which criteria exactly should the MSM be held accountable?

Oct 11, 2004 - 8:57 am 9. Rick Ballard:

WB,

That’s the spirit! Jacques didn’t really die, he’s just constructing a new narrative.

Oct 11, 2004 - 9:07 am 10. vnjagvet:

I guess the celebration of Derrida’s death in the NYT and elsewhere in the MSM was not coincidental. His influence is found throughout the temples of elite thought including, apparently, ABC. Note also the similarity between the essence of Halperin’s note and Dan Rather’s pronouncements in the wake of the TANG Memo “unpleasantness’.

The editors of Pravda and Isvestia certainly subscribed to this philosophy and would recognize the thoughts that Halperin expresses in the memo and Rather boldly proclaimed when outed.

I wonder what Ben Franklin, John Adams or Thomas Jefferson would say about this turn of events. Silence Dogood would have a field day.

Oct 11, 2004 - 9:12 am 11. vnjagvet:

I might add that this would all be amusing were it not for what I believe to be the highest of stakes in this election.

This is one election where the “not a dime’s worth of difference” mantra is inapplicable, IMHO.

Oct 11, 2004 - 9:15 am 12. Texas Tom:

There are officially no deconstructionists at ABC News, though: “A spokesman for ABC news insisted ‘we are not interested in taking sides, we are only interested in getting at the truth.’” Of course, ABC does have its own truth.

Oct 11, 2004 - 9:18 am 13. chuck:

Rick,

WichitaBoy has a point. Given that we are all human, how do we set up journalistic standards? After all, I suspect the media folks don’t see themselves as biased, so if we want better reporting we need to define what it means in somewhat objective terms.

On the other hand, maybe we should just go for quantity and competition. A major problem now is that the MSM is a bottleneck to the collection and desemination of news. Perhaps the best we can do is ask for more people reporting and evaluating. The web is a bit like that, but too few are in the habit of using it, and boy, is it a lot of work. Hard to replace the convenience of a paper on the doorstep that can be read a leisure at the breakfast table. I hope this will change as technology continues to advance over the next decade.

Oct 11, 2004 - 9:24 am 14. ricpic:

The types who go into journalism are, with rare exceptions, bright young things, not thoughtful young things. They are the types who, when asked “Why journalism?” answer in chorus “To change the world.” And we all know that change the world = more socialism, the paradigm they have been force-fed by their professors. They are on the right side, the socialist side, the side of the angels. So why shouldn’t a Mark Halperin be open about his bias, which in his mind isn’t bias at all, in fact it’s the only position that a right minded journalist advancing positive change could take, right?

Oct 11, 2004 - 9:36 am 15. flenser:

Clio

The problem, Roger, is that while those of us crazy and/or dedicated enough to self-education can overcome the institutional barriers the MSM has put in our way, we cannot get others to follow us.

The question I put to you and your readers is this: how do we get our friends and family to follow us out of the cave?

That is the question all right.

We blogaddicts like to actively seek out information. But a lot of people who would be willing to listen to a different perspective just cannot be bothered to go to that much trouble. They prefer the old media model where they sit in front of the TV and let some “experts” tell them what is happening in the world.

So…

Encourage your friends and family to get their news on line and boycott the newspapers and big three broadcast news networks. A broadband connection really helps of course. And you have to point them to quality web sites.

I hardly ever listen to talk radio myself, but it has a much greater diversity of thought than is available in the MSM, so turning off the TV and turning on the radio might help in converting that significant other who suffers from BDS.

Cancel any subscriptions you have to newspapers. None of them are worth reading, and you are indirectly helping AP when you buy any newspaper.

Pressure the political classes (the president, your congressman, your senator) to start giving greater access to the alternative media. This would have three benificial effects. (1) it will allow “our” side to get their message out more effectively, without the MSM filter. (2) it will encourage the growth of the new media, at the expense of the old media. (3) it will raise the profile of the new media in the eyes of the disinterested and detached.

President Bush has taken some small steps in this direction, by appearing on Fox on a couple of occasions. But there is so much more that could be done, to legitimize the new media and to de-legitimize the old. If people like Rumsfeld and Rice and Bush and Powell were to shun the alphabets, and give interviews instead to people like Roger Simon, Hugh Hewitt, Rush Limbaugh, and Rich Lowery, it would shatter the “gatekeeper” status of the established media. Sadly, the people in the Bush administration are probably too old-school to follow this advice.

Oct 11, 2004 - 9:36 am 16. vnjagvet:

I think the blogosphere at its best is the functional equivalent of Silence Dogood’s letters in early 18th century America.

This free marketplace of ideas has tremendous capacity for creating change. Usually slowly, but sometimes rapidly.

Some of the better websites have the daily national circulation of some early 20th century urban newspapers of the day, and more than literary reviews and some of the more esoteric monthlys of the day.

The more Halperin and Rather try to put the genie back in the bottle, the more bottles spring up all with genies of their own.

Oct 11, 2004 - 9:41 am 17. RogerA:

I stopped reading the NYT years ago and stopped watching network news about two years–It was either that or go hoarse every night yelling at a TV. It seems to me the days of the MSM are numbered–the NYT, WaPo, and LAT will be fighting it out for an ever decreasing market share–and I think the figures on TV coverage of the election season suggest the cable news networks will be taking over–esp Fox. I am guess will see an atomization of the MSM where market forces will gradually kill off the weaker. Trust in markets and keep your powder dry–or something like that.

Oct 11, 2004 - 9:43 am 18. Jamie Irons:

ForNow

Whiskey at Captain’s Quarters blog thinks that the memo is “almost too accurate to be true.” She says: “Since all other products coming out of ABC are filled with blatant bias, this seems too accurate to be genuine.”

I saw that, too, and thought it was a perceptive comment.

When I first encountered the Halperin memo, I thought it was so blatant as to evidence a kind of “innocence,” in the sense that a five-year-old child is innocent. The writer was so certain of being on the “right side,” that there could be no question, really, of treating the Kerry and Bush campaigns “equally.”

Jamie Irons

Oct 11, 2004 - 9:52 am 19. thedragonflies:

I have the fortune, good or ill, of speaking to good friends who are very much against Bush and ìforî Kerry. Their point of view is that Bush is so evil, so incompetent, so close-minded, so venal, so disastrous for America and the world, that any and all means to destroy him are justified. It is an amazing thing to witness. They extend their view, pretty much, to all of conservatives, but their total and complete revulsion is for Bush.

The best term that I have heard for this mind-set is ìliberal supremecy.î I read it in a comment section somewhere, maybe here. They donít see any of this as a difference of opinion, but a matter of defending everything that they hold as sacred against the forces of darkness.

Oct 11, 2004 - 9:56 am 20. Jack Tanner:

‘Kerry distorts, takes out of context, and mistakes all the time, but these are not central to his efforts to win.’

He edited out a little bit but some guy from Texas who used to be in the TANG sent me a copy of the original from Kinko’s and it said:

‘And it doesn’t matter if it is central to his efforts to win, like those fake medals, and sealed records, and blatant lies about running the Boston Marathon, and being in Cambodia and being Irish but what matters is that Bush loses, because he like, sucks’

Oct 11, 2004 - 10:26 am 21. Brian:

In other news Charles Johnson tells us that Mary Mapes is still going after the Bush AWOL story. Reports are that she made her three producers swear on their three crossed Bic pens, and was afterward heard to mutter that she’d strike the sun if it insulted her. And NY Times ombudsman Dan Okrent says that since both right and left are obviously suffering from confirmation bias, there mustn’t be that much to worry about. Or some such; I can’t quite tell what his point is, honestly.

Oct 11, 2004 - 10:30 am 22. insatty:

The MSM has pulled out all the stops in its effort to ensure a Kerry victory. The Halperin Memo is just a call to arms. Sadly, the MSM is again winning: Cheney’s and Bush’s debate wins last week are spun as draws, Zogby has Kerry up by 3 points, conservative commentators like Kristol say Kerry has the “Big Mo,” the Afganistan Election success is disparaged, and the good news out of Iraq like Sadr’s surrender is relegated to the back page. The MSM celebrate Kerry saying that terrorism is a nuisance, Theresa saying Iraq is a war for oil, and Kerry/Theresa paying only 12% in taxes. And the MSM still refers to Kerry as a “moderate.”

I still have hope that Bush can win, but the epic MSM forces he must battle concurrently with the Democrats make things look grim with three weeks left to go.

Oct 11, 2004 - 10:44 am 23. WichitaBoy:

thedragonflies,

Your comment is correct. The hatred of Bush is, in my opinion, iconic. That is, I don’t believe most of the Bush-haters really hate Bush personally, though they may have persuaded themselves that they do, but rather that he is symbolic of much that they don’t like about the world, about their lives, about America. I believe this because I have noticed that every President is hated, with greater or lesser intensity. Many of them are so hated as to bring on repeated assassination attempts. (Why on earth would anyone believe Gerald Ford was worthy of being shot down? No offense to Mr. Ford.)

But what I didn’t understand until yesterday was the degree to which America is hated, America is viewed as the ultimate fascist state, that bringing down and destroying America is the ultimate goal of any right-thinking person, the ultimate purpose of life itself. I had no idea that there was such extreme hatred, or if I did know it I was unable to take it seriously, until I read this post, a post which Syl linked yesterday about Chomky’s latest.

Now I must say the scales have fallen from my eyes. Now I see that there are two entirely different socially-defined narratives being constructed out there.

On the one hand, most posters on this board agree that there are “Islamofascists” out there who want to kill us, who deny almost all the most basic human rights in which we believe, and who are not susceptible to negotiation, to reason, or to rational discourse as we know it. We can only deter them by killing or capturing them. From the point of view of this narrative, cut-n-run Kerry is the worst possible choice because his surrender-monkey mentality will send entirely the wrong message, leading to more attacks, more hijackings, more killing of innocent children.

On the other hand, the other narrative being constructed is that the West itself is the fascist group, the evil-doers, the group which must be destroyed before it destroys the planet. Particularly, the United States, as the leader of the West, must be brought down at any cost.

But I can’t begin to render it as well as it is rendered in the link above:

The US equals Nazi Germany trope has made considerable headway in leftwing, and even non-leftwing, circles in Europe and around the world, and reading this book it is not difficult to see how the comparison of president Bush to Hitler has come to seem not only acceptable, but reflexively obvious to the anti-war movement: it has been part and parcel of the ideology of their foremost guru for decades.

Besides indulging the leftist tendency towards conspiracism, it is fairly obvious what purpose is served by invoking such an identification: it is a moral justification, an intellectual granting of indulgences to engage in the worst kinds of antinomianism. Put simply, once this trope has been accepted, the moral fetters fall away, and one is not merely justified, but enjoined to commit acts which would otherwise be of the most appalling possible nature. For if one is facing Nazi Germany, if you are a citizen of a state so permeated with industrial evil, then one has no choice but to destroy that society by any means at your command. Even the considered betrayal of one’s own professed values becomes acceptable under the rubric of such an apocalyptic confrontation. Thus, through the original lie, a new truth is created; a truth by which, in the most classic Orwellian fashion imaginable, law becomes crime, truth becomes lie, love becomes hate, peace becomes war, war becomes peace, and treason, normally the most heinous of crimes against one’s country and community, becomes the highest of moral acts. As soon as one accepts the lie that somehow, someway, Hitler is still alive, and his spirit permeates the very fabric of one’s own society, then one is no longer betraying one’s friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens, but saving them, liberating them even, from an evil only you are privileged to recognize and confront.

All the actions which baffle us make sense if you consider it from this point of view. Bush really is Hitler because America is the preeminent fascist state. Didn’t we kill innocent civilians in Iraq? Didn’t we take away people’s basic human rights in Guantanamo? Aren’t we destroying the environment by burning gasoline?

It’s not that everyone who votes for Kerry buys into this hard-Chomskyite view hook, line, and sinker. But I would bet some version of it is present in the minds of many of the Kerry voters. To take one example, my son is appalled because people have died in Iraq, people who would not have died if President Bush had not made certain conscious choices. This makes Bush evil for him, even if he doesn’t believe that America is evil. So although he wouldn’t buy the whole Chomsky narrative, he would agree that the current administration has taken the country in a fascist direction.

The MSM has almost entirely bought into some version of this latter narrative. That is why they consistently trumpet the bad news and ignore the good news. They are fighting the good fight against the forces of darkness as they best see fit.

Who are the real fascists, we or the Islamists? That’s the ultimate question here. Everything hinges upon the answer to that.

Oct 11, 2004 - 10:49 am 24. chuck:

WichitaBoy,

Let’s not overlook the fact that hating someone is fun and feels good. I expect your son enjoys his prejudice. The politics of the left has always managed to appeal to this basic human trait.

Oct 11, 2004 - 11:07 am 25. mrp:

WichitaBoy -

Outstanding post.

To further reinforce your point about Western self-loathing, the Sunday Times of London has an article quoting former British Labour cabinet minister Clare Short. It is a tour de force in moral equivalence

Excerpt:

In the interview with the English-language Gulf News, Short said she had been reading a book by a US intelligence analyst that painted a sympathetic picture of the Al-Qaeda chief.

ÔøΩThe author says Osama Bin Laden considers it a war, a defensive jihad, because the people in the Middle East are being crushed and destroyed and their resources, their oil, misused and they have got to defend their civilisation and their religion,ÔøΩ she said.

ÔøΩSo I think the killing of civilians is always wrong, all the Prophet MuhammadÔøΩs teachings said it was wrong, but I think the cause is just.ÔøΩ

Short saw little difference between the actions of British and US troops and terrorists, claiming allied forces had deliberately killed innocent people.

Oct 11, 2004 - 11:30 am 26. flenser:

I get the feeling that the Bush campaign view’s their opponents as being John Kerry and the DNC. As long as they persist in that delusion they are going to have trouble making headway. They should have been aggressively taking the fight to the opposition. I believe that goes against Bush’s nature, and that he hoped that behaving in a sensible and moderate fashion would pay off for him.

There is still time to make a difference, if somebody in the WH has the wit to see it. They could get the largely invisible cabinet members on all the talk show’s to hammer home all the good things that have been happening, both with the economy and in foreign policy. I still think their is a receptive audience out there that would be willing to hear the Bush sales pitch, if only someone were to make it.

It’s too late now to take the fight to the entrenched reactionary left and have it make a difference in this election. David Horowitz has been trying to tackle the left-wing culture at it’s root, in the academic system, but I think he has been largely alone in this. Whatever happens on November 2, that will remain a problem that we all need to deal with, because the Chomskyite poison that is paralyzing our culture originates there.

FrontPage Mag is worth a visit if you have not been there. It’s message boards have been overrun with the worst kinds of trolls however.

Oct 11, 2004 - 11:43 am 27. Charlie (Colorado):

Wimblehack, the worst reporter of this election.

Oct 11, 2004 - 12:16 pm 28. Pat Curley:

What I found amusing was that if you go back to the Nagourney piece that Halperin cited as reason to believe the Bush “lies” are more crucial, Nagourney starts with the “Global Test”, which he dismisses, saying Kerry previously said he believed in unilateral preemptive war. What I found amusing about that assertion is that you could flip it around. If the Republicans had claimed, “Look here, Kerry’s in favor of unilateral preemptive war!”, Halperin could have written that they were lying because, after all, Kerry said he would pass the “Global Test”. Maybe all this “I agree with X, but I also agree with Not-X” is working for Kerry; it gives him plausible deniability no matter what he’s accused of saying.

Oct 11, 2004 - 12:37 pm 29. Fresh Air:

Insatty–

Don’t worry about the polls, especially Zogby. These geniuses don’t understand the law of unintended consequences. All their “horse-race” polling will serve to do is ensure that Bush supporters turn out in large numbers.

Regarding the MSM: Another interesting unintended consequence is the shattering of the “credentialed” reporter myth. When bloggers learn to pick up the phone and interview people themselves, the role of the reporter is no longer sanctified. There are only 1,600 newspapers in the country today. There can’t be more than 25,000 non-sports reporters working for them.

How many non-vanity blogs are there? How many will there be in 10 years?

The MSM is dead as the preeminent authority on anything–it just doesn’t realize it yet.

Oct 11, 2004 - 1:11 pm 30. Pat Curley:

Charlie (Colorado), my God! Is that Matt Taibbi piece supposed to be a parody? That’s easily one of the most hackneyed columns I’ve ever read!

Oct 11, 2004 - 1:22 pm 31. thedragonflies:

WichataBoy,

Wonderful post. The Chomsky left so define themselves as anti-fascist that they conclude that whomever they oppose is, de facto, fascist. The amazing thing is they actually miss the real fascists because they perceive the real fascists as being on their side, opposing the pretend fascists – Bush and conservatives. Thus, they actually believe that the jihadists are joining with them to fight the noble fight against fascism!

Whoever said that language is important said a deep truth. The left has been calling conservatives ìfascistî for so long that they have come to believe their own propaganda, and are unable to see the real thing when it tries to kill them.

Plus, I agree with Chuck, that it is so much more fun to hate and give yourself permission to do anything you want to hurt others. Underneath the high IQs of the Chomskys are little, immature child and adolescent minds being given permission to hate and be bad.

Oct 11, 2004 - 1:22 pm 32. WichitaBoy:

mrp,

Thanks!

chuck and thedragonflies,

Underneath the high IQs of the Chomskys are little, immature child and adolescent minds being given permission to hate and be bad.

Exactly. If you think about it, wasn’t that exactly one of the major appeals of the original Nazi movement (the real one!) in the first place? Permission to throw off the psychological shackles demanded by civilized behavior? And doesn’t that make the Chomskyites, as our gracious host reminds us, “objectively pro-fascist”?

Oct 11, 2004 - 1:31 pm 33. Rick Ballard:

WB,

Another excellent initial post. Your follow up post identifies a phenomenon occuring daily now. The AFL-CIO has a wonderful past but it really appears as though it has chosen the Sturmabteilung as its model for the future. I think that “objectively pro-fascist” takes too long to type. Plain old fascist works fine.

Oct 11, 2004 - 1:48 pm 34. chuck:

Permission to throw off the psychological shackles demanded by civilized behavior?

Indeed. In fact, I recall this same sort of thing in Nietzsche, back in “Birth of Tragedy” or some such where he is enthusing about Wagner and the recovery the primitive impulses. I also see this in Rodin and other artists from 100 years ago. I find voicing this opinion a good way to p*ss off artists, artists being of higher morality and all. I mean, I like Rodin, and part of what is appealing in his work is just that strain. But it led to catastrophe.

Oct 11, 2004 - 1:51 pm 35. chuck:

WichitaBoy,

Thinking a bit more about the joy of throwing off civilized restraint. It seems to me that the Fascists and Nazis made this a virtue in itself, whereas for the left it was a side effect. Of course, Lenin did disparage bourgoise morality and seemed to think that brutality was some sort purer morality. Not sure where Franco would fall in this classification, he seems a bit of an odd one. But anyway, this would put Saddam in the fascist camp, as he glorified violence as an end in itself to ennoble the arab soul, or some such. The Islamists seem to me closer to the revolutionary left in spirit, in as much as their violence follows from other ideals. These things all sort of mush together, of course. I don’t doubt that Lenin was moved by the spirit of the times which showed up in a different form in the fascists.

Oct 11, 2004 - 2:12 pm 36. Terrye:

Chomsky is a fraud and a parasite. I remember once getting into an argument with some college professor about economics. I told him I was sick and tired of getting lectures on capitalism from people with tenure. The truth is most of the people who want to destroy America would not survive without it and anyone who could compare Gitmo to a deathcamp is stunningly stupid.

I was not happy about the civlians being killed in Iraq myself, but once I knew what was happening there I felt like it should be stopped. I also felt that a tyrant like Saddam had to understand that a mandatory force resolution meant something. Strange that the people who are the most dedicated to the UN are also the most cavalier about carrying out its mandates.

Wichita boy, ask your son if the US soldiers who killed civilians in WW2 to stop the death camps were evil and if FDR was evil for sending them there. I know people do not like the analogy but Saddam killed more Muslims than the Crusaders and if we had allowed him to continue on knowing what he was doing then we would have been guilty as well.

In the years to come far fewer Iraqi people will suffer and die because of what we have done. And that is all we can hope for. Most of the antiwar people I know really do not care about the mass graves, their concern for Iraqi civilians extends to their usefulness politically.

Oct 11, 2004 - 2:13 pm 37. lindenen:

Regarding the MSM: Another interesting unintended consequence is the shattering of the “credentialed” reporter myth. When bloggers learn to pick up the phone and interview people themselves, the role of the reporter is no longer sanctified. There are only 1,600 newspapers in the country today. There can’t be more than 25,000 non-sports reporters working for them.

I’ve been wondering of late how much money each blogger makes from BlogAds and those Amazon.com links. Depending on how many bloggers you have and how much they make with those ads, it’s conceivable that bloggers could hire journalists and investigative reporters to represent them at White House press conferences, etc. At the very least, it’s an idea.

Oct 11, 2004 - 2:23 pm 38. chuck:

lindenen,

I will believe it when Glen quits his day job and buys reportage. He’s already an editor, but he doesn’t pay the reporters. Love to see it though.

Oct 11, 2004 - 2:29 pm 39. lindenen:

Well, he doesn’t have to quit his day job. Just get several bloggers to band together and combine the money they make from the blogs. Depending on the amount, you might be able to hire a small team. You could probably hire a few people to investigate Oil For Food. The left-wing blogs would hire their own people probably. Imagine if we had people on the ground in DC just like ABC and CBS. hehe

Oct 11, 2004 - 2:49 pm 40. Pat Curley:

Lindenen, I think the more likely model will be group blogs along the lines of the Command Post or Red State (or a tiny project I am involved in called Digital Brownshirts News).

Oct 11, 2004 - 3:19 pm 41. WichitaBoy:

chuck,

Without entering too deeply into the entomology of the various totalitarian movements, what I see as the salient distinction is that between all of them on one side and liberal Western democracy on the other. In this I agree with Churchill. Unfortunately, the imposition on the body politic of the artificial 1-dimensional left-right linear worldview has confused people greatly on this issue.

Terrye,

The truth is most of the people who want to destroy America would not survive without it.

Of course, but as my son pointed out to me, what’s really going on with most of them is a failure of imagination. They can’t really imagine a world without the safe capitalist democracy in which they live and they simply imagine the world as exactly the same only better.

That never happens though.

My observation is that many of these people couldn’t even survive in Wichita, let alone outside the United States.

Oct 11, 2004 - 3:42 pm 42. Terrye:

Wichita:

This is kind of off topic, but not really. Today I heard that Christopher Reeves died and there Edwards was out on the campagin trail shamelessly using this tragedy. Vote for us and these folks will walk again. I was stunned at the brazen insensitivity and then I remembered the man was a trial lawyer. My point here is that what killed Reeves was not a lack of funds for embryonic stem cell research, it was a failure of basic care.

The man had a pressure sore that got infected and then he went into a coma and died of heart failure. My health care agency would no doubt be sued if one of our clients suffered something like this while in our care.

People tend to think that all hope lies in medical research when the truth is without a good Nurse’s aide none of it matters. You can have the best surgeon in the world and if there is no one there to care for for you post op you will die in your own waste.

It seems to me that the left has become hostage to the elite. It is all about money and what you do with it and so they fail to see that sometimes the answers are more simple. Human kindness and common sense have been religated to the realm of the mundane.

Oct 11, 2004 - 4:45 pm 43. Charlie (Colorado):

Terrye:

The man had a pressure sore that got infected and then he went into a coma and died of heart failure. My health care agency would no doubt be sued if one of our clients suffered something like this while in our care.

Really? I kind of had the impression this was a fairly common complication.

Or is “fairly common complication” just a phrase that evokes cash-register sounds to the ambulance chasers?

Oct 11, 2004 - 5:42 pm 44. Terrye:

Charlie:

I have seen pressure sores in the very old and the very ill. For instance when people stop eating often times the lack of nutrition helps lead to tissue breakdown. And sometimes in long term care facilities when the old are suffering death by inches it can happen. I saw an elderly woman whose skin became so fragile she could only be moved with a sheet, any direct pressure on her skin could cause a tear.

But Christopher Reeve was a 52 year old quad. Someone should have seen this before it got that bad. It could be that it came up so quickly and got bad so fast that the infection could not be stopped, but we have had a number of quads and none of them has ever had anything like this happen to them.

And for Edwards to drag it into the campaign is despicable. An interesting note, most of the quads I know do not support embryonic stem cell research. They prefer to see support for adult stem cell research. I think once you have come as close to dying as these folks have it can often change your views about what life is about.

Oct 11, 2004 - 6:28 pm 45. max:

1. The mainstream media is the most dishonest, corrupt and arrogant institution in American public life today.

They don’t understand how their approach hurts rather than helps their ’side’:

Many people simply do the opposite of what the msm wants them to do because they know that the msm has said everything negative that it can find about the side the msm is opposed to, but they know they haven’t been told about the negatives about the side the msm supports.

What Bush negatives have we not been told about by the msm? My guess is none. What Kerry negatives have we not been told about by the msm? I can name a few – Cambodia, medals, pitiful Senate record, but what others have I missed that the msm has refused to report? I prefer to support the guy whose negatives are disclosed over the guy whose negatives are concealed.

2. What people want is an ‘unbiased’ media, not a conservative partisan media – we want a media that reports the full story on both sides of the equation so that we can make truly informed decisions.

3. I hope and pray that the msm is as traumatized on Nov 3rd as Australia’s msm is right now. (If anythin they’re worse than ours from what I see on the web.)

Oct 11, 2004 - 6:40 pm 46. rumblestrip:

Roger

You say that you would like to see the MSM upeneded and destroyed. The MSM has simply eaten the fruit of the poison tree. Others have eaten of the tree: the U.N, Europe, many third world countries, my beloved Canada, and almost all of your cultural institutions. Now, it would appear, that the Democratic Party is about to do the same.

This poison tree has a name: International Socialism. This is as dangerous a utopian scheme as has ever been devised and is a stealth ideology, wrapping itself in many guises before it reveals its true self.

Canada succumbed in 1968 by being in the thrall of a charasmatic socialist named Pierre Trudeau. Don’t let this happen to you. Your problem is not John Kerry. Your problem, in my opinion, is most likely to be Hillary Clinton, who, if the Democrats bite, will step up and take a bite ,too.

Socialism is your real enemy. Hack at the root, not at the branches.

P.S. If I seem presumptuous in commenting about American affairs, I would say in my own defence, that my late father was an American as is 95% of may family.

Oct 11, 2004 - 6:52 pm 47. Karl:

No one should be surprised by the memo. No one should be surprised by the fact that the memo did not come up on “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos.

In 1992, while covering the Clinton campaign and producing for ABCNews, Halperin passed Stephanopoulos a copy of the famous letter Clinton wrote to Col. Holmes, thanking him for helping Clinton avoid the draft and blathering about loathing the military. ABCNews then sat on the story until the Clinton campaign could get their story together.

At least, that’s the story presented in Strange Bedfellows, by Tom Rosenstiel (no right-winger, he).

Oct 11, 2004 - 7:45 pm 48. richard mcenroe:

Flenser ó I’m sure Bush is aware of the rot on the campuses. But he isn’t running against tenured professors. He’s got to deal with what’s in front of him.

Oct 11, 2004 - 7:47 pm 49. Karl:

Halperin was on TV with Stephanopolous and the memo didn’t come up? Where is Claude Rains when you need him, for I am shocked!

FYI, in 1992, Halperin was covering Clinton and producing for ABCNews. Halperin passed a copy of that letter Clinton wrote to Col. Holmes about avoiding the draft and loathing the military to… yes, you guessed it, Stephanopolous. ABCNews then sat on the story for a while. Then Clinton went on “Nightline” to defuse the issue, because he had time to get his story straight.

And Halperin got promoted when Hal Bruno retired.

Oct 11, 2004 - 7:51 pm 50. Karl:

Halperin was on TV with Stephanopolous and the memo didn’t come up? Where is Claude Rains when you need him, for I am shocked!

FYI, in 1992, Halperin was covering Clinton and producing for ABCNews. Halperin passed a copy of that letter Clinton wrote to Col. Holmes about avoiding the draft and loathing the military to… yes, you guessed it, Stephanopolous. ABCNews then sat on the story for a while. Then Clinton went on “Nightline” to defuse the issue, because he had time to get his story straight.

And Halperin got promoted when Hal Bruno retired.

Oct 11, 2004 - 7:52 pm 51. John Clayton:

People looking for complete truth about complex stories on the network news shows, regardless of their slant, are going to be disappointed. It’s probably more fun to see what Hollywood has given us on the subject, going all the back to 1933, the Ben Hecht play “The Front Page”, first in film in My Girl Friday, remade in the 70’s with Lemmon and Matthau, then converted to a television scenario in the 80’s as “Switching Channels” with Burt Reynolds and Kathleen Turner. Of course there’s Broadcast News and Network, two great satirical looks at the tv news industry, whose premises haven’t lost their edge or timeliness.

Anyone who thinks that the networks regularly slant right or left misses the point: they are about making money, and over the last two decades fluff has replaced hard news. What hard news still being reported is either of the “if it bleeds, it leads” genre, or a “he said” kind of reporting that ignores facts and research and puts talking heads on screen. There are some exceptions- PBS Frontline, Nightline, 60 Minutes.

The upshot? TV is excellent for breaking news when you can’t or don’t want to wait. But for a roundup of the day’s news or a long term, thoughtful analysis, you’ve got to read- hopefully while keeping a skeptical eye and an open mind.

Oct 11, 2004 - 8:24 pm 52. Matteo:

Max

“Many people simply do the opposite of what the msm wants them to do because they know that the msm has said everything negative that it can find about the side the msm is opposed to, but they know they haven’t been told about the negatives about the side the msm supports.”

Yes. I’ve often thought that if you were a Martian who came down to Earth and knew nothing more that one side was under constant, unrelenting, intense scrutiny, while the other side was never examined in any effective way at all, you’d want to vote for the first side, for reasons of accountability alone…

Oct 11, 2004 - 9:05 pm 53. John Lynch:

I watched Fox News late last night and saw a guy citing a social research study “scientifically accurate,” that rate the MSM TV coverage of the debates. Essentially supporting the Halperin bias, except it is wider. Link

Oct 12, 2004 - 12:13 pm

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