The other day I wrote about 140 words to note that nobody admits failure anymore, not in the movie biz and certainly not the White House.
Today, Ellen Goodman, the syndicated columnist, writes about the year about to end:
"Denial was in, repentance was out. To err was human, to admit it was a strategic blunder."
Don’t you just hate it when somebody else demonstrates how to say things with brevity and wit? I do.
I received an email yesterday from a reader in Belgium who wondered why
I did not make room here for critical comments.
Good question.
The expediter of "alpertstruth," the fellow whose computer savvy makes it all possible was very annoyed by the spam we got. So he shut off access to the blog. Rightly so, I think. The spamsters are disgusting.
Yet I would love to read reactions to my ideas. And deal with your ideas. So here is what we will do:
Send me your comments via email, letting me know if I may copy them to the blog. (I promise to edit judiciously when I must edit.)
Thank you.
Arthur
PS I cannot wait to hear from you, so don't forget to email me at ArthurAlpert@swcp.com with your ideas.
PPS Happy New Year!
I had just paid for my groceries today when I spied the kiosk advertising the video of "King Arthur." Above the picture of the lovely Keira Knightley was the line, "from the producer of Pearl Harbor"
But "Pearl Harbor" was a bomb. Oh, it may have made money; Hollywood has a way of doing that even when the movie fails to entertain, particularly with "spectaculars." But reviewers were almost unanimous in saying that "Pearl Harbor" was a bad film.
So why boast about producing "Pearl Harbor" to sell the VHS of another movie?
Because that is the strategy for victory. Never explain. Never admit failure.
Claim victory and move on to the next episode.
If this reminds you of the Bush Administration’s approach to Iraq, well, it should.
Understand. The White House cannot admit failure for that would be the first step on a slippery slope leading to...well, accountability
I finished reading "The Kite Runner," by Khaled Hosseini, on Christmas Day and it was sometimes a trying experience. Hosseini and his protagonist both grew up in Afghanistan (pre-Soviet, pre-mujaheddin) and both emigrated to the US. Add to this the author’s talents and I found myself worrying about him, his friends and family. I forgot that this is a novel, not an autobiography.
"The Kite Runner" (Riverhead, 2003) has been a popular success, I read somewhere, and I understand why. The story is riveting, the themes universal and they play out against the background of an exotic land that has only recently made headlines.
So why I am telling you all this? Journalism - even good journalism - runs a poor second to fiction in telling truths. I learned a heckuva lot about Afghanistan as it was and is from "The Kite Runner". I recommend it.
A couple of days ago, the Albuquerque Journal carried an AP story by John J. Lumpkin headlined "Rumsfeld Says He Cares for Troops." This was a Pentagon response to the criticism the Secretary of Defense received when he answered a soldier’s question about inadequate armor this way:
"You go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have."
In the seventh paragraph down, the reporter wrote:
"Critics called the response insensitive and castigated him for not doing more to prepare the US military for the Iraqi invasion and its aftermath."
Did somebody call the response "insensitive"? I guess so. But why?
What is this language of feelings? Where does it come from? And what is it doing in our political arena?
Because I am older, I would categorize Rumsfeld’s response as true or false, politically adept or stupid or, maybe, the product of quick or sluggish thinking.
It would never occur to me to say "insensitive."
But lots of folks use that language these days. How come? Well, wars usually give rationality a bad name and World War II was no exception. Then, in the 60s, came youth culture and television. Rock-and-rollers, hippies and other rebels exalted feeling and the senses. And though I do not fully understand how it works, the process of learning-by-seeing is about feeling, too.
We "linears" grew up getting not only specific information but a manual for using it - logic. The visual, however, offers – not hard information – but a "sense" of a person or situation. And its logic, the logic of pictures, is different. (In TV news, for example, we used to say, "Best video first." That meant rejecting chronology, an aid to logic.)
Perhaps that is why so many younger people use the language of feelings in the political arena. Me, I fear that concern with manners, feelings, emotion, will obscure what’s really at issue.
In this case, what's really at issue is the accuracy of Rumsfeld's answer. Fact: Rumsfeld went to war in Iraq with the Army he inherited from Clinton. Fact: Passionate about certain ideas about warfare in the new millennium, he rejected the advice of top brass to send a much bigger force to Iraq. Fact: he also ignored existing reports from the State Department and a few NGOs on what might happen after Saddam’s fall. And he didn’t adapt quickly to what was happening on the ground, The story today is about armor for vehicles, but not long ago parents were buying and mailing protective vests to their sons and daughters.
Thus, we have reaped the whirlwind. Not because of Rumsfeld’s language, but because his mind is closed.
Hey, I have my reservations about rationality, but feelings are an inferior tool for negotiating the world. I have never doubted the sincerity of Osama bin Laden’s feelings. Nor George W. Bush’s. It's just that, like Rumsfeld, they glory in their invincible ignorance.
Merry Christmas, everybody.
.
I regularly post my Albuquerque Tribuen column here, once the newspaper has published it. Here is today's column:
CAPITAL OFFENSE
Our money fixation has devoured every part of America
By Arthur Alpert
The topic of my sermon, friends, is worship of the Almighty Dollar and the gospel of the free market. For this ancient preacher remembers when money wasn’t everything.
Professions, for example, stood outside the market. In the 30s, his uncle, the doctor, set out to do good. Took payment in chickens. Devoted days to "charity" work. As did all his peers in the doctors’ guild. Their greatest reward? They were adored.
MDs are entrepreneurs today or employees in the health biz, a subsidiary of the insurance and drug industries. And, as economist Milton Friedman famously wrote, "The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits."
The market swallowed law, too. Chief Justice William Rehnquist was blunt back in 1996: "... The practice of law is today a business where once it was a profession."
But having seen attorneys trolling for customers on TV, you knew that.
The Sabbath, too, fell quickly to market forces. In my mind’s ear, Red Barber is telling us radio listeners the baseball game is over in the sixth inning because of "blue laws" restraining Sunday commerce. Well, those laws are history. So is the day of rest.
Sadly, American capitalism, the best economic system ever, producer of the most wealth and jobs, has a dark side. Unfettered, its engine leaps barriers, invades all non-commercial space, subverting all non-cash values.
Intoxicated, free market fanatics sacrifice to Mammon. What else are the victims of Vioxx? The Food & Drug Administration - a pawn of the pharmaceutical industry - routinely ushers poisons to market. FDA is abetted by politicians of all stripes. The drug makers then reward our elected representatives.
Coincidence, I’m sure.
We used to call this "laissez-faire" but that’s French. Even worse, it conjures up child labor, sweatshops, corruption and the Great Depression. So marketers conceived a brilliant fix, the "free market." What could be better?
Unless you want your children to postpone gratification,. The free market wants sales now. Or, keep the kids innocent. Sorry, sex sells. You out there who believe integrity trumps wealth, bless you. But look around. It doesn’t.
In the front pews, my neighbors curse Hollywood and liberals for their assaults on "family values." They never question market capitalism.
Perhaps they missed the lesson of the 1950s. High taxes on individuals and business. Serious regulation, too. Yet business boomed, the middle class prospered. Believe it or not, even as big government tempered the market, American capitalism’s brawn and creativity astonished the globe.
Fellow seekers, a confession – I’m a fool for rationality. Oh, I know it’s a weak reed compared to the faith of the true believers. Still, it led me to research their gospels wherein I discovered – brace yourselves - why they must privatize Social Security.
Their scripture contains no "social." They believe it’s every man for himself.
And each "makes it" alone.
They hate "security," too, for reasons I don’t fully grasp. Is anxiety good? Are they proud we’re #1 in domestic and street violence? Abuse of alcohol
and other drugs? Prison populations? Still they say, "Bah! Humbug!"
Which reminds me - Christmas nears. If you will look over there (that’s right, behind the retail sales numbers and quarterly reports), you will find an innocent babe. Feel the warmth and hope. Comfort each other.
And in that spirit, join us in a New Year’s toast.
Here’s to a not-so-free market!
Email Alpert, a semi-retired newsman in Albuquerque, at
ArthurAlpert@swcp.com. His column runs the fourth Thursday of the month in Insight & Opinion.
•To my mind, journalism's biggest improvement in the past 15 to 20 years has been the proliferation of "news interpretation" or "analysis" stories. Not only do they enable the reporter to evade the limitations of "objectivity," but they give him or her more words in which to cope with complex realities.
That said, it's often the brief report that brings me up short.
A week ago, for example, the Albuquerque Journal carried a Moscow item on the seizure of a government building in Moscow by Bolsheviks. They were described as a "radical, right wing" party.
Bolsheviks on the right? Think about that.
* A Journal story this morning, datelined Whiteland, Indiana, reported the death of a minister days after he'd been attacked on the altar. A man in custody told police, "I couldn't kill a human being. I was killing the devil."
Unusual in an individual act of violence, but exactly right, I think, where mass murder is involved. That is how humans make it easy to kill, by demonizing their victims. Osama bin Laden did that. So did George W. Bush. It's what leaders have done from time immemorial. And we do follow the leader.
• A Los Angeles Times story said all these new reports about the dangers of painkillers are troubling doctors and patients.
Finally. progress.
• Bill Richardson, reports Michael Coleman of the Journal, wants an "outside the Beltway moderate" for DNC chairman. Credit the Governor with forthrightness, but note that his comment is one more sign the Democratic Party will pursue power by moving to the right.
• My horoscope today - I'm Aries - reads "The more money you make the better you feel - but is that right? Self-worth is not to be confused with net worth."
Sweet, but dated, I am sorry to say. In 2004, those "worths" are identical.
Richard Reeves’ column in this morning’s Albuquerque Journal reminded me of a truth that makes it terribly difficult to think, almost impossible to commit good journalism.
(His concern was "military disinformatiion." He argued that it can lead to the deaths of soldiers, citing the loss in 1983 of 241 Marines in Lebanon shortly after the Marine Corps Commandment told the Congress they weren’t in any great danger.)
That reminded me of the huge distance between guys who testify on Capitol Hill and guys who carry weapons. Which led me to my concern - the meaning of words.
We say "military" or "judiciary," "church" or "government" or "business." We share the belief that their meaning is clear, concrete, even obvious to all. Yet because humans live in hierarchical institutions, that reality doesn’t exist. It changes depending on whether you live at the top or bottom.
Take the army. Reeves brought me back to 1965 (I think it was), when I spent two weeks filming a TV documentary in Dong Xoai, Vietnam. A handful of US Special Forces, a company of combat engineers and some South Vietnamese Army soldiers waged war there for the "hearts and minds" of the people.
That’s where I learned to appreciate the grunts – brave guys, responsible, innocent. And the Special Forces guys, though they were less innocent. (No doubt, the fact that they were keeping me alive influenced my assessment.)
We had choppered into Dong Xoai from Saigon, where up-and-coming officers conducted daily briefings to mislead the press. If memory serves, the resident press corps called those sessions the "Five o’clock follies." Eventually, the whole nation learned of the big lies perpetrated by the top brass and their civilian superiors in the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations.
No, generals and Pfcs don’t breathe the same air.
Or consider, in the context of the sexual abuse scandals, the gap between the bishops of the American Catholic Church and the laity. Or the contrasting realities of small businesses, which operate in a competitive environment with the real possibility of failure, and major corporations, which enjoy monopoly or oligarchy, hate competition and use political power to ensure longevity. The family that opens a New Mexican restaurant in the South Valley shares damn little with the CEO of a firm whose stock is listed on the NYSE.
And so on. There is no such concrete reality as "military" or "business." Yet we use these deceptive generalizations every day.
Until we can learn to cut life horizontally, as well as vertically, I just want to keep in mind how words fail to capture reality.
I wrote some complimentary words about the new direction of the Albuquerque Journal's editorial and Op Ed pages Sunday, using that day's columns to illustrate.
I neglected to note that the newspaper's own editorial (on Social Security) was well-researched, thoughtful and fair-minded.
Sorry about that.
Time Magazine picked the President as its Man of the Year because he reshaped "the rules of politics." True, he did not run to the center, but stayed on the right.
Meanwhile, as the Democrats stumble around, trying to figure out what hit them, the conventional wisdom is that they must move to the center. On yesterday's "Meet the Press," for example, there was an almost off-hand exchange in which the moderator and his guests agreed the party's must pick a national chairman whose name is not Howard Dean.
The Establishment is telling us that the Democrats can only win by "me, too-ing" the GOP. As if they did not just lose with a candidate so clueless he promised to fight "a smarter war on terrorism." As if you can beat a sitting President who is running on his war leadership by saying you can do it better. As if Sen. Kerry ran a liberal campaign. Is it liberal to espouse eight positions on the war? To duck rather than attack the Republicans on tort reform?
It is true that the Democrats still don't understand the new rules of the political game; you do not counter outrageous lies with rational arguments. But their problem now is not tactical. It is fundamental.
Specifically, the question today for Democrats is what do you believe, if anything?
In this, they will not be helped by the press. John Stuart Mill's marketplace of ideas is pretty narrow these days. On TV, it ranges from the far right to the middle-of-the-road. Newspapers cast a wider net; they publish several liberals. No matter. The Democrats' immediate task is to look inward where they just may find a reason for being.
Charles Krauthammer, whose column is syndicated by the Washignton Post, may be the best columnist in the nation. That is to say that he makes strong arguments, in simple English, integrating rational argument and emotions. The result is almost always powerful.
His views are something else; I disagree 100%.
Today, however, I am forced to retract that last statement. I heartily subscribe to the views he expresses in today's piece in the Albuquerque Journal. He says it's time to stop "....the attempts to de-Christianize Christmas...."
he's tired of "Season's Greetings" and "Happy Holidays."
First, he argues, it's silly to ask the majority to "stifle ints religious impulses in public.." Secondly, he says America is uniquely capable of not just tolerating different religions but celebrating them.
Great. I do wish he had made one more point, namely that the biggest force behind the neutering of Christmas is business. But that's asking that he write my ciolumn, not his.
Another point, please. Today's Albuquerque Journal gives us not only Krauthammer, but Jim Hoagland on Iraq, Sen. Joe Biden on Israel and the Palestinians, John Fleck (the paper's science writer) on science and politics and William Kristol on Rumsfeld. True, that is three conservatives to a single liberal, but so what.
Hoagland, who knows a lot about foreign policy, educates. Kristol represents a significant part of the GOP, so his attack on Rumsfeld has a special resonance. Biden's piece is a plan to end the Israeli-Palestianian impasse. And Fleck wants to help us read stories about science and public policy.
I have no idea who is running the Journal's editorial and Op Ed operation, but he or she is doing very good work.
I am often hard on news people. In fairness, they do a tough job. It is not always easy to find and convey the truth.
An AP story headlined "McCain lacks faith in Rumsfeld" that ran in the Albuquerque Tribune December 14 got me thinking about this. In it, McCain said he believes Rumsfeld neither sent enough troops nor the right types of troops to Iraq. Pentagon spokesman Larry Di Rita’s response included the statement that Rumsfeld has "relied upon the judgment of the military commanders…." Etc. Etc.
How does a reporter warn the reader that the Pentagon is lying? You cannot say, "Di Rita’s statement was a lie." The usual approach is to find a credible source to contradict him. But that is not always easy, not if the source must go on the record. True, if you had unlimited space, you might give the reader background (as I will in the next graph), but you do not have all that room.
(When Rumsfeld cashiered General Shinseki, he sent the brass a message. Shinseki, you remember, made the mistake of telling the Congress we need to send 350,000 soldiers to Iraq. So nobody who wants to keep his job will follow his lead. Telling Rumsfeld privately won’t work, either. He doesn’t want to deal with the politics of getting more troops. They would have to come from US bases in Europe (difficult) or a draft (impossible).
Now, with this in mind, consider another story – from the NY Times News Service - that ran the same day. Here is the first paragraph:
"The Pentagon is engaged in a bitter, high-level debate over how far it can and should go in managing or manipulating information to influence opinion abroad, senior Defense Department civilians and military officers say."
Down in paragraph three:
"Critics of the proposals say such deceptive missions could shatter the Pentagon’s credibility, leaving the American public and a world audience skeptical of anything the Defense Department and military say……"
Think about that - despite the Pentagon’s record in the war on Iraq – one miscalculation after another – and its unwillingness to admit to error, the New York Times thinks the Department of Defense has credibility to lose.
Or thinks it must write that way.
And maybe the Times is right. Maybe the American public, if not "a world audience" still believes the Pentagon.
Scary.
Three stories:
o "Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik conducted two extramarital affairs simultaneously, using a secret Battery Park City apartment for the passionate liaisons, the New York Daily News has learned."
That story ran in this morning’s Albuquerque Journal.
Kerik said questions regarding his employment of a former nanny would make the confirmation process messy when he declined President Bush’s nomination as Homeland Security chief in a Friday call to the White House.
o Elsewhere, columnist David Broder wrote about increasing polarization of politics, in the course of which he mentioned Newt Gingrich and Bob Livingston, former House Republican leaders.
o Finally, the New York Times said that Rudolph Guliani, who pushed Kerik’s nomination, may have lost some White House influence because Kerik crashed and burned.
Test: What do Kerik, Gingrich, Livingston and Guliani have in common, besides being Republican?
You got it – if the Daily News is accurate, they are all GOP adulterers.
To that list, please add Rep. Henry Hyde, the anti-abortion activist. (Remember when Hyde excused his long-term affair – he was in his 40s - as a "youthful indiscretion?")
But here is my point – why is Republican adultery not as serious as the Democrats’ version?
Bill Clinton’s trespasses are everywhere, all the time, in newspapers and on "TV news." (Admittedly, he was Prez.) Not so Guliani’s or Gingrich’s or Hyde’s. (Livingston lives in relative obscurity these days as a lobbyist.)
Why don’t Democrats attack Republican immorality the way Republicans go after Democrats?
And why doesn’t the press find GOP adultery as fascinating as it does the Democratic kind?
PS I think the world is off its axis. Kerik, a Republican? Once upon a time, his Falstaffian appetite for life would have identified him as a Democrat.
I wish the world were less predictable. Don Rumsfled had hardly finished saying that the Pentagon was pushing the manufacturers of that vehicle armor to makel more, faster, when they told the papers that nobody in the Pentagon was exhorting them to speed it up. And sure, they said, we can do it faster.
Rumsfled is an intelligent guy, too.
And, speaking of what is predictable, Rush Limbaugh accused the "liberal media" of trying to take down Rumsfeld. Just what I was anticipating in my last item.
I wish I had heard Rush explain the big cheer that greeted the Guardsman's question on armor. He probably figures it was choreographed by some homosexual Hollywood director.
Ah, well. What's imporktant here is that Rumsfled will survive and that Rush and friends will continue to flog the fictional "liberal media conspiracy."
Oh, and most of the liberals won't fight back.
In the previous item, I forgot to note that the soldiers who questioned Don Rumsfeld (in Kuwait) also asked about DOD's use of "stop loss" orders to keep soldiers in uniform who are eligible to get out.
Rumsfeld said it was based on a sound principle, wouldn't be used a lot but would continue to be used.
What he didn't say was that the Army uses it because it lacks manpower.
Why does it lack manpower? Well, one answer is that US forces are over-extended. He didn't say that; you may have noticed that this Administration doesn't go overboard on self-criticism.
Another answer might have been that the Bush Administration) doesn't want the political grief that would come with conscription. He didn't say that, either.
Unlike the President and Veep, Rumsfeld served in the armed forces. But he, too, speaks like a girlie-man.
PS Earlier, I paraphrased Rumsfeld's answer to the soldier's question on vehicle armor. Here is the AP version:
"You go to war with the army you have," not the one you might want.
I try to think of the President and his men as misguided, not evil. I remind myself that they think they are serving the nation when they perpetrate policies that kill innocents in the name of defending freedom.
And then comes Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to make my life difficult.
When the soldier asked why Americans had to forage for armor for their vehicles, Rumsfeld said – I paraphrase – you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want.
That answer ignores a few realities. First, the specific problem is hardly new. It's bene reported for about a year and hasn't been solved. Nor is it unique – you willremember the soldiers’ families who bought and sent protective vests to their sons and husbands.
Also, when generals told the Secretary of Defense that we needed to send lots more soldiers to Iraq, he retired them rather than beef up the armed forces with a draft. And when economist Larry Lindsay said Iraq would cost lots more than they were estimating, the White House cashiered him.
Oh, and none of this kept the Administration from cutting taxes.
So Rumsfeld was perfectly wrong. The Bush Administration didn’t have to go to war with this army. It chose to go to war with too few soldiers and sent them, sometimes, with inadequate equipment.
This is one of those days where it’s hard to think of this White House as honestly mistaken.
PS This morning, we learn a reporter helped the soldier frame his question, maybe even used the soldier to get his question answered. Those devious reporters. There goes the liberal media, undermining the war effort. Me, I wonder if the reporter also orchestrated the cheers that arose from the assembled fighting men.
PPS Isn’t it time liberals pointed out that the President and Vice-President have been cavalier in putting so many trusting GIs in harm’s way? Why aren’t they calling out Bush and Cheney? If a guy who ducks a fight is a wimp, how do you describe men who do that, then rush to put others in harm’s way?
Me, I’d call them girlie-men.
So there I was telling you that eveyr self-respecting newspaper needs a beat reporter to cover the news mediums and here comes Maria Elena Salinas to demonstrate why.
In the Albuquerque Journal today, Salinas (a syndicated columnist out of Florida, I believe) tackles a "media" topic, using Dan Rather's departure as the hook. Too bad she makes two big mistakes.
First, she defends good old-fashioned objectivity. I don't so much object to her believing in that fantasy, but rather that she misleads readers.
Secondly, she concludes that Rather's mishandling of the Bush-Texas Air National Guard story meant the story wasn't true. (At least I think that is her conclusion.)
In fact, the saddest part of the Rather episode is that his rotten reporting cast doubt on an old, solid story. Molly Ivins and other Texas-based newspeople reported it years ago.
(Specifically, VIPs helped Bush jump a long waiting list to get into the TANG, thereby reducing the chances he'd be sent to Vietnam.)
Salinas is a generalist whose columns generally make sense to me. She is not an expert on news mediums or journalism. We need more such experts.
Both our local newspapers reported the other dqy that KRQE-TV/13 News won the ratings war at 10 PM for the first time in eons.
That is certainly to the credit of the Channel 13 folks and to CBS; as the stories indicated, the network shows preceding the 10 PM newscast were very popular and some viewers just didn't change the channel.
What was missing from the stories was that the total number of viewers of local TV news is down, way down, for each of the competing stations. Viewership has been sinking for years now.
(The stations will tell you that's because viewers have more choice. Take that with a grain of salt; nobody but local stations offers local news.)
So why didn't the newspapers tell us Channels 4,7 and 13 are losing viewers for their local TV news programs?
Because they have no beat reporter covering TV. Or "media."
Funny. Years ago, when I worked in TV news (unaware that the phrase is an oxymoron), we were jealous of newspapers because they had staff. They could assign beats. Almost every TV reporter had to be a generalist.
Beat reporters learn a lot about their area of focus. Generalists? Not so much.
If I were running a newspaper today, I would ask myself if the beat system needs updating. As a newspaper reader, I miss and would institute the following beats asap:
• A business reporter. Not another booster, mind you, a reporter.
• A news mediums reporter.
• A religion/spirituality reporter.
I would appreciate your ideas on this.
In this day and age, we swim in a sea of information. Or pseudo-information. So for news mediums, Job #1 must be to give coherence, meaning, by aligning these bits into a necklace, like a string of pearls.
But two stories in today's New York Times remind me of the power of the fact. One, which analyzes the Republican use of TV advertising in the campaign just past, tells me that Republicans like "Will & Grace" a lot. Also, they prefer Leno to Letterman.
I don't know what those bits mean, if anything, but they are making me think.
(I have never cottoned to "Will & Grace." Why? Because I am a Democrat? And neither Leno nor Letterman makes me laugh. Does this make me "undecided"?)
The other story reports that while Internet use in China keeps growing, the government still censors it.
This is useful, reminding me to be careful when I email friends I made in China this summer.
I guess that digging for facts is still important, maybe Job #1.5.
The other day a fine New Mexico journalist I know indicated a certain disdain for bloggers. No doubt - many deserve to be sniffed at; my name may belong on that list. But the blogging phenomenon arises not only from the new technology that makes it easy to do, but also the failures of the mainstream news business.
Today - as we learn that the Secretary of Defense is staying at the Pentagon, despite his abject failure – is a good time to look again, for example, at how the mainstream news mediums performed on Iraq.
It would take a book to do the entire job, but we can begin. Consider the phrase, "war on terror" - central to the Bush Administration’s policies and its re-election.
I've said before that the phrase is a political tool, like the "war on poverty" and the "war on drugs. But beyond its political use, the phrase, "war on terror," enabled the Bush Administration to accrue extraordinary powers in a way that would have been impossible if we had no slogan so brilliantly amalgamating 9/11 and Iraq
Thus, the White House and Justice Department and Pentagon were emboldened to commit Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and the arrests and detentions of immigrants and several individual prosecutions (most of which have gone nowhere).
Of course, those blows to Constitutional government have been reported. Given this Administration’s penchant for secrecy, we must assume there are others we do not know about.
Returning to the political side, American public’s belief that our attack on Iraq was part of a "war on terror" was essential to President Bush’s reelection.
Which brings us back to the Fourth Estate. How come news organizations bought the phrase, thereby buying into the story? How come they still routinely use it without quotes?
Fact is, our press is traditionally kind to government, rarely speaking truth to power when that power is strong. As it is in times of war of fear of war. We tend to pipe up – if we pipe up - when fissures appear in the monolith. (See WWI, WWII, McCarthyism, Watergate, Iran-Contra, et al.)
[Aside: the New York Times is taking heat these days for failing to challenge the White House’s WMD claims. As if being chummy with power is something new on 43rd Street. The Times, remember, suppressed the Bay of Pigs story as a favor to Jack Kennedy. Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose.]
Secondly, while some big newspapers are prospering, the print press overall is losing readership and - not knowing why – often falls victim to the idea that survival lies in news lite, bite-sized paragraphs about celebrities, mostly.
Thirdly, newspapers increasingly are written and edited by people who – having grown up in a visual culture – don’t read enough. No wonder, then, that they are insensitive to how words and phrases affect thinking.
As for TV news, so-called, its fundamental problems remain, one, that it is a sideline of the entertainment business and two, that pictures are a lousy way to convey facts and complex ideas.
It’s also true that the networks are vulnerable to White House pressure via the FCC, which licenses their local stations and makes other decisions affecting the competitive balance with other technologies. Meanwhile, the networks continue to lose audience to cable, satellite, even the Internet; no wonder the Wall Street guys who run TV these days do not seek difficulties with Washington.
(Thus, CBS deep-sixed a 60 Minutes piece on the run-up to war immediately after Dan Rather’s stupid mistake on the Bush Texas Air National Guard story. And why Sumner Redstone, boss at Viacom, owner of CBS, announced he favored Bush during the recent campaign.)
The news biz isn’t the only institution to fold, of course. The Democratic Party did, too, nominating for President a man who wouldn’t question that potent formulation, "the war on terrorism;" who switched positions on the Iraq adventure several times during his campaign; and who wound up campaigning on the bold promise that he would fight a "smarter" war.
But that is another discussion.
My intent today was to raise questions about the mainstream news mediums.
A comment not on the news biz but on the quality of thought among the elites:
William Safire's column on Iraq in this morning's New York Times equates elections with democracy.
Now Safire is not only intelligent and well-connected but a real conservative. So i simple-mindedness on his part is discouraging.
Isn't it obvious that elections, even if free and fair, do not add up to democracy unless accompanied by restrictions on majority will, protection of individual and minority rights and - most importantly - a spirit of toleration?
Guess not.
Incidentally, the Supreme Court's decision not to review Albuquerque's campaign spending limits means that Americans with money have more "free speech" than other Ameircans. This is conventional, of course - the quality of American justice and health care and you-name-it also depends on how much we can spend. But it does suggest our own democracy is far from perfect.