Embarrassment
And the lack thereof. Michael S. Malone at ABC beautifully, if tragically, with shame, reports on the ”get-a-room” performance of the national media in this presidential election year and his own awakening. (If you prefer to give the business to bloggers, the ironically initially MSM’s column is also at Edgelings, his Pajamas-hosted blog):
The traditional media are playing a very, very dangerous game — with their readers, with the Constitution and with their own fates.
The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I’ve found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.
But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I’ve begun — for the first time in my adult life — to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was “a writer,” because I couldn’t bring myself to admit to a stranger that I’m a journalist.
Yeah, well here’s my advice on that point, Mike. Call yourself a reporter, an editor, a columnist, a commentator, whatever it is you actually do. “Journalist” is a bogus word for people who are trying to make it sound like this wretched business is something exalted, something professional, something that requires arcane, secret knowledge hard come by. All things it never was, as amply demonstrated on a regular basis by some of the best in the business working at some of the finest publications in the nation. Yes, there are some skills, knacks and tricks of the trade. It helps to be familiar with stuff like … your subject matter … the English language … telephones and computers. There are some hard lessons. Some people learn them. And some people are better at it than others. But bloggers, untrained, in a couple of years have shown that millions upon millions of dollars have been wasted in this country on journalism degrees.
I generally prefer “newspaperman” or “editor,” by the way. That is what I am, and I am not embarrassed to be one, no matter what any of the others are doing. Previously, it was “reporter.” It was fun being one, and people found it fascinating. I liked telling my reporter stories, and people liked hearing them. “Tabloid reporter,” even better. I have never been ashamed of that. It’s like eating garlic. If people have a problem with it, do you really want to talk to them, and anyway, it just makes it that much more fun to stink up the mutual airspace with your existence. It’s more fun than being a plain old “reporter,” often a lot more intense, and every bit as important to the people you write for … most but not all of them the working people of this country. The cops, the cabbies, the commuters, construction workers and not a few professionals who can’t stomach the local broadsheet’s lefty tripe anymore. Scribbling for a tabloid, you are also required to bullshit less.
I figured out a long time ago that “journalist,” with the reek of bullshit about it, already sounds like you’re trying to pull one over on people before you’ve even asked a question or written a word. What the fuck does a journalist do? Journalize?
That’s actually a word. It has nothing to do with news. It means to keep a personal record. Now that I think of it, maybe that does describe what large parts of this business have been doing in this election cycle. ”Dear diary … Obama looked so hot today.”
As for the bias, the fact that people have it isn’t what bothers me so much. Obviously I have my own. We all do. It’s the fact that they pretend they don’t, when they are nakedly exhibiting it. It isn’t entirely their fault. It is the American news convention, the charade we are all a part of. I don’t mind so much that major newspapers and networks are run and staffed by a bunch of Bush-hating, McCain-disparaging, Palin-bashing, Biden-ignoring Obama-lickspittles. That’s between them and their readers or viewers. I periodically hit them for being full of it, biased, even bordering on treacherous, but this is America and they have the right to be that way. It bothers me more when the Associated Press does it, because it is in violation of everything they are supposed to be, their obligation to their clients and their readers, and because this whole bogus American “objectivity” thing was their idea in the first place. God, it was brilliant when arch-tabloidist Murdoch’s Fox hit on “Fair and Balanced” as a slogan. No one had ever thought of trying that. No one ever thought it would matter to proclaim it.
Malone touches on some of that:
Now, of course, there’s always been bias in the media. Human beings are biased, so the work they do, including reporting, is inevitably colored. Hell, I can show you 10 different ways to color variations of the word “said” — muttered, shouted, announced, reluctantly replied, responded, etc. — to influence the way a reader will comprehend exactly the same quote. We all learn that in Reporting 101, or at least in the first few weeks working in a newsroom.
But what we are also supposed to learn during that same apprenticeship is to recognize the dangerous power of that technique, and many others, and develop built-in alarms against them.
But even more important, we are also supposed to be taught that even though there is no such thing as pure, Platonic objectivity in reporting, we are to spend our careers struggling to approach that ideal as closely as possible.
That means constantly challenging our own prejudices, systematically presenting opposing views and never, ever burying stories that contradict our own world views or challenge people or institutions we admire. If we can’t achieve Olympian detachment, than at least we can recognize human frailty — especially in ourselves.
The problem is that for all the J-school lip service, no one was ever actually taught to be fair. How else to explain the predominance of loaded words for “said.” “Maintained” is one of my favorites. Code for “is full of it, but I can’t exactly say that.” How else to explain why every McCain claim or McCain supporter’s claim is refuted in the next graph with unattributed Obama camp policy interpretations, while the same gratuitous courtesy is not extended to the McCain camp? How else to explain the massive movement of reporters into Alaska, while news organizations have done everything they can to avoid reporting on the background of the Democratic presidential candidate, let alone his veep. How else to explain the utter lack of respect and tolerance for people whose views and lifestyles differ from theirs, while hypocritically trumpeting demands for respect and tolerance?
You have to remind yourself sometimes, that even as bad as it is, it is a pillar and an essential one of our society. It is important. We can’t do without it. Every day, in this space, I draw on useful information from news organizations I have come to despise for their shamelessness. I may have to winnow it, filter it, and maybe hose it off, but I have no choice. I’m not embarrassed by what I do for a living, or even by my profession. I’m just disgusted by so many of the people who are my colleagues.
People like to call the media liberal. It isn’t entirely true. The surveys I’ve seen in the past indicate something like a 60-40 to 70-30 liberal to conservative split. With a lot of shades in the middle. There are various theories about why that is. Idealists, iconoclasts, authority challengers leaning left. The left doesn’t have a monopoly on those pursuits though. I think it’s more that conservatives are smarter, and figure out more useful and/or lucrative ways to contribute to society. Even so, the slant is not as clear cut as you might think. I work with a guy who is a died-in-the-wool lefty draft dodger. He can’t believe a lot of what he’s seen either, and knows how to edit for news content, and edit out bias. An equal opportunity pol blaster. That’s because he’s smart enough to get it, and because he is fundamentally fair. He’s not the only person I know like that. As for the outlets, there’s MSNBC and CNN but there is also Fox. There’s the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. There’s the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald, and people have thanked me for my employer’s existence and the alternative it gives them, though I only work there. The media is not a monolithic thing. That said …
For many years, spotting bias in reporting was a little parlor game of mine, watching TV news or reading a newspaper article and spotting how the reporter had inserted, often unconsciously, his or her own preconceptions. But I always wrote it off as bad judgment and lack of professionalism, rather than bad faith and conscious advocacy.
Sure, being a child of the ’60s I saw a lot of subjective “New” Journalism, and did a fair amount of it myself, but that kind of writing, like columns and editorials, was supposed to be segregated from “real” reporting, and, at least in mainstream media, usually was. The same was true for the emerging blogosphere, which by its very nature was opinionated and biased.
But my complacent faith in my peers first began to be shaken when some of the most admired journalists in the country were exposed as plagiarists, or worse, accused of making up stories from whole cloth.
…
Meanwhile, I watched with disbelief as the nation’s leading newspapers, many of whom I’d written for in the past, slowly let opinion pieces creep into the news section, and from there onto the front page. Personal opinions and comments that, had they appeared in my stories in 1979, would have gotten my butt kicked by the nearest copy editor, were now standard operating procedure at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and soon after in almost every small town paper in the U.S.
I’m not sure that’s true. I wasn’t working in newspapers in the 1970s, and spent most of that decade in Thailand. But I know where a lot of the prevalent assumptions about Vietnam came from. I do remember being a little confused about how the Vietnam War was supposed to be a bad thing, and the American military was supposed to be a bad thing, when all the soldiers I knew, my scoutmasters and friends’ dads, were good, earnest men, and when we were profoundly disturbed by the communist takeovers of Vietnam and Cambodia. That was happening about as far away from my home then as New York and D.C. are from me today, and the stories of re-education, imprisonment and mass murder next door began coming out with the floods of refugees who risked their lives to get out. Still, I believed, much like Malone, that this business which had helped force the abandonment of those places, reporting them to be beyond saving, their saving to be a crime, was in the larger part fundamentally fairminded. I never suspected then the level of delusion I have come to witness over the past eight years. For me, it really began in earnest as I listened in astonishment to the attacks on my nation’s government at war. Here’s Malone’s wakeup:
… what really shattered my faith — and I know the day and place where it happened — was the war in Lebanon three summers ago. The hotel I was staying at in Windhoek, Namibia, only carried CNN, a network I’d already learned to approach with skepticism. But this was CNN International, which is even worse.
I sat there, first with my jaw hanging down, then actually shouting at the TV, as one field reporter after another reported the carnage of the Israeli attacks on Beirut, with almost no corresponding coverage of the Hezbollah missiles raining down on northern Israel. The reporting was so utterly and shamelessly biased that I sat there for hours watching, assuming that eventually CNNi would get around to telling the rest of the story & but it never happened.
But nothing, nothing I’ve seen has matched the media bias on display in the current presidential campaign.
Republicans are justifiably foaming at the mouth over the sheer one-sidedness of the press coverage of the two candidates and their running mates. But in the last few days, even Democrats, who have been gloating over the pass — no, make that shameless support — they’ve gotten from the press, are starting to get uncomfortable as they realize that no one wins in the long run when we don’t have a free and fair press.
Malone goes on to discuss the recent campaign coverage. His argument falls apart a little at the end when he lets reporters off the hook and blames editors. Reporters unleashed would have gone after Obama. Sure, editors assign reporters, make demands of them. But unless all of those scribblers’ boot-polishing stories are being entirely rewritten, top to bottom, the reporters are very much on board with the program. Where do you think editors come from, anyway? Not counting those ones that never actually did any reporting, but that’s another matter. Editor-reporter issue aside, Malone’s quick review of this election’s news decisions, even where he defends aspects of the outrage, is a scathing indictment of the livelihood and calling he clearly loves.
Read the whole thing. Then ask yourself. What’s with this last bit? Does ABC do this with every column? Newspapers don’t:
This is the opinion of the columnist and in no way reflects the opinion of ABC News.
Too bad. It should.
Welcome Punditeers, RealClearPols, vanderLoons, Wise Meat, etal. “Welcome to the dark side” indeed, Jeff G. Always good to see all of you. Don’t be strangers.
Prior related: Campaign Shocker, Joe’s Army, Good News is No News, Present Prologue, Racially Tinged, Irritated, Narrative Suggested, Yeah, But, Lazy, Stupid or Willfully Ignorant?, Insurgents Resilient!, AP Analysis: War is Hard, We’re Depressed (Can We Leave Now?), Happy Memorial Day
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:43 pm on Tuesday, October 28, 2008
26 Responses to “Embarrassment”
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October 28th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
You’re not only a newspaperman and a reporter, you’re a damned fine writer. You get it, Malone gets it, and a lot of ex readers get it. Although I may complain about the depth of reporting in your paper, I have to remind my self of two things. First, it’s a tabloid, with all that means. Second, it’s still miles better than the Globe.
As you point out, it’s not just print media that’s afflicted, it’s all media. I won’t watch any of the local stations news except for the few minutes I need to get the weather and traffic reports in the morning. Their anti Republican, anti Bush, anti gun owner, anti everything that normal people believe in just sickens me. I figure I’m not alone as TV ratings and print circulation continue to dive like a Kamikaze plane.
Keep writing and reporting, I’m sure there are a lot more like me that appreciate it.
October 28th, 2008 at 11:00 pm
[...] Michael. Jules Crittenden, who doesn’t like being called a journalist in the first place, has some advice for [...]
October 28th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
[...] Jules Crittenden… Embarrassment [...]
October 28th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
do you think if we elect the messiah, that intratrade will offer wagering on the ‘first journalist to express regret for their culpability’?
or
1st journalist to say actually say ‘we did not vet the candidate’?
my bet…andrea mitchell. Dinner with greenspan will make for interesting times. Wonder if he’ll obsess about spending or raising taxes in the heart of recession.
October 28th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
Fantastic points.
As for loaded said words — watch out for “claimed” — always code for “we think this is crap.” I tried to talk a city editor out of that word once, but he insisted that it was proper — since he really did think the guy was lying.
October 29th, 2008 at 12:25 am
[...] on Embarrassment Filed under: Posts — buttle @ 20:25 And the lack thereof. “Journalist” is a bogus word for people who are trying to make it sound like this wretched [...]
October 29th, 2008 at 12:58 am
For 22 years I was a professional soldier. I never thought for one minute that any reporter had my, or my soldiers’, best interest at heart. Or the nation’s best interests, for that matter. I know that’s not true of all of them, I just never had the time or inclination to figure out which ones were telling the truth about the military when it was clear most were lying. Lies I knew to be lies because the reporters were writing (and lying) about things I knew firsthand. I always assumed that the lies were intentional, and were written because of the bias of the reporter. Not a slant, to try to get someone to think the way that the reporter wanted them to think. No, these were outright lies, designed to get the public to hate the profession, and professionals, I loved. So with that background, it comes as no surprise to me that lefty reporters would do this in a national election.
Hell, the only reason it took this long is because they never had a candidate so far left that it was worth the effort.
October 29th, 2008 at 1:07 am
[...] EmbarrassmentBut I know where a lot of the prevalent assumptions about Vietnam came from. I do remember being a little confused about how the Vietnam War was supposed to be a bad thing, and the American military was supposed to be a bad thing, … [...]
October 29th, 2008 at 1:16 am
The media, in the form of reasonably straightforward provider of news and information, has probably given up the ghost, flat-lined with the Obama campaign, and is unlikely to be revived anytime soon. That’s not so bad. Except for NPR, there is no government money keeping the comatose patient alive, and observers can “tut-tut” while observing the rotten fruit, and speculate whether the next crop will be any more successful than the last.
The reverse side of this is that I, and I think pretty much everyone else, can’t picture what the next crop should look like. As much as we blast media bias, I don’t think anyone has a handle on what the next generation of profitable and productive information gathering really looks like. I can guess, it might look like a conglomeration of bloggers run thru a Drudge-like aggregator, but really, do I know? No one else knows either.
October 29th, 2008 at 1:19 am
[...] EmbarrassmentBut I know where a lot of the prevalent assumptions about Vietnam came from. I do remember being a little confused about how the Vietnam War was supposed to be a bad thing, and the American military was supposed to be a bad thing, … [...]
October 29th, 2008 at 8:25 am
[...] you can’t blame it on Wall Street meltdown, either: But bloggers, untrained, in a couple of years have shown that millions upon [...]
October 29th, 2008 at 10:18 am
For someone who has so many insights and such a gift of gab you sure are a foul-mouthed son-of-a-gun!
October 29th, 2008 at 10:47 am
Perhaps what you fail to comprehend is that people don’t care for the Politics of the past 8 years and have a firm belief that John McCain is no “Maverick” that will bring about change, or reform.
While I consider myself an Independent (I have voted for Reagan, Clinton, Bush and Gore) my vote was inexorably sent to Obama due to the irrational and politically motivated pick of Sarah Palin. If that doesn’t demonstrate a clear lack of conscience and ethics, what does?
It is so very typical to see people rail against others who choose to assert a different viewpoint, as opposed to try and understand why that viewpoint is so prevalent. Perhaps the national media is responding to the views of their readership and as such, reflecting those views in the stories that are written.
The simple fact remains, McCain has not demonstrated a clear and convincing argument for becoming our next Commander in Chief. Perhaps he had a little more work to do to overcome the anti Republican bias that the Bush years have brought, but he has had ample time to make his case. Instead he has chosen to pander to the lowest common denominator (Hello Sarah Palin supporters) as opposed to creating a meaningful agenda for reform.
His actions speak louder than his words and the rest of us have decided, enough is enough.
While I have no guarantee that Obama will make for an excellent President (those are few and far between it seems) I firmly believe that he has a batter path to doing so than does McCain.
Maybe next time the Republicans will put forth a real “Maverick” (do those actually exist in the “me first” political scene) and not saddle that candidate with a cheap, second rate curiosity show.
Obama / Biden 2008
October 29th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Thanks for noticing, jgillmartin. In person, in familiar adult company, guilty. In print, I avoid profanity except in particular and limited cases for purposes of emphatic emphasis and descriptiveness, or accurate reporting. Unlike a lot of my lefty pals who use eff-words, etc., as the substance of their political discourse. Sorry if it offends. Go read something else.
October 29th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Excellent defense of your profession, Jules. Years ago I learned to read between the lines of any newspaper article, and began to suspect news broadcasts weren’t giving all the details. But these past eight years have been an eye-opener, especially with the explosion of the blogosphere. Yes, blogs are generally opinionated and biased, but the good thing about the internet is that you can get opinions and bias in all flavors, and contrast and compare. Bloggers, especially, are ferocious fact-checkers as well, which I believe gives me a fairly balanced view of things. Newspapers and broadcasts, sadly, have given up doing that, and that’s why they’re dying. It’s a little frightening, because how else are we going to get the news, if nobody is reporting it in a fair and balanced manner?
October 29th, 2008 at 2:33 pm
I’m an Obama supporter, just to get that out of the way.
I do agree with the claim of media bias, but I think it shifts in the bias from case to case. There is no question that the general media has fallen for Obama, but I think (honestly) that many in the media find Obama a more interesting subject than they do McCain. That, at least, is how I think this started. And I am in no way saying that is appropriate, but I that through the primary’s, people fell for Obama, media included. He was certainly not the media darling he has become when this all started 18 months ago.
But I remember clearly the coverage from the media over the beginning of the Iraq War, the lead up and the first several months, and the general media coverage was such that Bush loved. Many in the media came back in the following years, and indicted their own coverage, whether it was from pressure or bias, that was too lax. That, in mind, was as equally inexplicable and unethical as this current issue. Part of what caused that caveat emptor admission in the media was that the War did not go as planned, and quickly became unpopular.
That isn’t to say that such self-awareness will happen this time around, but my hunch is that, if in a years time Obama turns out to be unpopular and truly not ready to lead, they will start looking back at their own work.
If he’s popular and a success, they’ll have the I told you so attitude the media so loves.
October 29th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
I agree with most of what Malone had to say, and with you, Jules. I would like, however, to offer a slightly different take. I became a reporter in 1973, the year Watergate began to unravel, and continued until 1999, when I got married and became a teacher. I believe the most serious cultural development of the last 35 years is the proposition, and acceptance, that the press is as important as the subjects it covers. Even though the ideological bias is true and obvious, I think the more toxic problem is the sheer will to power on the part of a corporate news establishment, that beginning with Woodward and Bernstein propounded the idea that it was the fourth branch of government, the “true voice of the people”. “They” were the ones who had to vet Sarah Palin; “they” were the ones who had to tell us whether Presidential or Congressional actions were correct. The assumption of that mantle of power de facto requires an abiding distrust in the real institutions of government. The press profits in reputation (and economically) in direct proportion to the amount distrust it can gin up. Is it any wonder that the most forbidding looking edifice in Washington is the Newseum, a self-serving grandiose monument to itself largely funded by the most ethically challenged media conglomerate in the county: Gannett.
Malone is not the first observer of this election season to make his observations. Stuart Taylor of the National Journal–no conservative–said flat out several weeks ago that it was now impossible to true the main stream media. This is a serious matter indeed: if the basic conduits of information cannot be trusted to tell the truth, then it becomes impossible for the voters to make any kind of informed decision. The culture ceases to work. I think Taylor and Malone are right; it has now become impossible to trust the corporate, mainstream media, especially when you have en entire network, NBC and its cable subsidiaries, quite obviously dedicated to one candidate, to the extent where they, the New York Times, the L.A. Times and dozens of others, simply refuse to ask pertinent questions or report adverse news. Those that do are labeled as racist, a tactic guaranteed to chill legitimate inquiry.
This is not new, though it has become exponentially worse this year. I first realized in 1987 that there was quite often a fundamental disconnect in what the media reported and what I observed. In that year, I attended the Iran Contra hearings in Washington and watched Oliver North make a monkey out of Congress. That night, on TV, I watched Haynes Johnson of the Washington Post describe a witness who was on the defensive, sweating, scrambling to stay afloat–the exact opposite of the truth. My doubts were reinforced a few years later when I read Renata Adler’s Reckless Disregard, a study of the simultaneous libel trials against CBS and Time by Gens. William Westmoreland and Ariel Sharon. CBS had accused Westmoreland of lying about Vietnam casualty figures, and Time had accused Sharon of ordering a massacre of Lebanese civilians. Both sued; both cases were settled and in both cases the media claimed vindication. Adler conclusively demonstrated otherwise; both CBS and Time were guilty of using selective evidence,and suppressing dissenting testimony, Adler demonstrated that both media conglomerates went with stories they knew to be untrue and then used the same corporate legal conglomerate to smother the plaintiffs with discovery motions until neither Westmoreland nor Sharon could afford to continue. CBS, in particular, tried to suppress Adler’s book with that same corporate legal pileon, but the publisher published anyway.
I think we are in for a very rough next few years. Either the mainstream media will engage in a massive power struggle with the Obama administration or—more likely—having invested so much of its honor and integrity in his election, will simply refuse to give it the same kind of scrutiny as it would a McCain administration. Either way, the American public will be the big loser.
October 30th, 2008 at 1:07 am
[...] EmbarrassmentBut I know where a lot of the prevalent assumptions about Vietnam came from. I do remember being a little confused about how the Vietnam War was supposed to be a bad thing, and the American military was supposed to be a bad thing, … [...]
October 30th, 2008 at 1:13 am
[...] EmbarrassmentBut I know where a lot of the prevalent assumptions about Vietnam came from. I do remember being a little confused about how the Vietnam War was supposed to be a bad thing, and the American military was supposed to be a bad thing, … [...]
October 30th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
I heard Calvin Trillin speak at a writing conference and loved it when he said he considers himself a reporter and that “journalist” is a “candy-ass” term. (Another great quote he shared: when he was regularly writing a 3,000 word piece every 3 months for the New Yorker, he said “people who write books asked me, ‘how do you keep up the pace?’ but people who write for newspapers asked me, ’so what else do you do?’”)
My husband listens to NPR for a little while in the morning, so I have become familiar with their bias, but I almost never watch TV news. Yesterday I spent a couple of hours at the laundromat, and got a near-lethal dose of CNN. Even expecting to hear bias, I was absolutely astonished at how blatant it was.
Every single action of the McCain Palin team was presented as an unjustified attack on Obama. First they present the “news item,” which is that “McCain claims X,” then they trot out an “expert” with no particular credentials who gives the Obama talking points, then the anchor thanks the expert for clearing things up. One segment about Obama’s tax policy that used this formula was beefed up by being called “Fact Check.”
Another segment was called “The Politics of Fear,” and the refrain from the anchor–I heard this twice on this one segment–was “Why are they demonizing Obama… and is it working?” They didn’t just set it up so that the Obama spokesperson could say “they’re demonizing us,” this is what the ANCHOR said, in introducing the segment. The excuse for the segment was an “analysis” of a certain ad. They didn’t quote the ad, they just described it as being “by evangelical extremists” and then they mocked it. Apparently the content refers to dire military consequences of an Obama presidency; it was mocked as “oh, yeah, end times!” Those stupid religious people and their wacky beliefs. Once they finished mocking the ad that was their news hook, they continued–in this segment called The Politics of Fear–with “and it’s not just evangelicals, but Catholics, too–they have a problem with Obama’s stand on abortion.” [i don't remember the verbatim on that one, but that was the substance] Apparently on CNN there is no difference between disagreeing with a policy and “demonizing” the candidate.
Even if the ad is offensive, I find it astonishing that a group paid good money to make an ad to present its point of view and CNN then effectively steals that money from the group by using their more powerful voice to cancel out the investment. (Yes, I realize I am naive and have led a sheltered existence.)
Then there was a clip of a hard-hitting ad featuring a woman who says she is the result of a failed abortion, and that she thinks Obama made the wrong decision to vote for the law that would have had her killed. CNN handled this by bringing in some random expert-like person who said, “well, I interviewed Obama and I asked him about that ad. And I have never seen him so angry. He was just boiling because of that.” End of analysis. Apparently if it upsets Barry, it’s clearly a Very Bad Thing. That one reminded me of the point Dr. Sanity has been making for quite some time–that on the left, feelings are often treated as if they are ideas (or principles, or evidence…).
Truly a strange time for the press in this country. Thank goodness for the Internet, and for sites like this one. I take such comfort in the wisdom here.
October 31st, 2008 at 1:11 am
[...] EmbarrassmentI wasn’t working in newspapers in the 1970s, and spent most of that decade in Thailand. But I know where a lot of the prevalent assumptions about Vietnam came from. I do remember being a little confused about how the Vietnam War was … [...]
October 31st, 2008 at 1:16 am
[...] EmbarrassmentBut I know where a lot of the prevalent assumptions about Vietnam came from. I do remember being a little confused about how the Vietnam War was supposed to be a bad thing, and the American military was supposed to be a bad thing, … [...]
November 3rd, 2008 at 2:34 am
[...] EmbarrassmentI wasn’t working in newspapers in the 1970s, and spent most of that decade in Thailand. But I know where a lot of the prevalent assumptions about Vietnam came from. I do remember being a little confused about how the Vietnam War was … [...]
November 4th, 2008 at 1:13 am
[...] EmbarrassmentBut I know where a lot of the prevalent assumptions about Vietnam came from. I do remember being a little confused about how the Vietnam War was supposed to be a bad thing, and the American military was supposed to be a bad thing, … [...]
November 4th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Well, after 21 months of a gruelling campaign that, to me, has been one of the most divisive, unethical and unappealing campaigns I have ever witnessed, it is almost over.
At the end of the day you can make the claims that Mr. McCain was unfairly targetted by a “Liberal media”, however the facts will always remain that he undermined his credibility with his choice of Mrs. Palin as a running mate, then allowed her to drag their campaign to new depths with her charges of Mr. Obama being a “Socialist”, “Terrorist” and “Un-American”. These are not media created utterances, but rather the clear and present voice of Mrs. Palin, with no contradiction by the campaingn, nor Mr. McCain.
Ultimately Mr. McCain will lose this election based upon the poor choices he has made in the last 4 months, starting (but not ending) with Mrs. Palin.
I was originally planning on voting for Mr. McCain until the Palin selection. That alone led me to question Mr. McCains ability to govern effectively and thoughtfully. I saw the pick then (and still do) as a politically motivated ploy to secure votes and one that would threaten to undermine the United States in the event of Mr. McCain not being able to fulfil his elected tenure.
Nothing the Republican party has summoned up since then (least of all the tax evader, “joe the plumber”) could change my opinion on this. Thus I voted today for Mr. Barack Obama to become the next President of the United States.
God Bless America!
November 17th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
I don’t often agree with neo-con Sean Hannity of Fox News, but he’s right that the MSN died in 2008. The fawning coverage of now President-elect Obama was just too much. Sure back in the day we had our favorite candidates, but we worked damned hard to keep our biases out of print. Now, we’re going back to the partisanship of everyone who owned a printing press publishing their own political newspaper. Except now it’s easier, just blog.
Before I write anything more, I want to make it clear Jules Crittenden is a friend of mine and has been for well over a decade. And if you don’t like that, too bloody bad.