T.P.
Bush admin issues accomplishment talking points to White House staff. Scribbler for the troubled LA Times fires back with … Dem talking points:
In case any Bush administration officials have trouble summing up the boss’ record, the White House is providing a few helpful suggestions.
A two-page memo that has been sent to Cabinet members and other high-ranking officials offers a guide for discussing Bush’s eight-year tenure during their public speeches.
Titled “Speech Topper on the Bush Record,” the talking points state that Bush “kept the American people safe” after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, lifted the economy after 2001 through tax cuts, curbed AIDS in Africa and maintained “the honor and the dignity of his office.”
The document presents the Bush record as an unalloyed success.
It mentions none of the episodes that detractors say have marred his presidency: the collapse of the housing market and major financial services companies, the flawed intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war, the federal response to Hurricane Katrina or the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
OK, fair enough, the housing market and financial services collapse happened on his watch. He failed, over the past eight years, to anticipate it and prevent it. Much like a lot of other people, some of whom did have a hand in creating it. Does the LA Times Washington Bureau actually think President Bush caused it? Ditto that hurricane, an act of God that wreaked havoc on a levee system neglected by numerous administrations, with a response complicated by the fact it took place in a corrupt third-world country, I mean Lousiana. Meanwhile, as I recall investigations were underway on rogue National Guardsmen who harrassed prisoners at Abu Ghraib before the gotcha took place, followed shortly after by prosecutions. President Bush does not appear in any of the incriminating photos, except compliments of Photoshop.
As for the flawed intelligence, that’s a gotcha on the Clinton administration, the United Nations, the CIA, the rest of the world’s major intelligence agencies, and Saddam Hussein’s general staff. I don’t believe George Bush or any of his political appointees actually produced any of that intelligence or, contrary to reports, manipulated it.
If I were writing those talking points, I’d add a few things. Like how George Bush, faced with an unprecedented threat to national security and dangerous instability in the world’s most vital oil-producing region, made the world a better, more stable place.
The memo closes with a reference to Bush’s 1999 memoir, “A Charge to Keep”:
“Above all, George W. Bush promised to uphold the honor and the dignity of his office. And through all the challenges and trials of his time in office, that is a charge that our president has kept.”
No snark on that. Apparently no foothold for the LA Times scribbler there. Speaking of unanticipated financial woes, is terrible to see more newspapers on the rocks. I’m a little surprised the scribbler has time for this kind of nonsense, but then again, maybe the scribbler doesn’t have time for anything but nonsense. But it raises an important question. Is the LA Times really in any position to snark about disasters?
These are complex situations. Changing technology and readership habits. Financial miscalculations. There’s a lot of pain and readjustment. (Been there, done that. May have to yet again. Still standing for now. Knock on wood.)
Ultimately, though, another property that was grossly overvalued, now facing foreclosure. Yeah, I know, it’s all the evil Zell’s fault. Easiest thing to do is always to blame the boss. Have at it. Here’s a guy, the Washington Post’s Harold Meyerson, who shares LA Times scribblers’ disdain for the boss:
During his first year in journalism, Zell has visited the city rooms and Washington bureaus of a number of Trib publications to deliver obscenity-laced warnings and threats to employees that whatever it was they were doing, it wasn’t working. There was too much coverage of world and national affairs, he told Times writers and editors; readers don’t want that stuff. Last week, the company decreed that its 12 papers would have to cut by 500 the number of pages they devoted every week to news, features and editorials, until the ratio of pages devoted to copy and pages devoted to advertising was a nice, even 1 to 1. At the Times, that would mean eliminating 82 pages a week.
What? Make money and figure out how to appeal to readers? Blasphemy! High priests of journalism exist on another plain!
As the company prepares to shed more reporters, it has measured writers’ performances by the number of column inches of stories they ground out. It found, said one Zell executive, that the level of pages per reporter at one of Zell’s smaller papers, the Hartford Courant (about 300), greatly exceeded that at the Times (about 50). As one of the handful of major national papers, however, the Times employs the kind of investigative and expert beat reporters not found at most smaller papers.
I dunno. If the above snark is what Meyerson means by “expert beat reporters,” then the misdeeds of Zell aside, LA Times scribblers may want to think going forward about how they can better serve their readers. Maybe with something more insightful than regurgitated Democratic/MoveOn talking points.
In other LA TImes-related meanspiritedness, a longtime hometown observer of the LA “Dog Trainer” weighs in. Patterico:
Chapter 11: Market’s up, Tribune stock’s down, kudos for not asking for a bailout. Commenter snarks: LAT could have made buku bucks with that Obama tape.
Cuts to buyouts? “That really sucks, and I’m quite serious. Some of my favorite L.A. Times staffers are former L.A. Times staffers.”
Pulitzer’s nod to shifting technology: “Woo-hoo, Patterico is in! … Ouch, L.A. Times is out!”
Here’s a ChiTrib columnist who’s proud his industry isn’t begging for bailouts … even if it costs him his job. via RCP.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:01 am Comments (1) on Tuesday, December 9, 2008
One Response to “T.P.”
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December 9th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Bush is one of the few politicians who made a serious push for the reform of FNMA and FHMLC. Who blocked it? Democrats, of course. Yet here we have a reporter at a major daily, whose job would presumably include knowing that sort of thing, lying outright about Bush’s record. Why? Because he didn’t like that the administration had the *gall* to send out a press release that focused on their achievements rather than Democratic talking points. How dare they!