Of a slow news week-end (check the pic).
Jacked Up
Jack Shafer is shrill:
The larger point that the boneheads who so despise the media need to appreciate is that the mainstream American press is better than it’s ever been. If you don’t believe me, visit your local library and roll through a couple of miles of microfilm of the papers you’re currently familiarly with. By any comparison, today’s press is more accurate, ethical, reliable, independent, transparent, and trustworthy than ever. Skepticism is a healthy disposition in life. I wouldn’t be a press critic if I regarded the press as hunky-dory. But mindless skepticism is mainly an excuse for ignorance. Even the people who denounce the New York Times as the bible of liberals ultimately get most of their useful news from it.
Your average reader is not to be trusted because he just doesn’t know his own mind. In addition to the Jayson Blair finding, the Annenberg survey offers this gem. When asked how important it is to them to live in a country in which they can criticize the government, a resounding 81 percent of respondents say “very important” and 14 percent say “somewhat important.” The verdict is almost unanimous.
Now, one would assume that what’s good for the individual—rip into your government the best you can—would also be good for journalists, who are paid to watch-dog politicians. But the average reader can’t keep a consistent thought in his head for two minutes. When the same Annenberg survey asked if government should have the right to limit the press in reporting a story, an appalling 68 percent said either “always,” “sometimes,” or “rarely.” Only 29 percent said “never.” Let’s hope the First Amendment never comes up for a vote.
I’ve had it with all you unreliable, inconsistent, and detestable blockheads. I’ve given you every possible chance and you’ve failed me miserably. Tonight I’m ordering a custom bumper-sticker that reads, “I Don’t Trust the Mainstream Media Audience.”
Due in large part to the tone of this piece, my personal opinion of Jack Shafer just went up a few notches.
Cut and Run
To all Democratic Representatives and Senators who voted for the Iraq War resolution:
Just admit you fucked up.
I don’t care how you do it. I don’t care why you do it. I don’t care if you believe it or not.
Just admit it and move on so we as a party can start beating the crap out of the Republicans with this issue.
Once this is done, the Democrats can then get back to the business of siding with the American people, the majority of whom see the war negatively, not worth the cost, and not making us safer.
Discuss.
Push Polls and Judge Roberts
Details here. Again- this is one person’s mother, so let’s not get too worked up…
McCaffrey’s Report
Barry McAffrey provided the Senate Foreign Relations committee with a detailed report of the situation in Iraq. A must read.
Daily Plame Flame Thread
Almost forgot:
Whatever a federal grand jury investigating the case decides, a small political subgroup is experiencing the odd sensation that this leak has sprung before. In 1992 in an incident well known in Texas, Mr. Rove was fired from the state campaign to re-elect the first President Bush on suspicions that Mr. Rove had leaked damaging information to Mr. Novak about Robert Mosbacher Jr., the campaign manager and the son of a former commerce secretary.
Since then, Mr. Rove and Mr. Novak have denied that Mr. Rove was the source, even as Mr. Mosbacher, who no longer talks on the record about the incident, has never changed his original assertion that Mr. Rove was the culprit.
“It’s history,” Mr. Mosbacher said last week in a brief telephone interview. “I commented on it at the time, and I have nothing to add.”
But the episode, part of the bad-boy lore of Mr. Rove, is a telling chapter in the 20-year friendship between the presidential adviser and the columnist. The story of that relationship, a bond of mutual self-interest of a kind that is long familiar in Washington, does not answer the question of who might have leaked the identity of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, to reporters, potentially a crime.
But it does give a clue to Mr. Rove’s frequent and complimentary mentions over the years in Mr. Novak’s column, and to the importance of Mr. Rove and Mr. Novak to each other’s ambitions.
“They’ve known each for a long time, but they are not close friends,” said a person who knows both men and who asked not to be named because of the investigation into a conversation by Mr. Novak and Mr. Rove in July 2003 about Ms. Wilson, part of a case that has put a reporter for The New York Times, Judith Miller, in jail for refusing to testify to the grand jury.
Consider this the day’s flame warfare thread.
Jon Stewart Is Bad For America
Or so thinks HuffPo’s Catherine Ingram:
Unlike much of America I am dismayed by the success of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” Aside from finding the show’s humor banal, I am genuinely concerned with its message based on a comment by a 17-year-old relative who told me that all politicians are alike and there was no difference between Bush and Kerry. He, like many young people, gets his news almost exclusively from Jon Stewart. And, though I suspect that Stewart himself is a Democrat, he did such a great job of evenly skewering Kerry and Bush that a young person would not make any distinction between say, lying to take a country to war and having a dorky way of speaking. As a contrast, Bill Maher uses humor with intelligence, makes it hilarious, and lets you know exactly where he stands. With so much at stake, it is a shame that people of influence such as Jon Stewart (not to mention our politicians) don’t use their national platforms to go on record with what is in their hearts, even if it costs their jobs (as it did Maher his show on ABC). If enough of them spoke out, maybe it would start a trend: standing for what one believes instead of whoring for more cash, ratings, and power.
Jon Stewart’s comedy show on Comedy Central isn’t overtly partisan enough. You can’t parody some of these libs.