Letters to the Editor
Reilly
Published Letters: 178
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As compelling as Van Riper's story of the war games is
[Read the article: Joe Galloway blasts Pentagon and Larry Di Rita on "military analyst" claims]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]it almost faded into the background for me as I read the e-mail exchanges between Galloway and Di Rita.
Could there be a more clear cut and extreme disparity between the characters of these two people?
Galloway, speaking straightforwardly with passion and knowledge from his own person, his own experience, and Di Rita wheedling and cajoling and pimping for his boss.
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Well said Timberman
[Read the article: Joe Galloway blasts Pentagon and Larry Di Rita on "military analyst" claims]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]And yes necessity is the mother of invention, but before necessity comes intention; before you bring down the WTC you have to intend to do it and then innovate the means.
So in a country of hammers and samovars and all the time alotted, is it an inability to innovate the means or a lack of the driving force of a clear intent?
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-- ShawnWM@ "Better look twice in his closet and I mean his political background and ask some tough questions."
[Read the article: Major new ad campaign -- aimed at Blue Dog Rep. Chris Carney -- begins]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thanks for opening my eyes. I wish I could say that we've simply been played as useful idiots but it's beyond that.
We've been duped into gathering at Salon in one of the greatest counterintelligence ploys since the Cheka set up The Trust - their phony anti-Bolshevik front group intended to bring together and monitor and identify and eventually bring down the true counterrevolutionaries.
That's exactly what's going on here. I'm sure Walsh and Kamiya and all the rest are involved in this elaborate deception, but only one person is capable of masterminding this and it isn't Karl Rove - we're being manipulated by Glenn Greenwald, the Felix Dzerzhinsky of our time.
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-- L.W.M.
[Read the article: Major new ad campaign -- aimed at Blue Dog Rep. Chris Carney -- begins]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It was. Thanks. What else can you do with that kind of absurd insinuation?
I agree with your comment to WT about GC and the "flame wars".
Flame wars. Insight. Humor. G.C.'s poetry. Snark. We've got it all here. Personally I love about 99% of it. Makes it hard to leave sometimes and attend to the chores and other reading material. The classroom may get a bit unruly at times but where else can you find this many extraordinarily bright classmates?
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-- pointus
[Read the article: Major new ad campaign -- aimed at Blue Dog Rep. Chris Carney -- begins]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Try to look on the bright side. Maybe they'll tattoo us with our screen names so we can put faces to all our fellow commenters.
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"...trivial chatter requires no analysis, thought, or critical faculties."
[Read the article: The Politico's John Harris admits now what he denied last year]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It also produces no push-back or retaliation from the power elite, as would the coverage of the important stories.
It isn't simply a matter of the gossipy stories "dominating" or "crowding out" the substantive stories as if through a force of their own, although most of the time "journalists" refer to the process as if it were some phenomenon over which they have no control.
Of course generating traffic and the ease of reporting sleaze are two important factors, but I think the hidden motivation of the media in focusing on the trivial is avoidance. Avoidance by the media of having to answer to the power elite who would suffer the repercussions of actual reporting. As Glenn says; "Those who know best how to feed journalists their easy, gossipy items are those who best manipulate their "reporting"."
And those are the same people who don't want to see any rocks overturned through true investigative reporting, while the "journalists", in general, don't want to be the ones to risk the fallout of overturning them. It's an agreement. It isn't a spoken one, it's a very subtle one. It's an agreement based on power and cowardice and ease of relationships by people who inhabit the same little political universe.
Harris is right that "modern political journalism...has shredded the ideal of proportionality". But it's one thing to indentify the problem and another to understand what really drives it.
I know that if journalism were my "profession" and I made this statement;
"Important stories, sometimes the product of months of serious reporting, that in an earlier era would have captured the attention of the entire political-media community and even redirected the course of a presidential campaign, these days can disappear with barely a whisper."
I would feel that things had reached the crises point, and I just didn't get that feeling from Harris.
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"...avoid alienating those in political power on whom they depend."
[Read the article: The Politico's John Harris admits now what he denied last year]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Hey Glenn,
I wasn't trying to riff on your update. I posted my comment before I read that. I just bumped into you.
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"...are there any reporters left who deny that the campaign-covering media in 2000 was gushingly enamored of George Bush and oozing with contempt for Al Gore?"
[Read the article: Scott McClellan on the "liberal media"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Well here are two, from the Vanity Fair piece Going After Gore by Evgenia Peretz. http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/10/gore200710?currentPage=7
Katharine Seelye, who still writes about national politics for The New York Times, has had time to reflect on her work: "I'm sure there were times my phrasing could have been better—you're doing this on the fly. Sometimes you're just looking for a different way to describe something that you have to write about over and over again," she says. "But I think overall my coverage was tough-minded. A presidential campaign is for the most important, hardest job in the world. Shouldn't the coverage be tough?" Connolly, still a staff writer at the Post but on a leave of absence, maintains that "the Washington Post political team, myself and a dozen other journalists, approached the Gore campaign no differently than any other—with aggressive, thorough, objective reporting."
And then there's Matthews, who can't be considered a reporter even with that word framed in quotes and marinated in sarcasm, but who has specifically referenced Gore several times over the past year as having been solely to blame for his own "failures" as a candidate, and specifically referencing, and dismissing, the Peretz piece.
He has also on several occassions framed the question "Why do the democrats always run such weird candidates?" as if it were as unassailable a fact as saying "tall candidates", invariably citing Gore as well as the usual Dukakis, Kerry, etc. He actually asked this once directly to Eric Alterman, who I admire, but who disappointed me by not challenging the the question.
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-- Pedinska
[Read the article: Network news anchors praise the job they did in the run-up to the war]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I did hear Olbermann say last night that he has Scotty booked for Monday. He probably won't be disappeared (a la deLulio) by then, but he may be backpedalling furiously, as he's in for heaping helpings of right-wing hate and media sanctimony.
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Correction
[Read the article: Network news anchors praise the job they did in the run-up to the war]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Earlier I wrote that Scott McClellan would be appearing on Olbermann's show on Monday, but he will be on tomorrow's show.