Letters to the Editor
Jebbie
Published Letters: 1119
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-- bebop-o
[Read the article: The NYT's Michael Cooper demonstrates what real reporting is]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Then we can also be too slow? If too cautious and afraid, scared, and backwardly timid...it's becomes too late. The Damage is done. One can't recall those dead soldiers back from the dead to speak. Someone needs to feel obligated, obliged, devoted, persistent, and willing to help give the deceased a relevant Voice.
I believe that part of the problem is that we (progressives) are, yes, both too slow and too timid by nature. Timidity tends to force slowness of response. On the other hand, it's hard to preach peace while at the same time pounding a fist on the table demanding something. How does one enforce such a demand peacefully when the other side doesn't recognize honest discussion?
They need some more people to speak in their behalf. Did they die for a lie?
People are dead. It doesn't really matter to them whether they died for a lie or for truth. They're dead, last seen as a bloody, sticky pile of goo on the floor of the jungle we call the world. Bones exposed, guts in the bushes, teeth missing, eyeballs staring without seeing. The faint echo of "Mother!" ringing in the silence.
I don't believe that there is any value dying for country when that country obviously doesn't represent your values. I don't believe sticking a plastic ribbon on the bumper of your car is enough of a statement to change anything, especially to bring back the dead.
O, die in vain? Then honor them!
The best way to honor our dead is to do everything within our power to make this country worth dying for. At present, it isn't and those who have died for it, have ALL died in vain - ALL of our brave soldiers in ALL of our wars have certainly died in vain unless our country deserves their sacrifice in perpetuity and continually. When our moral base, our reason for being, is taken by thugs, as it currently has been taken, the sacrifices of our dead or rendered worthless. ALL of our dead.
A "journalist" can be afraid of the 'powers' that be, He/she may need to put food on the family dinner table, pay for the Mercedes, and not get a bank loan officer to be doing paper-work to scheme a foreclosed home? Or, Laundromat? huh.
The second vacation home S/he needs to entertain and associates say, "wow. what fine linen and pretty tea cup with matching saucers, you neoconservatives have, my dear." Sweet. Cool.
Guest want expensive pot-roast? GOPs like good expensive drinks, and after dinner cordials. Succotash. Ham hocks.
Precisely. Journalism (and Journalists) was (were) given special treatment and a special place at our constitutional table by the Founders. Journalists have allowed themselves, and their profession to be cheapened by greed. Their own greed and the greed of those who subvert them whether they subvert in the cause of Conservativism or Liberalism or any other "ism". When Journalists allow themselves to be bought and paid for like a cheap Bourbon Street whores, they deserve to be treated like a cheap Bourbon Street whores and denied a place at the table for the Last Supper of the First Amendment. They've forfeited their right to the protections afforded real journalists by our constitution and they should revert back to only having those protections of the common citizen. You, me, Joe Schmoe.
It reminds me of the pro-war 'deed' who was a fake. The GOP was so afraid to write anti-war sentiment. CEO's Stocks may sink. Well, too bad. One day a neocon-neoconservative ( I despise the craved labels brands ) who lived in perpetual fear was up at sunrise on the way to bow to the King. That was during the horse and buggy stage coach days. The phony-baloney scribe-stenographer looked left, right, east, west, north, south...
Then Finally, as 'he' got the courage up, mustered confidence, and self-assured himself a stray oat-full, wild-horse, and buggy would not run him/her over, the neocon "journalist" strutted like a pretty peacock across the city streets.
We have too many Peacocks and not enough Journalists, bebop-o. I am of the opinion that this is as much a fault of the left as the right, perhaps more so. We adored those who brought us Deep Throat, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, to the point of elevating them to the status usually reserved for Stars and insodoing, we generated a whole generation of so-called journalists whose only goal was not the truth, but to be recognized with Pulitzers and the trappings of wealth and stardom. WE did that and we are now paying the price for emphasizing the role of "investigative reporter" at the loss of real journalism. ALL reporters, IMO, should be "investigative" in nature (if not title) for to not investigate a story is to reduce one's self to the level of a stenographer - as is emphasized here on an almost daily basis. Thus, we've cheapened journalism by raising a basic requirement of a journalist to Star status.
Oh, ah, however, a eagle flying overhead had a hard shell turtle that slipped from the talon's clutches.
Plunk!
There went the breakfast.
The hard shell tortoise flopped Right Smack on Top of the politico's neocon's head. Guess what?
Dead!
Footsie.
Tootsie.
Whatever you meant there, I'll agree to it.