Has NBC or Brian Williams responded yet to your request for an interview relative to General NBC Pentagon WH Propaganda-Gate?

They haven't. Hard to believe, I know. They also still haven't reported this story in any way. Equally hard to believe.

-- GlennGreenwald

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Though normally reluctant to intrude with a personal note, I cannot forbear but to wonder aloud, as it were, whether Glenn's bubbeh never warned him that a tongue held often and firmly enough in the cheek will grow into it permanently.

Just sayin'.

Not that my previous screed needed padding, but it feels incomplete without a specific reference to the grotesque metastasis of private/corporate military forces, the burgeoning mercenary trade expanding rapidly to assuage the insatiable appetite of war and occupation.

It's another vast dance floor upon which to practice the slip-slidin' steps in the government and military partnership with for-profit service delivery systems; it's not your daddy's hardware store any more! The confluence of financial and economic forces aside, here's another area where the operational checks and balances are minimal and ambiguous.

This conspicuous absence of bright lines and boundaries sanctions gratuitous mayhem, and is devoid of accountability and consequences for personnel who commit crimes, either on or off-duty. I suppose I ought to drill Google for examples, but I doubt that there's anyone (except for the trolls) who hasn't seen stories from the allegations of rape to drunken homicide that slip through cracks in law and due process.

The criminal misfeasors atop the chain of command act out of a delusional and reprehensible realpolitik which transmits their pathological approval for the unrestrained exercise of force and violence to accomplish our leaders' virtuous and exceptionalist ends.

Our plutocracy, down to reptiles like John Yoo, make exactly the error confronted by Thomas More and his son-in-law William Roper in "A Man for All Seasons" [see sig for link].

In short, the ruling cabal has purported to cut down all laws in its righteous and relentless pursuit of The Devil, presumptively riding on an Axis of Evil as a witch rides on a broom. They are either utterly oblivious, or cynically and nihilistically indifferent to the ultimate consequence of this rabid folly.

We're noticing the painfully infected symptoms of a gravely compromised rule of law.

Did you know that the last man involved in the plot to kill Hitler died today?

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I think that the most important part of the story is that to the moment of his last breath, that man was refining and perfecting that plot.

He is also a professor of journalism ethics

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If I'm not mistaken, the Seinfeld Professor of Journalism Ethics Chair was formerly the Fresnel Luminiferous Aether Chair in the Physics Department.

cross-posted from Common Dreams:

Indeed. I distinctly recall the corporate media proto-infotainwhores of that era (c. 1988) solemly declaiming “It goes to character!” to rationalize their pursuit of any sensational, superficial, and irrelevant personal issue they saw fit to cover.

That phrase was like a master key to Pandora’s Box, and the corporate media did not hesitate to fling it open– and wrench off the lid for good measure. Anything that could be said to “go to character” was fair game– and what doesn’t “go to character”, if one chooses to frame an issue in such terms?

Moreover, regardless of the usual pious window-dressing of Journalistic Ethics and Standards– a subset of the now-hoary Rhetoric of Excellence that makes such a splendid and convenient whited sepulchre in which to conceal inner rot and corruption– there was no practical need to explore and probe alleged “character” issues in a rigorous, systematic, and even-handed manner.

That is, it isn’t as if the corporate media’s alleged objective and altruistic revelations of candidate “character” arose from some profound, post-Nixonian media reform which demanded that all public figures, especially candidates for high office, be newly scrutinized so that We the People could be presented with a clear and comprehensive view of the candidates. Rather, this ostensibly high-minded and noble mission to delve into character issues was– is– a pretext to jazz up the horse-race of Amerikan politics, comparable to shrewdly tossing handfuls of ball-bearings onto a race course to make the spectacle more dramatic and exciting.

What’s more newsworthy than a candidate stumbling, perhaps fatally, during the home stretch? Or perhaps smashing into each other, ratcheting up the play-by-play with frantic analysis of the collisions, and the strategy of the jockeys in coping with this ever-complicated obstacle course!

The “character” canard fatally eviscerates the intelligent political discourse necessary and sufficient to operate our republican democracy as created by the Founders. But it’s a small price to pay for putting asses in the seats.

PS: FWIW, I don't mean to suggest that the media's use of time-honored Fourth Estate techniques for stirring up the shit, and keeping it stirred, is employed randomly and impartially. There are agendas within agendas at play, and those metaphorical ball-bearings on the race track are used selectively-- and aimed.

This is not inconsistent with Manufacturing Consent.