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Walter Shapiro is a classic windbag, so full of himself he seems unable to resist making proclamations such as the following: “We are ashamed to live in a country that somehow came to accept that torture and prisoner abuse were simply business as usual.” I yield my liberal credentials to no one, but this is precisely the sort of arrogant and overblown nonsense that robs liberals of their credibility. Once again we have a liberal assuming that only he and his ever so sensitive friends are outraged by the crimes at Abu Ghraib, without offering any evidence that the country as a whole accepts such crimes as “business as usual.” Come on, Walter, it’s a big country with lots of decent people in it who were and are outraged by such crimes, including even some members of Congress. And I don’t think Walter needs to feel ashamed of a country where crimes such as these can be exposed and condemned.
Salon, moreover, desperately needs to regain its balance. Not a cartoon in sight, cowering before the Islamofascists, and now these photos, preaching to the liberal choir, hardly an act of courage. You’re all over the crimes of the Bushies and the US military, as you should be, but day after day innocents are murdered by Islamic thugs and we hear not a peep, view nary an image. Get a clue, Salon: crimes are being commited every day by both sides, and both sides need to be condemned with equal fervor. A rigorous intellectual honesty is absolutely necessary to establishing and maintaining the respect and authority that I would hope Salon would seek for itself. Otherwise this publication risks becoming a Fox News-type outlet for liberals and sinking into the insignificance and mockery that Fox News has so richly earned for itself. I’m reminded of the saying that “the fish rots from the head.” Someone at Salon needs to get a grip on the editorial rudder.
