Letters to the Editor
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Bagdad Broder?
"They are all "Baghdad Bob" now."
-- Wabanatta_3
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Washington Post
A Nexis search of the Washington Post shows that the Post still has not reported Hunt Oil Co.'s oil contract in Iraq. The New York Times has reported, but I guess to the Post that's not news.
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Perhaps Mr. Broder is overdue.....
for another one of his famous trips to the heartland.
He'll be quite surprised at the number of lifelong Republicans who nevertheless regard Bush to be the worst thing that's happened to America in their lifetime.
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Links to the Richard Cohen Columns
I should have provided links to the two Richard Cohen columns from 2004 that directly addressed the Swift Boat slander. Here they are:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47890-2004Aug30.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60596-2004Sep3.html
The first column is from Aug. 31, 2004. The second is from Sept. 4, 2004. In both columns, Cohen criticizes the Swift Boat slander. In both columns, he acknowledges - BUT DOES NOT CRITICIZE - Bush's failure to denounce the Swift Boat ads.
This is yet another remarkable illustration of how the rightwing attack machine can count on not only Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coulter to amplify their message, but on avowed non-partisans like Cohen and Broder.
Cohen's hypocrisy is manifest. The Swift Boat slander was the most despicable (and arguably the most successful) campaign of political slander in recent American history. It was funded by longtime supporters of Bush. It had close ties with associates of Rove. And yet Cohen could not bring himself to demand that Bush repudiate these scurrilous ads. And yet he devotes a full column this morning to accusing Sen. Clinton of "hackdom."
In the battle of the Noise Machines and Echo Chambers, we are getting outflanked and massacred. People like Cohen and Broder can take marching orders from the rightwing slime machine and still purport to be serious, non-partisan and even vaguely left. From this stance they can effectively dictate the parameters of acceptable discourse, and marginalize MoveOn.Org while tacitly admitting the Swift Boaters into the national discourse.
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The Opposition
Diana Powe asked, where is the opposition?
Well, you're reading it (not me, this blog, and other commenters). And I think the reasons why it is not more widespread, which I think is the real thrust of your question, are many.
Mostly, I think that it's just easier and faster for the Broders and Kleins to regurgitate the spoonfed pap they are served. They get to go to the parties, feel like they have the inside scoop on the goings on...etc, etc. Being adversarial would work against this dynamic; I believe they would see that as severely restricting their ability to deliver the real scoop.
Second though, I think that the truth not only takes time to assemble, but it takes time for readers/watchers to integrate all the facts. That appears not to play in Peoria, these days. So the dynamic becomes one of, "Look, here's this guy's history of statements about how things are going...(reference Glenn's long list), maybe we should really be skeptical of what he has to say." OR "This guy is a hero. He says things are good. QED, you whining America-haters."
And full understanding of the whole dynamic just requires too much of some people. In some cases, it is not belief-affirming, and so you get outright rejection. In other cases, it requires that people be able to try to reconcile two antagonistic positions, and people try to shift the argument to avoid that cognitive dissonance. Otherwise, how can you even begin to explain the trolls around here? Nothing breaks in. Reasoned argument and facts never shift their positions even a nanometer. I am left with the conclusion that these people simply are not capable of acting or thinking otherwise. And as Glenn titles his piece, they are limitlessly wrong, simply because they can be no other way. Their ways of thinking and believing are tide-locked.
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Democracy? What democracy?
In a genuine democracy, authority is questioned all the time, and no one questions and challenges governmental authority more than the press. In the US, the corporate media jumps at every opportunity to conform and is a willing and eager disseminator of government propaganda.
We should be very envious of the Israeli press. Although it's subjected to military censorship, it's a very thorough and aggressive in investigating the government and the military. The latest state commission of inquiry into the aftermath of the disastrous 2006 war in lebanon based a great deal of its investigation on findings by the Israeli media. The Israeli media had a prominent role in dismantling the government's attempts to stonewall and conceal information. As a result, the government nearly collapsed. The defense minister was forced to resign, along and the army chief of staff and a number of generals. An Israeli friend has told me that without the press, the government would have probably gotten away with it. We can only dream of a press like that.
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Enough to make ya gag
God, Glenn. You know, I have a hair trigger gag reflex as it is. I can only read these columns of yours on an empty stomach. Kudos for all you do, but reading them is a discomfiting experience. Crazy making. This betrayal by the press is absolutely crazy making.
Reportedly, Petraeus' name translates from the Roman (as I read it) to Protector. Protect whom, becomes the obvious next question. Sure isn't our troops or the Iraqi peoples.
Jane Hamsher at FiredogLake has the pitch perfect way to handle these questions about the MoveOn ad. It's from a post she put up about Elizabeth Edwards negative response to the ad. Note to Elizabeth Edwards: Lay Off MoveOn http://tinyurl.com/yt86nr
The war is a desperate mess. When offered the opportunity to cudgel your own side, you pivot and attack. How about, “glad you mentioned that…I think an ad is about as relevant to George Bush’s growing collection of toe tags as a haircut is to the problems facing this country.” Or, “thanks for the opportunity to discuss this, Chris. I personally would not choose the word “betrayal” to characterize General Petraeus’s lack of judgment or skewing of the facts to perpetuate the war, but I do think we should be looking at the fact that this was the bloodiest summer ever in Iraq and asking ourselves if the assessment we’re being given about the situation is realistic…”
The ad, and it's advisability, continues to claim column inches/pixels at FiredogLake and OpenLeft. MoveOn is like the dog that caught the car it was chasing. The important thing now, IMHO is for MoveOn to continue to pound that message every chance it gets. And, indeed it looks like Giuliani was the next target. MoveOn (and the progressive insiders, no matter how squeamish they are) need to keep control and ownership of that meme. This framing resonates in the same way the right's attacks on Gore and Kerry resonated. It's too late to put the genie back in the bottle. If the Democratic candidates can't figure out how to use this meme (catch, pivot, parry) they darned near deserve to lose. Don't any of them know how to play this game?