Letters to the Editor
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It's a shame
Well, I heard enough criticism about how chinese government controls the media and propaganda machines about their policies. Where are all the outrages about our own governments news control?
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Why no News about Fragging?
I know if I was out in the field watching the way some of our more psychotic troops respond to situations on a shoot first ask questions later basis, my trigger finger would begin to wonder if it was shooting the wrong "bad guys."
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Charlie Rose misunderstood?
After skimming the video of Charlie Rose, I didn't find him out of his normal behavior in his show. Actually, I've seen Charlie behave much more intensely and aggressively in many other shows, including his interview with President Bush. I wonder if either the author rarely watches the Charlie Rose shows, or if he misinterprets his style and is trying to scapegoat him. Charlie often plays Devil's advocate to extract information and opinions from people he is interviewing. I feel his show provides a wide variety of points of view and is an important asset to a media often so lacking in perspectives and analysis.
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Charlie Rose Knows
Glenn I watched this interview and I thank you for posting. I do believe, however, you may have misinterpreted the subtlety of pro-invasion media bias you believe you detected in Rose's interviewing posture. I think that's what you were suggesting though I could be wrong.
After watching Charlie Rose interviews for years I've come to notice that he tends to interrupt controversial guests right around the time they are becoming repetitive. The provocative questions, suggestions,statements he interrupts with serves to help move the guests off stuck and into a fuller expansion of their thoughts. Nothing like a nice cup of hot coffee on your lap to get you focused. It serves to move the conversation along. At least, that's what I've found. Maybe I've been watching Rose too long and am missing the subtleties you mentioned.
In my opinion, Rose's handling of these two guests and the very fact he had them on is what makes him one of the best interviewers on television. Unlike Peter Jennings, I don't believe for a minute that Rose did not know in advance, well before these guests were invited on the show, how they felt about Iraq 5 years later. Rose had to know because unlike those other so-called journalists, he reads, he does his homework and so does his staff. It shows.
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bucky1
As I read him, for Plato religion was what he called a "mythos", a way to frame truth that are inexpressible: to use a zen metaphor, a finger pointing at the moon. What was primary for him was the idea of the good, of quality, a qualitative universe in which quantity was not the defining factor. He seemed convinced you could experience an apprehension of goodness that could only be verbalized through analogy and metaphor. He once wrote that the truth could not be written down, but only developed in a dialogue between two living beings. There is also always an element of playfulness and room for doubt; always he has Socrates say, if these things are true, then these things follow. He has Socrates in the Phaedo say that religous matters cannot be strictly proven, but instead must be approached in a dialectical manner. Religous movements following Plato, from the neoplatonists like Plotinus to christianity, judaism, islam, and all their various subgroups and permutations, all grabbed parts of plato, part of his mythos, for themselves and twisted them to their own ends. Plato stands alone, smiling at them all.
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@Joel Grant
We illegally invaded Iraq, we are now illegally occupying Iraq and we need to figure out how best to get out and make amends to the people of Iraq.
Joel, do you realise what you are asking for? If we do as you say, we will be placing an awful lot of people in some unbearably invidious positions. Some really ticklish spots, given what happened at Nuremberg? (Sp?)
And then amends, Joel? In order to make amends, we would have to first, find out what happened (You are certainly not in favor of blanket entitlements, are you? It smacks of socialism)
That could also leave a lot of good, hardworking, honorable people in some rather uncomfortable situations, where they wouldn't show to good advantage.
Combined with some actual economic and social malaise which may occur spontaneously in the US, but could be blamed on the War by leftist media types, we could be exposing some very serious people to a notoriety so vehement, they might become agoraphobic. Or claustrophobic, if they can't overlook the bars.
Is that what you want, Joel? I sure as hell do, but that's just me.
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tempus
I really admire you saying what you did, having the courage to say that. I don't know what else to say but that I respect your honesty.
A buddha bow to you.
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All Rose, No Thorns
First, by way of venting and expressing regrets, I'm in an aggravating rut: I can access Salon, but not letters/comments, at work. It's a temptation I am definitely better off without, but invariably when I get home, I'm too beat to read through the comments, etc.
With that caveat, or whatever the hell it is, I'd just like to observe that I've always found Charlie Rose too smarmy and supercilious for comfort; as Glenn notes, this is a subjective perception, and your mileage may vary. (Offer void in Tennessee.)
And I think he reflects a teevee News Personality that is nearly universal in the class of infotainwhores, as I've dubbed them. It's a quasi-bully persona, or at least a "one-up" persona. Despite the modern custom in teevee talking heads shows of eschewing hierarchy in favor of horizontal panels or groups or round tables, it's as if the host is hovering a couple of feet above the guest. Or else is prone, squirming, and panting at the guest's feet.
Because the polarity of this stance flips. If a guest is Famous, and generally considered to be an Esteemed Person of Power and Importance, Rose and his ilk are typically deferential, meek, and focused on showing off for the benefit of both guest and audience. Sucking up to power, as usual, as someone correctly noted above. (Closet Queen Tweety Matthews adds his own peculiar psychosexual twist to this Uriah Heepish obsequiousness, and indeed each infotainwhore has an idiosyncratic style.)
Contrariwise, if the guest is more pedestrian, or a figure of controversy or perceived weakness or inferiority, the infotainwhore rediscovers the Inquisitorial Mode of interviewing. The "Sixty Minutes" correspondents have followed this formula from day one-- one minute Steve Krofft is hammering some mortgage company CEO, the next minute Morley Safer is rimming Judge Judy for a quarter of an hour I'll never get back.
To me, the pervasive practice of treating the powerful with 'umble respect bordering on adulation (and crossing that border, as often as not), along with getting tough and aggressive to lower-status guests is pretty much the classic polarized schoolyard bully archetype. ("Archetype" is different than "stereotype"-- it's classier, for one thing.) Kiss up, kick down.
Obviously, I share the title proposition. And it becomes clearer and clearer that the corporate media factories, besides manufacturing consent, also continuously pimp and hype nonsense as if it were significant and compelling, like pranksters scattering ball bearings on a dance floor. The oligarchs and kleptocrats in power promote a Future Shock environment, in which so much sparkly crap is continuously injected and percolated throughout our pubic discourse that everyone's permanently off-balance.
Sorry if all this was covered when I was out of the room.