What a crazy interview. She's so... hollow. Sometimes it sounds like BG is talking to a talking points zombie. And I really don't imagine her being that different from a lot of the media professionals in much of the mainstream media.

BOB GARFIELD: The U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights says that waterboarding is torture. The International Committee of the Red Cross have called what the U.S. did “torture.” Waterboarding is unambiguously in violation of the International Convention on Torture, which has been ratified by 140-some countries.

It seems to me that the only people who think it’s a debate are the Bush Administration, who are the culprits. So how does that constituent a debate?

ALICIA SHEPARD: Well, there are two sides to the issue. And I'm not sure, why is it so important to call something torture? You know, when you describe the technique, I think that sounds like torture to me. Isn't it the job of the news media to put the facts out there, to give as much detailed information and to put it in context?

...as ombudsman, since part of the job by definition is to be available for follow-up opportunities to explain to the public she supposedly serves. see below.

but she isn't serving the public, is she? she's not independent, either. she's a flack for a cowed and cowering "news" organization that has traded away its self-regard for the security of a weasel. npr, by allowing its very use of words and their meaning to be corrupted by outside forces, means it's no better than any propaganda machine financed by the government on which it reports.

fired? far from it. she'll be seeing a little something extra in her paycheck: a bonus for having to take the heat from the big bad blogosphere.

From wikipedia: •An ombudsman (English plural: conventionally ombudsmen) is a person who acts as a trusted intermediary between an organization and some external constituency while representing the broad scope of constituent interests.

Yeah, and I use the phrase "Zip,nada, zilch", instead of saying "Not one f***ing red cent."

Glenn, you're going to get my NPR money this year.

Will some generous soul give this woman a ticket to the Scandanavian countries in order to educate her about the duties of an Ombudsman. She doesn't have a clue, even after 30 years of "journalism".

When it works for NPR, apparently. I read the comments posted to her column and they were overwhelmingly negative, not to say scandalized and horrified. I suspect this is because rightwingers do not make a habit of listening to NPR, so the response is an accurate representation of the reaction of the true audience.

Unlike the troll-infested comments on Salon.

Expect a torrent of spin, expect the trolls to begin posting as soon as they discover the issue, pretending to have been loyal listeners all along. The letters defending her will begin arriving perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow or the day after. But there will be a sharp and easily distinguishable change in the character of the comments: The near-universal outrage and scorn will give way to a mix, and the proportion of lie, invective, ad hominem, and threat will rise drastically.

The thing is, the sharp and sudden character of the change will be a dead giveaway.

Maybe no one walks into a hit piece knowingly.

Especially when almost everyone would agree that this has nothing to do with her job as ombudsman. NPR management should send a real representative to make its case.

Bravo! I love these myth-jacker smackdowns. How can they fail to see that refusing to respond itself is a damning response? Do they believe that reality is controlled by their official verbage? That if we just don't say it or even dare to think it, then a thing like torture just doesn't exist?

As I so often say, this is the power of myth and narrative, giving shape to the cosmos in which we are enacting the often absurd theater of life. Myth-making think-tankers are intentionally perverting our shared narrative away from human social intercourse and toward weapons-grade domestic propaganda.

Our "unmanned" drones, which take quite a few people to operate, are the perfect model of that society: push a button, kill an "evil-doer," get a food pellet reward, and no one you know gets hurt. Our new creed is: get in, sit down, strap in, shut up, and do as your superiors tell you.

We're a Christian nation, all right: Christian Imperialist. Our dominant myth features a tyrant-creator of the universe, a political figure who rules by force and fiat, and imprisons his enemies for a thousand years. And then what? Then there's a final battle and the enemy is forever done away with. Is it any wonder why we have the highest incarceration rate in the world? And our foreign affairs have been an unbroken string of wars of aggression?

See, we're the ones whom God loves the most; therefore, as long as we convince ourselves that all we're doing is what The Big Guy Upstairs tells us to do, then we can do no wrong.

And since all we're doing is The Big Guy's bidding, anyone who opposes us, or our policies, obviously is an evil-doer, of whom we are quite right and even duty bound to rid the world. In this chauvinistically bifurcated cosmos, there are only Super-Heroes and Super-Villains: which one are you? Are you loyal enough to the Commander-in-Chief? Can you prove it? Show me your papers!

"Collateral damage," the deliberate killing of civilians (when you know for certain that action X will kill civilians, but you decide to do it anyway, that's not an accident), is our modern method of human sacrifice. So is warfare, in general, come to think of it. Don't incoming presidents "bloody their hands" to prove their Seriousness?

Regarding your comment, Brother G, about adolescent self-absorption:

The only point worth noting is that he agrees with the observation I expressed last night that Goldfarb's views (like those of most neonconservatives) "ultimately come down to nothing more complicated than: what we do is Good and Right because we are superior and because they are inferior." Goldfarb admits he thinks torture is tolerable when we do it to Them but not when They do it to us because -- as he puts it -- "Of Course We Are Superior and They Are Inferior" (that, of course, is the very definition of "moral relativism," which Goldfarb and his allies like to pretend they oppose even as they exemplify its core premise). And -- other than a view that Muslims generally are inferior -- what possible ground is there for claiming moral superiority over the numerous detainees at Guanatnamo (sic) and elsewhere who, even by the Bush administration's reasoning, were guilty of nothing? Independently, it's bizarre to hear someone proclaim themselves morally superior when, just a few months ago, they were celebrating the benefits of the wholesale slaughter of an entire extended family -- including small children -- in Gaza.

As I wrote a couple of weeks ago:

The most predominant mentality in right-wing discourse finds expression in this form: "I am part of/was born into Group X, and Group X -- my group -- is better than all others yet treated so very unfairly" . . . . Here again we find the same adolescent self-absorption: the group into which I was born and was instructed from childhood to believe is the best [] (sic) is, objectively, superior. It is so much better than everyone and everything else that even to suggest that we have flaws comparable to others is to engage in "false moral equivalencies." To do anything other than emphatically proclaim my group's objective superiority is to treat my group unfairly.

Goldfarb's reply is a pure expression of that warped and self-glorifying mentality.

That's what I'm sayin'! This is all about the assertion of physical dominance, not any high-minded ideals.

I bow in your virtual direction.