Letters to the Editor
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No no no, the press was toothless long before 9/11
What happened after 9/11?
The media started sucking up to the Bush administration on foreign policy as fervently as they used to suck up to the Clinton administration on drug policy.
Actually, this kind of makes me laugh. It is kind of funny, isn't it?
In a sick sad way, it's rather hilarious.
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Anon no no no:
Would that be the "toothless" press that went along with the blow-job impeachment of Bill Clinton? "What will we tell the children?", and all that? As long as no one can call them "liberal," the media think they are doing their job.
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1 and half out of three.
The first page you had me - after 9/11, the main street media turned into a bunch of sheep that allowed anyone who disagreed with the administration to be called unpatriotic and even treasonous. No argument there.
The next page you started to talk about people who didn't toe the party line and suffered for it. Some of them I admire, but then you start with the fringe ultra left wack jobs and you start to lose me. Juan Cole? Sorry, I know he is a Salon contributor, but the only reason he has achieved cult status among a certain population was because his most extreme writings were until recently under the radar of serious academics. I have yet to find a real Arabic or Arab or Middle East scholar who even remotely takes him seriously.
Then of course we get to where the whole piece falls apart. OF COURSE - zionist, pro Israel conspiracy.
Ignore Afghanistan. Ignore all of the Administration background with Iraq. Ignore the history with Iran. Ignore unbelievably close ties to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States (Saudis owned part of Bush's company). Ignore Cheneys belief system in the importance of executive power. Ignore Abu Ghraib. Ignore Guantanamo (Israel wanted a camp on Cuba all along). Ignore the personal vendetta of Bush against Saddam. Ignore the back room ties with Egypt and Syria. Ignore the importance of Oil. Ignore the 200 odd million people, unbelievable riches, long history and all of the countries of the Middle East. A couple of AIPAC members planned the whole thing ito please a thousand right wing fanatics living in trailers on a hillside in biblical territory. I can't believe I didn't see it before.
The answer to the capitulation of the media to the right wing propaganda machine isn't the rise of a left wing conspiracy machine. It is a sensible, well informed centrist media that utilises all of the truly respected analysts and academics that are actually out there if someone bothers to look. That actually asks the opinions of analysts in the countries involved rather than developing a fascination with self involved bloggers in Montana and second rate professors in Kansas who just happen to say what the outlet wants to hear.
You're right about the problem, but your solution is no solution at all.
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Straightened up?
If the news media now really want to show that they have straightened up their act, how about someone finding out who really did buy George W. Bush's Harken stock? Wouldn't it be a turn up for the book if there was a Saudi connection there?
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Q: Why did the media fail?
A: Because they're pussies.
You wasted a whole lot of words after this reason.
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I must be some kind of genius
The claims about the Niger uranium, the aluminum tubes, the drones, the mobile bioweapons labs were easily shown to be trumped up and cherry picked just by researching on the Internet. BEFORE we went to war. By doing stuff like actually reading the NIE Colin Powell was talking about. I did it - why couldn't the "professionals"?
A free press is essential to our republic. Citizens can't hold our government accountable without a free press. Free meaning free to tell the truth. How is it that the MSM forgot this? Don't they know this? Isn't this the very first thing they teach them in Journamalism 101? Are they so venal, so cynical, so uncaring, so shallow, so frikking unbelievably stupid?
The author of our First Amendment wanted Americans to have "full information of their affairs thro' the channel of the public papers, & to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." - Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Edward Carrington, Paris, Jan. 16, 1787.
All journalists who looked the other way, didn't ask the tough questions, and enabled or even encouraged this war, you have the blood of thousands on your hands. I can't comprehend why you don't die of shame.
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I don't know why
But I do know that the contra-media, the opposition routinely overreaches and so takes itself out of serious consideration. IT's not enough that one oppose the war or this or that policy. The left, the opposition has for years adopted a kind of scorched earth policy. You're in for one issue, you're in for all of them no matter how radical or insane. It wasn't enough for instance to be at an antiwar rally, you had to wrap red rags around your head and scream for a communist revolution with the Philippino communist party, you had to stand with ANSWER and the Nation of Islam and people of the purple comet like some of the folks here who never saw a felafel stand without donning their aluminum hats against the secret Jew magic.
And the opposition bought into this, or, more often instigated it. If you honestly believe that Counterpunch is the antidote for Foxnews then you I'm afraid either need to get on or off drugs, whichever you're not now. If honestly believe that AirAmerica is Limbaugh Kryptonite then you dear madam need to put down the hydro. Please.
And is there a cure? Maybe not. Maybe everything is so polarized and agendized that rational thought doesn't matter any more. Fox thinks you're all commie queer liberal terrorists and you think anyone to the right of Bakunin is a capitalist zionist running dog mass murdering colonialist shill.
Congratulations. You are what you hate - a moron.