The link above is to a piece in The American Prospect by Paul Waldman which takes up the matter of Bush's Air National Guard record in the wake of Michael Moore's remark about W being a deserter and of the media condeming Wesley Clark for not distancing himself from it. Waldman points out the discrepancy in treatment the media accorded Clinton's efforts to avoid the Viet Nam war and Bush's efforts to avoid ANG service by a ratio of 10:1.
In a related vein is this piece by Joe Conason which appeared in the New York Observer and here in Working for Change. Conason takes Peter Jennings to task for his less than ept handling of the Moore remark.
A Flight of Fancy?
These are his concluding paragraphs.
So Mr. Bush's claim that he "continued flying with my unit for the next several years" is an unabashed falsehood. Yet the spotty coverage of his military record in the mainstream press -- aside from the Globe investigation and similar efforts in the Dallas Morning News and the Los Angeles Times -- elided that lie. Compare his soft treatment with the media scourging of Bill Clinton, who was held accountable during the 1992 campaign for every word he uttered about his draft record.What the Jennings episode validates is not Mr. Bush's strange military career, but the Bush method of press management. Treat journalists like vassals, with nicknames, cheek-pinching and -- whenever they forget their place momentarily -- sneering disdain. It works brilliantly.
And for a bit of comic relief the link below takes you to a cartoon with a slightly different slant on the matter.
So what's the Deal?
Keeping the story alive with KGO-TV/ABC News in San Francisco is a retired Army nurse whose brother died in Viet Nam. Chickenhawk in Chief
While on the east coast James Ridgeway has this to say in Village Voice. Missing Inaction And Eric Alterman poses the question in Newsday It Doen't Hurt to Ask He has one of the best summaries of what's at issue here:
Dare we call the president of the United States a "deserter?" Well, technically, no, of course. If he eventually got the papers, he's retroactively innocent of that charge. But what would have happened if, say, during late 1972, some by-the-books Alabama MP had happened upon Bush in a bar and was unaware that this son of a congressman would eventually be able to work out a deal with the higher-ups. He would be in Alabama without permission while his unit was training in Texas. Might that have been enough to throw Bush into the brig?
It's hardly an outrageous question, but even raising it seems to place one beyond the pale. And I doubt Tim Russert or Peter Jennings could have answered it more articulately than Gen. Clark had either one been willing to examine the issue with the seriousness it so clearly deserves.
Maybe the story has legs this time around?
At least one media writer has tried to create a context for the shouts that Dean uttered to his followers after the results of the caucases were in. Just as the media had created a false context for the fall of Saddam's statue, so too the media failed to provide a true context by not recording both a wide-view shot of the room and a true sense of the acoustic bedlam over which Dean had to make himself heard.
What you might not know, because it doesn't play 30 times a day on the cable news channels, is what was happening in the rest of the room. You don't see the visual and you don't hear the audio. The television crews recording the event plug into an audio source picking up Dean's microphone, not the sound of the room. The cameras focus in to a tight shot of the candidate, not the rest of the room.What you are not hearing is a room with thousands of people screaming and cheering.
What you are not seeing are hundreds upon hundreds of American flags waving.
What you are not hearing are members of the audience shouting out state names urging Dean to list more.
What you are not seeing is the way Dean's supporters were lifted out of their slump by the speech.
In a nutshell, you are not seeing that Dean's speech fit the tone of the room.
Not that the speech was a good idea; clearly it has created problems for Dean, but not because he's a loose cannon or a little off kilter. Dean is actually a rather straight-laced, staid person. The Iowa speech has become a problem because Dean's aides either failed to recognize or failed to convince their candidate that when he speaks to a roomful of people, he is not speaking to a roomful of people: he is speaking to a television camera.
Having said that, author Eric Saltzman concludes the piece slamming the Dean campaign for their treatment of the media, messiness of events on the campaign trail and "what you get is a press corps ready to pounce on anything the governor offers." Moreover, I'm missing something in the statement: "Dean was throwing a bone to his supporters. He was lifting them up after a devastating and unexpected loss. This is not the campaign's spin – it is their flaw." What flaw? To be downcast at an unanticipated defeat? Hhhhhhhmmmm.
This item from Tom Paine.com is quite cogent in its own right. It will also take you to a blog that I am going to bookmark.
He opens with
There are seven interlocking parts in a kind of contraption political journalists operate for us every four years—campaign coverage, as we have come to dread it. Recognize any of the following?
The seven parts, which elsewhere he refers to as "artifacts", pertain to ways in which the media confabulate the stories that they report to the public. A variation on propaganda techniques.
Continuing
Spin Alley is absurd, and called so by journalists. . . . But Spin Alley is there after every big debate, and it still draws the journalists. Why is this?. . .
The secret is this: pssst... the press is a player in the campaign. And even though it knows this, as everyone knows it, the professional code of the journalist contains no instructions in what the press could or should be playing for. So while the press likes being a player, it does not like being asked: what are you for? . . .
In fact, the instructions are not to think about it too much, because to know what you are playing for would be to have a kind of agenda. And by all mainstream definition the political reporter must have no kind of agenda
. . .
Yet these rituals persist because they do one thing well. They preserve the fiction of a view from nowhere, which is needed for ideological reasons (professional neutrality in journalism) and commercial ones (agenda-less news is for everyone, advertisers included). [Emphasis added]
This is the lengthy essay carrying Colin Powell's name which appears in the January/February 2004 issue of journal Foreign Affairs. It is surreal, making assertions that are contradicted by the facts.
Summary: Pundits claim that U.S. foreign policy is too focused on unilateral preemption. But George W. Bush's vision -- enshrined in his 2002 National Security Strategy -- is far broader and deeper than that. The president has promoted bold and effective policies to combat terrorism, intervened decisively to prevent regional conflicts, and embraced other major powers such as Russia, China, and India. Above all, he has committed the United States to a strategy of partnerships, which affirms the vital role of international alliances while advancing American interests and principles.
Do you suppose this is the sort of thing which occurs when one has an overactive prostate?
A sharp dissection of the article is made in this piece from the Miami Herald. Powell's Paean
The Columbia Journalism Review has a pair of worthy essays this issue. One sheds light on what is the matter with the television interview by professional journalists: their subjects have been trained to dodge them by professional trainers. The link above will take you to it.
The other, which is the cover story for this issue, explores the blandness of contemporary editorial illustration. A side benefit is a brief explanation of how the "op-ed" page emerged in the 1970s and its devolution since.
Little Murders
I am also bemused by the symmetry of these pieces. One is about verbal behavior in a visual medium while the other is about visual depiction in a print medium. In both cases we are witnessing the decline in the quality of behavior and depcition by the practicioners of the media and the concommitant decline in the intellectual demands made of the observers and readers of the media.
Is It Anti-semitic To Criticise Neocons?
Josh Marshall takes on two conservative authors who seek to smear any criticism of neocons as rooted in hateful antisemitism. Here's his concluding comment.
What's being practiced here isn't argument. These are rhetorical brickbats meant to squelch argument. The whole thing is disinformation from start to finish.
Read the rest for a deft analysis of what's at play in disinformation peddling.
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports
Let the hypocricy games begin! This piece opens with the following:
The White House has retreated from its doctrine of regime change and pre-emptive military action and is returning to traditional diplomacy in an effort to repackage George Bush as a president for peace.
But the motivation is less a change in principle and more a change in practice to support reelection.
"It's just the force of reality, the consequences of Iraq which has made them change," said Anatol Lieven, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Even by their standards it is not rational to think that America can run another war."With elections 11 months away, Mr Bush does not want to be vulnerable to claims that he has presided over a warmongering strategy that has left Americans little safer than September 11 2001. His shift follows an established pattern in Washington of politicians moving to the centre during an election year.
Behind the scenes there appears to have been a payoff for Tony Blair in terms of his capacity to influence Bush.
Britain's influence is particularly strong. British government sources were reluctant to talk about the US change of tack last night for fear of giving any impression of gloating. But any signs that Mr Bush is moving back to a multilateral foreign policy will be welcomed in London - if only in private - as a vindication of Tony Blair's strategy of dealing with the president. Friends describe this as "complete solidarity in public, and complete candour in private".
Stay tuned as Bush morphs into the butterfly of peace or the moth of Neocon disguise.