Category Archives: Media Criticism

Media Criticism, War Commentary

Actually Reading The Report

3 Comments

One of the prevailing myths (though that’s a generous term–perhaps Big Lie would be more accurate) of the left was that Saddam had no ties to terrorism prior to his removal (Obama has used it as a central theme, in fact, of his campaign). Many in the media reported a few days ago that a recent Pentagon report had substantiated this template. However, as Ed Morrissey notes, they could have done this only by not reading the report, relying instead on spin and leaks from the Pentagon. Those who did actually read it would come to an opposite conclusion:

The report, released this week by the Institute for Defense Analyses, says it found no “smoking gun” linking Iraq operationally to Al Qaeda. But it does say Saddam collaborated with known Al Qaeda affiliates and a wider constellation of Islamist terror groups.

And why would anyone be surprised that this was the case? He hated the US, and Israel, and was rewarding Palestinian suicide bombers’ families with cash. Other than the other myth (that he was secular, and they were extreme Islamic fanatics, and would have nothing to do with each other), why wouldn’t he collaborate and cooperate with them against a common enemy?

If the McCain campaign is smart, they’ll use this to school Obama again. Particularly since his proposed solution–to not have invaded Iraq–involves the need for a time machine.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Democrats’ Future, And Past

20 Comments

Kimberly Strassell writes about how a fawning media enabled Eliot Spitzer:

…from the start, the press corps acted as an adjunct of Spitzer power, rather than a skeptic of it. Many journalists get into this business because they want to see wrongs righted. Mr. Spitzer portrayed himself as the moral avenger. He was the slayer of the big guy, the fat cat, the Wall Street titan — all allegedly on behalf of the little guy. The press ate it up, and came back for more.

Time magazine bestowed upon Mr. Spitzer the title “Crusader of the Year,” and likened him to Moses. Fortune dubbed him the “Enforcer.” A fawning article in the Atlantic Monthly in 2004 explained he was “a rock star,” and “the Democratic Party’s future.” In an uncritical 2006 biography, then Washington Post reporter Brooke Masters compared the attorney general to no less than Teddy Roosevelt.

…What makes this history all the more unfortunate is that the warning signs about Mr. Spitzer were many and manifest. In the final days of Mr. Spitzer’s run for attorney general in 1998, the news broke that he’d twisted campaign-finance laws so that his father could fund his unsuccessful 1994 run. Mr. Spitzer won anyway, and the story was largely forgotten.

New York Stock Exchange caretaker CEO John Reed suggested Mr. Spitzer hadn’t told the truth when he said that it was Mr. Reed who wanted him to investigate Mr. Grasso’s pay. The press never investigated.

Actually, I think they were right. Eliot Spitzer does represent the party’s future. Which is to say, that it is facing a massive meltdown resulting from its own internal contradictions and self-righteous coddling of corruption.

I have to be amused at the charges being flung in the presidential race between the two identity-politics-based campaigns of Obama and Clinton. Her people say that Obama’s campaign is behaving “like Ken Starr.” His people say that they’re using “Republican” tactics. All of this projection is hilarious, since it is the Clintons who refined the “politics of personal destruction” to a high art, particularly when it came to destroying anyone with the temerity to tell the truth about them.

Poor Gerry Ferraro is now being pilloried for stating an obvious truth–that Barack Obama wouldn’t have a prayer of almost having the Democrat nomination sewed up if his skin had a lower melanin content. I listened to her this morning, having to defend herself against accusations of racism. The delicious irony, of course, is not that they’re “acting like Republicans.” No, what’s really happening is that they’re behaving toward each other the way Democrats and the left have always behaved toward Republicans–accusing them of “hate” when they simply want people to obey the law, accusing them of “racism” when they want the law to be color blind, accusing them of “fascism” if they oppose the latest “liberal” fascist project.

And funny thing, they don’t seem to like this kind of treatment any more than Republicans have enjoyed it when they’ve been on the receiving end for decades. But I doubt that they’ll take any lessons from it. I expect them to continue to engage in it, and I hope that it shreds the party, and causes it to finally implode from its own toxic politics, just as Eliot Spitzer has.

But in another way, Spitzer also represents, or is on a continuum with, the party’s past.

There was another Democrat politician, who was vaulted to power by an adoring press that ignored (and even helped cover up) his negative aspects. He was another politician who was all in favor of laws that would help “the little guy (or gal),” but apparently didn’t think that they should apply to him. He signed a bill with his own pen, to much applause at the time from the so-called feminists, that made sexual harassment (which was broadly defined to include any sexual activity between a boss and subordinate, even consensual, particularly when the power was greatly disparate) a federal affair, subject to federal civil law suits. Beyond signing the law, he was the person who had taken an oath of office to defend the Constitution, and see that the laws of the land were faithfully executed.

Yet, when sued under that same law by a state employee for an incident that occurred when he was a governor–having a state policeman escort her to his hotel room, where he allegedly demanded oral sexual services from her–he brazenly declared that the law didn’t apply to him. Fortunately, the Supreme Court ruled otherwise.

And when the law suit progressed, he not only lied under oath, but suborned perjury from others, both through bribes, and through threats, both direct and relayed through others, to prevent her from getting a fair hearing in court. It came out that he had not only engaged in the incident for which he was being sued, but had also indulged in sexual activity with another extreme subordinate, on company time at the work place, and (as the most powerful man in the world) exposed himself to potential blackmail through this reckless behavior.

And all throughout, much of the press defended him, and stenographed the spin and lies, and attacks, of his defenders. A woman who was one of those who had had her family threatened if she didn’t perjure herself, but who despite that told the truth in the affair was vilified, and called a liar, and mocked for her morality and even for her physical appearance. And in the end, with the aid of the media, after all the mendacity, after all the hypocrisy, after all the continued arrogance, the man survived politically, and even maintained a positive approval among many in the public.

And Eliot Spitzer no doubt observed all of this, and took what he thought to be a valuable lesson from it. Why in the world wouldn’t he have thought that he could do exactly do the same thing and get away with it? After all, the press loved him, too.

This morning, as he is about to announce his resignation, he’s got to be wondering, how did this happen to him? What did he do wrong?

[Update early afternoon]

Well, there are a few attempts to defend him from the left. They’re pretty lame, though. But then, so were the defenses of Bill Clinton, so maybe hope springs eternal.

[Evening update]

As a commenter notes, I was mistaken above about Bill Clinton signing the law that expanded sexual harassment law suit discovery procedures (how did that myth start?–I’ve believed it for years. No doubt some of the detritus from the hyperbole of impeachment years).

President George Herbert Walker Bush caved and did it the year before Clinton’s election, as a result of bullying in the wake of the Clarence Thomas imbroglio. But there’s no reason to think that Clinton wouldn’t have signed it, and Bill Clinton was just as obliged to obey laws signed by his predecessors as he was to obey those he signed himself. Despite his ongoing narcissism, arrogance, and corruption, he was not a king.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Democrats’ Future, And Past

1 Comment

Kimberly Strassell writes about how a fawning media enabled Eliot Spitzer:

…from the start, the press corps acted as an adjunct of Spitzer power, rather than a skeptic of it. Many journalists get into this business because they want to see wrongs righted. Mr. Spitzer portrayed himself as the moral avenger. He was the slayer of the big guy, the fat cat, the Wall Street titan — all allegedly on behalf of the little guy. The press ate it up, and came back for more.

Time magazine bestowed upon Mr. Spitzer the title “Crusader of the Year,” and likened him to Moses. Fortune dubbed him the “Enforcer.” A fawning article in the Atlantic Monthly in 2004 explained he was “a rock star,” and “the Democratic Party’s future.” In an uncritical 2006 biography, then Washington Post reporter Brooke Masters compared the attorney general to no less than Teddy Roosevelt.

…What makes this history all the more unfortunate is that the warning signs about Mr. Spitzer were many and manifest. In the final days of Mr. Spitzer’s run for attorney general in 1998, the news broke that he’d twisted campaign-finance laws so that his father could fund his unsuccessful 1994 run. Mr. Spitzer won anyway, and the story was largely forgotten.

New York Stock Exchange caretaker CEO John Reed suggested Mr. Spitzer hadn’t told the truth when he said that it was Mr. Reed who wanted him to investigate Mr. Grasso’s pay. The press never investigated.

Actually, I think they were right. Eliot Spitzer does represent the party’s future. Which is to say, that it is facing a massive meltdown resulting from its own internal contradictions and self-righteous coddling of corruption.

I have to be amused at the charges being flung in the presidential race between the two identity-politics-based campaigns of Obama and Clinton. Her people say that Obama’s campaign is behaving “like Ken Starr.” His people say that they’re using “Republican” tactics. All of this projection is hilarious, since it is the Clintons who refined the “politics of personal destruction” to a high art, particularly when it came to destroying anyone with the temerity to tell the truth about them.

Poor Gerry Ferraro is now being pilloried for stating an obvious truth–that Barack Obama wouldn’t have a prayer of almost having the Democrat nomination sewed up if his skin had a lower melanin content. I listened to her this morning, having to defend herself against accusations of racism. The delicious irony, of course, is not that they’re “acting like Republicans.” No, what’s really happening is that they’re behaving toward each other the way Democrats and the left have always behaved toward Republicans–accusing them of “hate” when they simply want people to obey the law, accusing them of “racism” when they want the law to be color blind, accusing them of “fascism” if they oppose the latest “liberal” fascist project.

And funny thing, they don’t seem to like this kind of treatment any more than Republicans have enjoyed it when they’ve been on the receiving end for decades. But I doubt that they’ll take any lessons from it. I expect them to continue to engage in it, and I hope that it shreds the party, and causes it to finally implode from its own toxic politics, just as Eliot Spitzer has.

But in another way, Spitzer also represents, or is on a continuum with, the party’s past.

There was another Democrat politician, who was vaulted to power by an adoring press that ignored (and even helped cover up) his negative aspects. He was another politician who was all in favor of laws that would help “the little guy (or gal),” but apparently didn’t think that they should apply to him. He signed a bill with his own pen, to much applause at the time from the so-called feminists, that made sexual harassment (which was broadly defined to include any sexual activity between a boss and subordinate, even consensual, particularly when the power was greatly disparate) a federal affair, subject to federal civil law suits. Beyond signing the law, he was the person who had taken an oath of office to defend the Constitution, and see that the laws of the land were faithfully executed.

Yet, when sued under that same law by a state employee for an incident that occurred when he was a governor–having a state policeman escort her to his hotel room, where he allegedly demanded oral sexual services from her–he brazenly declared that the law didn’t apply to him. Fortunately, the Supreme Court ruled otherwise.

And when the law suit progressed, he not only lied under oath, but suborned perjury from others, both through bribes, and through threats, both direct and relayed through others, to prevent her from getting a fair hearing in court. It came out that he had not only engaged in the incident for which he was being sued, but had also indulged in sexual activity with another extreme subordinate, on company time at the work place, and (as the most powerful man in the world) exposed himself to potential blackmail through this reckless behavior.

And all throughout, much of the press defended him, and stenographed the spin and lies, and attacks, of his defenders. A woman who was one of those who had had her family threatened if she didn’t perjure herself, but who despite that told the truth in the affair was vilified, and called a liar, and mocked for her morality and even for her physical appearance. And in the end, with the aid of the media, after all the mendacity, after all the hypocrisy, after all the continued arrogance, the man survived politically, and even maintained a positive approval among many in the public.

And Eliot Spitzer no doubt observed all of this, and took what he thought to be a valuable lesson from it. Why in the world wouldn’t he have thought that he could do exactly do the same thing and get away with it? After all, the press loved him, too.

This morning, as he is about to announce his resignation, he’s got to be wondering, how did this happen to him? What did he do wrong?

[Update early afternoon]

Well, there are a few attempts to defend him from the left. They’re pretty lame, though. But then, so were the defenses of Bill Clinton, so maybe hope springs eternal.

[Evening update]

As a commenter notes, I was mistaken above about Bill Clinton signing the law that expanded sexual harassment law suit discovery procedures (how did that myth start?–I’ve believed it for years. No doubt some of the detritus from the hyperbole of impeachment years).

President George Herbert Walker Bush caved and did it the year before Clinton’s election, as a result of bullying in the wake of the Clarence Thomas imbroglio. But there’s no reason to think that Clinton wouldn’t have signed it, and Bill Clinton was just as obliged to obey laws signed by his predecessors as he was to obey those he signed himself. Despite his ongoing narcissism, arrogance, and corruption, he was not a king.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Democrats’ Future, And Past

1 Comment

Kimberly Strassell writes about how a fawning media enabled Eliot Spitzer:

…from the start, the press corps acted as an adjunct of Spitzer power, rather than a skeptic of it. Many journalists get into this business because they want to see wrongs righted. Mr. Spitzer portrayed himself as the moral avenger. He was the slayer of the big guy, the fat cat, the Wall Street titan — all allegedly on behalf of the little guy. The press ate it up, and came back for more.

Time magazine bestowed upon Mr. Spitzer the title “Crusader of the Year,” and likened him to Moses. Fortune dubbed him the “Enforcer.” A fawning article in the Atlantic Monthly in 2004 explained he was “a rock star,” and “the Democratic Party’s future.” In an uncritical 2006 biography, then Washington Post reporter Brooke Masters compared the attorney general to no less than Teddy Roosevelt.

…What makes this history all the more unfortunate is that the warning signs about Mr. Spitzer were many and manifest. In the final days of Mr. Spitzer’s run for attorney general in 1998, the news broke that he’d twisted campaign-finance laws so that his father could fund his unsuccessful 1994 run. Mr. Spitzer won anyway, and the story was largely forgotten.

New York Stock Exchange caretaker CEO John Reed suggested Mr. Spitzer hadn’t told the truth when he said that it was Mr. Reed who wanted him to investigate Mr. Grasso’s pay. The press never investigated.

Actually, I think they were right. Eliot Spitzer does represent the party’s future. Which is to say, that it is facing a massive meltdown resulting from its own internal contradictions and self-righteous coddling of corruption.

I have to be amused at the charges being flung in the presidential race between the two identity-politics-based campaigns of Obama and Clinton. Her people say that Obama’s campaign is behaving “like Ken Starr.” His people say that they’re using “Republican” tactics. All of this projection is hilarious, since it is the Clintons who refined the “politics of personal destruction” to a high art, particularly when it came to destroying anyone with the temerity to tell the truth about them.

Poor Gerry Ferraro is now being pilloried for stating an obvious truth–that Barack Obama wouldn’t have a prayer of almost having the Democrat nomination sewed up if his skin had a lower melanin content. I listened to her this morning, having to defend herself against accusations of racism. The delicious irony, of course, is not that they’re “acting like Republicans.” No, what’s really happening is that they’re behaving toward each other the way Democrats and the left have always behaved toward Republicans–accusing them of “hate” when they simply want people to obey the law, accusing them of “racism” when they want the law to be color blind, accusing them of “fascism” if they oppose the latest “liberal” fascist project.

And funny thing, they don’t seem to like this kind of treatment any more than Republicans have enjoyed it when they’ve been on the receiving end for decades. But I doubt that they’ll take any lessons from it. I expect them to continue to engage in it, and I hope that it shreds the party, and causes it to finally implode from its own toxic politics, just as Eliot Spitzer has.

But in another way, Spitzer also represents, or is on a continuum with, the party’s past.

There was another Democrat politician, who was vaulted to power by an adoring press that ignored (and even helped cover up) his negative aspects. He was another politician who was all in favor of laws that would help “the little guy (or gal),” but apparently didn’t think that they should apply to him. He signed a bill with his own pen, to much applause at the time from the so-called feminists, that made sexual harassment (which was broadly defined to include any sexual activity between a boss and subordinate, even consensual, particularly when the power was greatly disparate) a federal affair, subject to federal civil law suits. Beyond signing the law, he was the person who had taken an oath of office to defend the Constitution, and see that the laws of the land were faithfully executed.

Yet, when sued under that same law by a state employee for an incident that occurred when he was a governor–having a state policeman escort her to his hotel room, where he allegedly demanded oral sexual services from her–he brazenly declared that the law didn’t apply to him. Fortunately, the Supreme Court ruled otherwise.

And when the law suit progressed, he not only lied under oath, but suborned perjury from others, both through bribes, and through threats, both direct and relayed through others, to prevent her from getting a fair hearing in court. It came out that he had not only engaged in the incident for which he was being sued, but had also indulged in sexual activity with another extreme subordinate, on company time at the work place, and (as the most powerful man in the world) exposed himself to potential blackmail through this reckless behavior.

And all throughout, much of the press defended him, and stenographed the spin and lies, and attacks, of his defenders. A woman who was one of those who had had her family threatened if she didn’t perjure herself, but who despite that told the truth in the affair was vilified, and called a liar, and mocked for her morality and even for her physical appearance. And in the end, with the aid of the media, after all the mendacity, after all the hypocrisy, after all the continued arrogance, the man survived politically, and even maintained a positive approval among many in the public.

And Eliot Spitzer no doubt observed all of this, and took what he thought to be a valuable lesson from it. Why in the world wouldn’t he have thought that he could do exactly do the same thing and get away with it? After all, the press loved him, too.

This morning, as he is about to announce his resignation, he’s got to be wondering, how did this happen to him? What did he do wrong?

[Update early afternoon]

Well, there are a few attempts to defend him from the left. They’re pretty lame, though. But then, so were the defenses of Bill Clinton, so maybe hope springs eternal.

[Evening update]

As a commenter notes, I was mistaken above about Bill Clinton signing the law that expanded sexual harassment law suit discovery procedures (how did that myth start?–I’ve believed it for years. No doubt some of the detritus from the hyperbole of impeachment years).

President George Herbert Walker Bush caved and did it the year before Clinton’s election, as a result of bullying in the wake of the Clarence Thomas imbroglio. But there’s no reason to think that Clinton wouldn’t have signed it, and Bill Clinton was just as obliged to obey laws signed by his predecessors as he was to obey those he signed himself. Despite his ongoing narcissism, arrogance, and corruption, he was not a king.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

Crickets Chirping At The ICRC?

2 Comments

With all the hue and cry about Korans in toilets in Guantanamo, where are all the staunch defenders of the Geneva Conventions now?

The terrorists are operating within civilian areas, many times with the actual assistance of these civilians, and more often than not with their tacit approval. Brace yourselves for the palestinian propaganda offensive going into overdrive, including stories about civilian deaths, many of which may not be true.

Here’s another point:

We are lectured a great deal about the importance of democratizing the Middle East as, somehow, a strategy to defeat terrorism. I do not want to reargue this issue or make too much (again) of the fact that popular elections have thus far succeeded in empowering terrorists.

My question for the moment is this: Does this democratization ever entail any responsibility? The Palestinian “civilians” were given a choice in 2006, and they chose to elect Hamas — a choice that was overwhelming in Gaza, where the terror organization — having ousted the more “moderate” terror-mongers from Fatah — now rules. If the civilians, eyes wide open, opt to be led by a terrorist organization whose chief calling card is its pledge to destroy Israel (a sentiment shared by a large majority of the “civilian” population), how upset are we supposed to get when the said civilians get caught in the cross-fire that is provoked by the savages they elected?

I have always thought that one of the aims of the Israeli pullout of Gaza was to demonstrate that the Palestinians are incapable of forming a functioning state, and of having someone accountable when Israel is attacked. If that was the goal, it seems to have succeeded. Hamas has declared war (or actually, Hamas has never not been in a state of war with Israel, since the destruction of Israel is one of its primary purposes), and now it will have to accept the consequences.

Hamas is blatantly violating just about every one of the Geneva Conventions, I suspect, but I fearlessly predict that only Israel will be charged with “war crimes.” We know that the world will claim that the death of every innocent civilian in Gaza, among whom these war criminals hide, will be Israel’s fault. No one, after all, can ever violate the Geneva Conventions except for the US and Israel, even when they don’t.

Hmmmm…I wonder what the ICRC has to say about this?

[wandering over and reading]

The most recent release related to the subject is from Thursday, in which it simply tells both sides to “use restraint” against killing civilians. It says nothing about military operations among civilians in Gaza, or indeed anything specific at all, about anyone’s behavior. I thought that they were supposed to be the defenders and upholders of the Conventions? Why can they not denounce this?

[Update a little while later]

I just reread the release at the ICRC site, and I just can’t get over it. Let’s just unpack this one graf:

Numerous rockets have been fired at the Israeli towns of Ashkelon and Sderot, hitting civilian areas and landing inside a hospital compound. At the same time, the Israel Defense Forces have carried out several air strikes inside the Gaza Strip. On both sides, there have been civilian fatalities and injuries.

Really?

“…rockets have been fired, and ‘at the same time’ the IDF have carried out several air strikes.” Surely they don’t mean literally “at the same time”? As though both Israel and Hamas decided to bomb babies, just for the hell of it?

All right, no doubt by “the same time,” they are simply expressing an equivalence between them, not literally saying that the events were simultaneous. Of course, the reality is that first the rockets were fired, with the deliberate intent of killing Israeli civilians to the maximum degree possible, given the crude aiming capability of the rockets, which was followed, afterward by air strikes from Israel whose purpose was to take out the facilities that were launching the rockets in order to prevent further rocket attacks.

This moral equivalence, with no mention whatsoever of the daily, ongoing war crimes by Hamas, is simply nauseating. The ICRC may have moral standing in the world, but it has none with me.

[Update on Sunday afternoon]

A good point in comments. The release isn’t even neutral. “Rockets were fired” (passive voice–who knows who fired them? Maybe they fired themselves?) versus the active and specific “IDF carried out air strikes.”

[Update a little later]

Here it comes. The Saudis (who else?) are accusing Israel of war crimes. And not just any war crimes, no. Nazi war crimes.

And a bad word for the state that is actually committing war crimes.

[Via LGF]

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Stupidest Person In The World

15 Comments

…has to be Keith Olbermann:

But you’ve got to love the staggering ignorance behind his continued insistence that fascists weren’t socialists because they beat other socialists to death. Golly. How many socialists did Stalin kill? Pretty much all of the show trial victims weren’t mere socialists but hardcore Communists. I guess Stalin was anti-Communist. Hitler’s Night of the Long Knives involved the slaughter of Nazis, so I guess by Olbermann’s logic Hitler was anti-Nazi. Most lefties can’t stand Joe Lieberman, I guess they’re anti-Democrat.

Heh.

Humor, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Creating An Appearance Of An Appearance

6 Comments

Michael Kinsley has the best take so far on McCain and the New York Times:

I have come under some criticism for my criticism of the New York Times for its criticism of Sen. John McCain. Many readers of last week’s New York Times article about McCain, including me, read that article as suggesting that McCain may have had an affair with a lobbyist eight years ago. The Times, however, has made clear that its story was not about an affair with a lobbyist. Its story was about the possibility that eight years ago, aides to McCain had held meetings with McCain to warn him about the appearance that he might be having an affair with the lobbyist. This is obviously a much more important question. To be absolutely clear: The Times itself was not suggesting that there had been an affair or even that there had been the appearance of an affair. The Times was reporting that there was a time eight years ago when some people felt there might be the appearance of an affair, although others, apparently including McCain himself, apparently felt that there was no such appearance.

Read all.