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April 28, 2006
Snow at the Podium, Rollback on the Rocks"The White House evacuated spaces where the president can legitimately be questioned because it was Adminstration policy in general that Bush's authority went unchallenged, his descriptions of the world uncontested. This made him more brittle, but they felt strong doing it."“President Bush appointed Fox News commentator Tony Snow as his press secretary Wednesday,” said the report in the Los Angeles Times, “signaling that in its final 1,000 days, his White House plans significant changes in the way it reaches the American people.” Actually we don’t know if the changes will be significant. All we know is that the White House is trying to signal new times in the briefing room; and a lapse back into a more conventional press strategy is being predicted. (Text of Bush’s announcement.) But as Michelle Cottle said at the New Republic site, maybe the White House is just “replacing the plodding, never-quite-up-to-the-job McClellan with a charming, fast-on-his-feet media pro who will appear smoother, more genial, and infinitely better coiffed as he feeds the media (and public) their daily serving of bologna.” Signs of regret During all of Scott McLellan’s time as press secretary, the Bush team charted an historically new course, which I have called Rollback, the decision to starve rather than feed the news beast, and wherever possible disengage from the press, treating it as either hostile or irrelevant, not a conduit to the nation but a special interest group begging for goodies it doesn’t deserve. Back ‘em off, starve ‘em down and drive up their negatives. That was the policy. But in the news about Tony Snow there were signs of regret.
The White House evacuated spaces where the president can legitimately be questioned because it was Adminstration policy in general that Bush’s authority went unchallenged, his descriptions of the world uncontested. This made him more brittle, but they felt strong doing it. In this sense press rollback had a single customer: it’s what Bush wanted. Being questioned by non-believers who knew stuff… he definitely did not want that. The staff got the message, the message became a style and they never realized the impression they left: that Bush wasn’t up to taking questions, except from friendlies in very controlled situations. Doing away with the interlocutor Thus we saw—during the same years as back ‘em off, starve ‘em down and drive up their negatives—the amazing rise of the Bush Bubble. By which I mean not the general insularity that all White Houses seem to develop, but the brazen practice of screening the crowd when George W. Bush came to town so that only supporters could come to the microphone should there be question time. Elisabeth Bumiller, White House correspondent for the New York Times, wrote about it when Bush went to Germany and tried to take the bubble with him. The Germans would not play. The proposed town-hall meeting raised the inevitable issue, said Wolfgang Ischinger, the German ambassador to Washington, of “Do you know what kinds of folks you are going to have at that meeting and what kinds of questions they might ask?” Ischinger said the Germans told the Americans that the guests could not be screened, as White House officials do at similar events in the United States, and so “don’t be mad at us if some nasty question comes up.” In the end the White House abandoned the event, rather than take the risk of an unfriendly European at the mike. As with Rollback, the bubble policy does away with the interlocutor’s position in the ceremony of presidential power. It cuts down on question time itself, which everyone knew the boss wanted. In my previous post, The Jerk at the Podium, I described “a machine for making the executive power more opaque, and the presidency itself less dialogic.”
Battle for world opinion Rollback “worked” in the sense that Bush and company pulled it off and made it stick for almost three years. (They also won an election in the middle of this period.) But what a gamble! They put a Bush loyalist who was weak, under-qualified and ill-prepared—Scott McClellan—into a strong position facing the cameras and the international, as well as the American, press. They then let this pathetic figure defend Bush’s policies before the eyes and ears of the world. He had no fluency, no humor, no gift for making sense of politics, no ease in front of the cameras, no gravitas, no air of authority— and most of the time no information because his job was not to “release” but to withhold. (This is the White House, kid, so get up there and give nothing.) And yet according to team Bush we’re in a war on terror and a battle for world opinion with Islamic fundamentalism, much of which takes place in the media. How do those things square? I asked that of conservative radio host and uber-blogger Hugh Hewitt when I went on his program last week. McClellan “didn’t care that the biggest collection of horses’ asses in the world assembled in front of him,” Hewitt suggested. David Gregory of NBC News could “yell at him all day long, and he just didn’t flinch. That’s why he was there. That’s his talent.” I agreed on the talent part (taking abuse was McClellan’s one skill.) “But does it bother you that he was so inept at explaining Bush policy?” Incredibly, Hewitt said it didn’t bother him. Press secretaries are “not there to disseminate information.” Old think, Jay. “They’re there to feed that particular group of very high strung primadonnas.” But wait a minute. “Aren’t we engaged in a Global War On Terror in which the media itself is a battleground?” Hewitt agreed: we are so engaged. “The image that goes out from the White House briefing room all around the world of an inept, inarticulate, bumbling fool in front of the world— doesn’t that have consequences for America’s prestige?” Hewitt didn’t think so. McClellan was plenty good at his job, which came down to babysitting the by-passed press. That room is just not an important room, he said. In from the cold I doubt that historians would agree, Hugh. In the nineteenth century the center of news in Washington was Congress, which had a big press gallery and a stable pool of correspondents. The White House was inhospitable, opaque most of the time, and barely a beat. The President didn’t make news; he gave speeches. There was no interlocutor. Newspapers reported what was in the speeches. The few correspondents who tried to cover the White House would stand outside in the street, hoping to grab visitors as they left and get word of what was going on inside. Theodore Roosevelt changed it all around. When he became president he brought the correspondents in from the cold, one part of a transformation in presidential power. During a 1902 renovation of the White House, which created the new West Wing, Roosevelt made sure there was a room set aside for reporters to work in. So when you think about the absurdity of today’s briefing room follies think about the logic of bringing the correspondents in. It’s still there. Roosevelt did background interviews, he floated trial balloons, he understood photo ops. He shot the breeze with favored reporters. He told charming tales about his family. (He also controlled who was, and wasn’t allowed in to the press room.) And he made himself the bigfoot in the story of national politics, the man whom Congress would be forced to follow. In the twentieth century and our own time the White House has been ascendant. Scholars of the presidency attribute a lot of it to the modern media interacting with presidents and the symbols of nationhood. The Constitution says the three branches are co-equal. The media system says not really. In the republic of signs the figure of the president clearly rules. Congress is the faceless institution, hard to glamorize, televise, quote. It’s so much easier for the country to connect to the president, whose image and voice are instantly recognizable. Congress has power, but can’t plead its case. Projecting presidential power Presidential charisma in its modern form had to await the mass distribution of images in newspapers and magazines. The president as national protagonist was an artifact of news stories that cast things that way. The president couldn’t dominate the news until news conquered the nation and became part of nearly everyone’s daily info diet. That began in the mid-19th century but it didn’t complete itself until the 20th. Radio tilted things even more toward the president, and then TV even more. Although his predecessor, William McKinley, almost got there, Theodore Roosevelt was the first to see what was happening: the modern media system would project executive power outward to the nation and significantly enlarge the stage on which the president strode. He was about to get a way bigger mike (his famous “bully pulpit.”) The larger stage, the bigger daily audience, made presidential character a bigger part of governing. Roosevelt, the first modern president and the first media savvy one, has often been called a larger-than-life figure, which is our way of registering the same shift. This much he figured out: The presidency itself had been made bigger by media. That’s the real reason he found room for the press in a renovated White House. Bring them in, make them comfortable, feed them information, answer their questions now and then. In the long run you’ll benefit big time. Congress has been diminishing in relative stature ever since. Today no one questions that the news center—and nerve center—of Washington is the White House, not Capital Hill. How much is that worth to presidential power and prestige, worldwide? Here’s what David Sanger of the New York Times reported in last Sunday’s New York Times. For the correspondents, things have been going back to the way they were… before Teddy Roosevelt! In a place this buttoned up, reporting happens from the outside in. The first glimmerings of what is happening come from those whose message the White House cannot control easily: members of Congress who have come in for arm-twisting, former White House staff members and advisers, and diplomats, foreign ministers and world leaders who leave the place confused or angry… Did the architects of Rollback know what they were doing? I don’t think they did. Doesn’t mean they’re going to stop. After-the-fact normalizing Bush camp media advisor Mark McKinnon explained the coming of Tony Snow this way. “The president’s message and vision are firmly in place and are not going to change. But it still helps to have a new messenger. It helps to wipe the slate clean.” I’ll bet it does. Communications director Dan Bartlett was doing some retroactive slate wiping. “I know there is a perception that we disdain the media as a whole,” Bartlett said. (Just a perception, probably started by the media.) “I do not believe that. There have been some issues that strained the relationship, particularly when it comes at a time of war.” This is after-the-fact normalizing. They tried something new, a change in the relationship, that wasn’t thought through. It was Bartlett’s job to do just that— think it through. Now McClellan is gone and a more conventional understanding is being peddled around. Tony Snow is “good at” media. He’s done newspapers, radio, TV: the tools that created much of the aura we call “presidential.” He has the sculpted look of a television host, and a public identity apart from his job for Bush. His quitting might mean something, whereas with the stooge figure… who cares? Open questions “It’s clear they are bringing in someone to do better marketing,” David Gergen told the Los Angeles Times. He’s the former White House “communications” adviser who worked for both Republican and Democratic presidents. “Whether they are bringing in someone to bring more complete information to the public is very much an open question.” It’s an open question whether more complete information is the Bush strategy— ever. The regime seems to have concluded that if more of the story is withheld it has increased freedom of maneuver in dealing with the enemies of freedom. That regime could be strengthened with a slicker Tony Snow out front. Whether actual persuasion will make a comeback in this White House while the bizarre expectation of democracy-by-assent declines… open question. It’s an open question whether the rollback of open government under Bush and Cheney will continue or meet reversal in his government’s final years. It’s an open question whether the people in charge leaned anything from the mistake their first-term strategy was kinda sorta said to be. The news is Tony Snow will rectify it, and don’t ask us what we were thinking. After Matter: Notes, reactions & links… Bag the briefing? New Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten on Fox News Sunday: Bolten said it may be worth considering whether to end the daily televised press briefings where reporters and the press secretary frequently air disputes in front of the cameras, but he will leave that decision up to Snow. “What kind of power player he really is?” Hmmm. What do you suppose Bolten is saying? I think David Broder had it right (April 27): Unless the president comes to understand that it is in his interest —as well as the country’s— to conduct a more open governing process, the new press secretary, Tony Snow, will find himself inevitably as much of a punching bag as McClellan became. Only George Bush can signal to the White House staff and administration that he wants a government ready and eager to explain itself to the people it is trying to lead. I would ask Broder: What if Bush thinks he cannot afford openness, and really, he can’t because of what would come out, especially about the run up to Iraq but other stuff? Peggy Noonan: “Mr. Snow’s White House press briefings are going to be nice to watch. The press does not want to appear to be ungracious and oppositional. They have an investment in demonstrating that the tensions each day in Scott McClellan’s press briefings, with David Gregory’s rants and Helen Thomas’s free-form animosities, were the fault of Mr. McClellan, not the press.” Richard Miniter, New York Sun: “Mr. Snow is expected have an unusual amount of access for a White House press secretary. Like other men in his position, he will be able to walk into the Oval Office to talk to the president. More unusually, it is part of his job description to sit in on high-level discussions that shape Bush administration policy, not simply to strategize on how to spin those policies to the press.” George Stephanopoulos at ABC’s World Newser: “For Snow, the biggest adjustment is psychological. He’s been out of the White House on his own for more than 15 years, voicing his own opinions, building his own audience. Now he’ll have to learn to squelch his private views and deliver the party line with conviction. I went through precisely the opposite process when I left the White House to join ABC. Not sure which move is more difficult, but I do know that neither one is easy or automatic.” Oliver North pens an open letter to Tony Snow: “It is time to re-claim the podium and put the press in its proper place.” More Michelle Cottle: “Admittedly, the storyline the White House is feeding journalists is genius in its appeal to their sense of self-importance and wounded pride: We’re so sorry we were mean to you. We know better now. Give us another chance and we’ll be ever so much more open and honest and respectful of your needs. See! We’re even bringing in one of your own to tell us how to make this relationship work.” Deroy Murdock at National Review: “McClellan, surely a nice man who loves his country and his family, looks pained and frightened at his briefings. Sniffing blood in the water, reporters chomp into him like sharks devouring a walrus. This leaves McClellan with little to do but meekly repeat his lame talking points. My contacts among the president’s conservative base uniformly pity his performance. I shudder to imagine how much McClellan’s haplessness has weakened America’s image overseas during wartime.” Dan Kennedy at Media Nation takes issue with something I said: I think Rosen’s on to something, although I disagree with his contention that McClellan represented a departure from Fleischer, who, Rosen claims, was unwilling to play the role of being ‘the jerk at the podium’ — and who, besides, had an unacceptable (to the White House) ‘twinkle in his eye’ when dissembling. I don’t see how you can say that McClellan’s act was much different from Fleischer’s, just a whole lot less competent. Here’s how they’re different, Dan. Some of the things the Bush team forced McClellan to do were unprofessional, not to say embarrassing. They made him go out “with little to do but meekly repeat his lame talking points,” as Deroy Murdock put it. Or their plans were so contrary to good practice that one of the problems higher-ups would have is finding a press secretary who would swallow doubts, shut his mouth, listen well, and go along at the cost of his own reputation. There’s only a certain number of people willing to do that, Dan. You need a stooge, or as Michael Wolff put it, a “kick me” figure. The yes man times ten. Ari Fleischer was never going to be one of those. I’m not saying Ari was less willing to dissemble for Bush. Like you, I see no differences there. As a flak, he had the normal coating of professional pride. They needed someone they could roll over. The price for getting that was weakness, lameness at the podium. It was a colossal error. Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times loses his column and blog.
Posted by Jay Rosen at April 28, 2006 12:25 PM
Comments
Well, there's two ways to starve the press: Don't feed them at all or give 'em only junk food. Whatever Tony Snow does, it will be better and appear more sustantive than McClellan's actions. But I'm not really expecting a significant opening up the Administration to public scrutiny. Let's not forget that however inept McClellen appeared to be, his performance sastisfied the White House for many years. What will happen? We'll see. How nice if the White House opted for a more open approach. Nice but unlikely. As I've mentioned elsewhere, when Bush announced Snow's appointment, they both gave brief statements that were relaxed and informal. And both left the room without answering questions. The more things change; the more they stay the same. Posted by: Dave McLemore at April 28, 2006 12:51 PM | Permalink It is not much of an exaggeration to say that the WH makes PR moves, not policy moves. Does everyone remember that big shift in Iraq strategy at the end of last year, the one that featured a Power Point document and the word "victory" repeated over and over? I hope we can acknowledge now that was simply a PR move, not a policy change. I see no reason to think that Bolten and Snow are going to truly change how the WH interacts with, or does not interact with, the press. This WH lacks the credibility to even suggest this. It's an open question about whether or not the press will buy into it. I keep coming back to what Mike Allen of Time magazine wrote earlier this week, not about Snow, but about Josh Bolten, the man who dispatched and replaced McClellan. He described Bolten as "extremely guarded around reporters, but he knows them and, unlike some of his colleagues, is not scared of them. (Emphasis added.) Administration officials said he believes the White House can work more astutely with journalists to make its case to the public, and he recognizes that the president has paid a price for the inclination of some on his staff to treat them dismissively or high-handedly." Not scared of them ... Part of McClellan's ineptness was the vague feeling he inspired that he was indeed on some level "scared," experiencing something almost close to dread as he did his daily imitation of a castle gate hammered by a battering ram. The man came to personify flop sweat. "Not scared" might change the daily equation all by itself. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at April 28, 2006 1:53 PM | Permalink I've been not scared of a lot of things, but being not scared of reporters never struck me as particularly noteworthy, considering some of the other things I'm not scared by. Normal people can't possibly be scared by reporters. So, if I'm right, those not scared of reporters are confident of their ability to say things which cannot be misrepresented without substantial and obvious effort, and of their ability to avoid being sucked into saying things they'd rather not say. If this is the case, things aren't going to be any better for you guys. For all his stumbling, McClellan really didn't give you all that much, did he? How do you think smooth is going to be better? Posted by: Richard Aubrey at April 28, 2006 2:45 PM | Permalink I wonder how many of the WH reporters remember the WW2 slogan -- Loose lips sink ships? Roosevelt would not allow some reporters to enter the press room, Bush takes questions from friendlies--so what else is new? Posted by: richard siegel at April 28, 2006 3:44 PM | Permalink "Normal people can't possibly be scared by reporters"? I'm wary, and everyone I know in business and in sports feels the same. Do I only know not normal people? Posted by: laurence haughton at April 28, 2006 4:14 PM | Permalink everyone I know in business and in sports feels the same reporters are above or below lawyers? Posted by: bush's jaw at April 28, 2006 4:19 PM | Permalink Sports? Business? Politics? If you have something to hide from the public, you have a healthy fear of reporters. Posted by: Richard B. Simon at April 28, 2006 5:54 PM | Permalink When McClellan's exit was first floated, it occured to me that the Bushies could use the opportunity to further close down the news flow. My first thought was, by not really filling the job -- maybe putting in some functionary as "acting" press secretary, thereby reducing his authority as a spokesman. The appointment of Tony Snow would seem to show that idea up as a little bit paranoid. But I wonder if the plan is still to reduce the news, and to catapult the propaganda even more than before. And so, here's my new (paranoid?) idea of what could happen... The main goal of the Bushies is to have a one-way flow of information, totally controlled by them -- with as few questions asked as possible. Suppose that the big change under Tony Snow is to increase that information flow from his side of the podium -- by changing his presentation from talking head at a podium to TV commentator, with the visual support that goes with that. It's been suggested that press secretaries incorporate Powerpoint into their announcements. How about going beyond powerpoint, to slick TV-style graphics and video roll-ins? Hey, maybe even the slogan du jour on the curtains! Far from a rollback, this would steamroll right over the press with their quaint little notebooks and quaint little questions. It would make them even more irrelevant to the Bushies' needs than they are now. The questions can still be deflected, Scotty-style, while the graphics and videos A multimedia press room is not that wild an idea -- remember the multi-million dollar Shock & Awe media center, which we kept hearing was designed "by a Hollywood set designer?" (I've always wondered who that designer was... A-list, soap opera, game show...?) Maybe the rollback theory is true. I hope so. But I'll be interested in seeing if there are any big changes in the press room besides the empty suit behind the podium. Posted by: woid at April 28, 2006 7:16 PM | Permalink DANG, a little of my post went into a black hole... 3rd graf from the end shoulda said... The questions can still be deflected, Scotty-style, while the graphics and videos can be dangled as catnip to news directors. What would they go with? The Q & A, or the White House eye candy? (Not to be confused with the White House nose candy, which is kept under wraps.) Posted by: woid at April 28, 2006 7:21 PM | Permalink The article is an interesting combination of Bush bashing - attacking him for secrecy - which is becoming quite a common thing here, and talking about press issues. I'll ignore the Bush Bashing, but I do thing the comments on the "double standard" on leaking are poorly reasoned. Of course, friendlies let friendlies leak stuff that is beneficial. As to the congressman who leaked, he has congressional immunity, and furthermore is an elected official. Since this situation is dramatically different from frustrated bureaucrats who have access to sensitive information, the response is of course different. The Plame leak has been turned into a gigantic issue by the media (and their friends, the Democrats) in hopes that it will become another Watergate. Its significance in terms of harming national security, however, is zero. Nada. Zip. In fact, by getting out the information that nepotism played a part in Wilson's silly trip to Africa, it may have helped the war effort. No wonder journalists are so miffed. As stated before, when bureaucrats leak, they are subverting democratic government. But that argument has never been answered here. Instead we hear all sorts of complaints that Bush, an elected official, is doing that - even though his actions are well within his power. So once again, I see a double standard - on the part of the liberal elite (MSM, etc). .............. Many conservatives have been after Bush to do a better job of communicating - listening and talking. He is not only at odds with the left (which is almost inevitable if he is to stay true to his principles), but he is at odds with his own base. If Tony Snow has the access described, that would probably be a very good thing. He may be able to let the president know in a direct way where some of his problems lie. Whether the strategy of "rollback" (i.e. not cooperating with those who are out to get you) is effective, we shall see. The "Bush Bubble" complaint is silly. Of course he screens his crowds, as does any politician aware of the power of the media, especially TV, to inflate a few dissenters into the main story. Conservative politicians have to beware of the press more so than liberals. Sure, the press won't let the libs get away with everything - especially if it salacious (Monica, etc). But the coverage is certainly strongly biased - as shown very strongly during the election year. Posted by: John Moore at April 28, 2006 7:22 PM | Permalink Same lies. Different liar. As the deck chairs on the S.S. Titanic are rearranged once again. . . Posted by: David Ehrenstein at April 28, 2006 7:24 PM | Permalink Sports? Business? Politics? Gets back to the maxim of Lord Northcliffe, founder of the London Daily Mail,first uttered 100 years ago: "News is something that someone somewhere wants to suppress. All the rest is advertising." True then, true now. As McLemore has said, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." Which, when you think about it, is a reassuring thought. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at April 28, 2006 7:33 PM | Permalink If there's one thing that Jay accomplishes with these discussion, I hope it is this: to get rid of the false and reductive term "MSM." As he once wrote himself, "Actually, 'major media' doesn't talk, think, have feelings, or put forward ideas. Specific news organizations do, the people who work for them do, the people who run them do, and sometimes committees of journalists do, but Media, Big Media, MSM, Major Media-- these abstractions do not have the ability to speak. They exist so people can say any damn thing they want about the media. Just as no one takes responsibility for what the MSM 'does,' no one has to take responsibility for what is said about the MSM. Yet there is magic in our deceptions and after a while we start to think that things like 'MSM' actually exist, and have intention." Posted by: Steve Lovelady at April 28, 2006 7:44 PM | Permalink |
But a fundamental question remains as to why taxpayers are forced to pay for a President's personal, partisan publicity-agent -- in the hiring of a "White House Press Secretary". If a Scott McClellan, Tony Snow, Dee Dee Myers, etc. A White House Press Secretary's client & employer is the American public -- not the temporary occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Posted by: CollinsJ at April 28, 2006 7:49 PM | Permalink Same lies. Different liar. Succinct; wish I said that.:-) It is beyond anybody's control now, not Snow's and not Bolten's; it is all unraveling like in a Greek tragedy. Having said that, as hard as I rack my brain for a parallel from the classics, I cannot come up with one. For sheer incompetence, Mr. Bush is nonpareil. Posted by: village idiot at April 28, 2006 7:54 PM | Permalink It's just a guess, but perhaps they dumped Scotty when they did because they are expecting more indicitments and they're going to need someone to explain these in an effective way, a pro, an enthusiastic new pro not yet tainted from a long association with Bushco. Someone who criticized Bush in the past and thus has credibility (among conservatives) independent of the administration. The goal will be to hold onto the base (and the conservative pundits) through the mid-term elections. They can't afford to rely on rollback if Rove or Cheney gets indicited. The vacuum would be filled by others if they don't fill it, and there's not much positive to say about indicitments or pardons issued to sitting administration officials. I bet Snow is going to be an aggressive advocate for the admin and will do his best to set the frame and tone for coverage of the coming bad news. He will have to be the anti-Scotty to do that effectively. Posted by: steve schwenk at April 28, 2006 8:08 PM | Permalink Fine thoughts all ... but as a fashionista, I have to ask: Has everyone forgotten that this is also about appearances ? (I mean, come on, the press secretary is the public image of the administration.) I know it's trivial, but let's face it, trivial defines politics. Scott McClellan was and is a fat little guy with a perpetually sweaty forehead, a bad haircut and a shirt collar and suit jacket that were always one size too small. (How fun can that be in the swamp of a Washington summer?) As Robin Gihvan put it in the Washington Post, "Watching him stand there on one side of Bush with Scott McClellan on the other, it looks like "before" and "after." Sad but true. Posted by: Ann Kolson at April 28, 2006 8:12 PM | Permalink Why should the tax payer pay for the President's press secretary? Wow. Perhaps so the President has time to do his duties, which are those of a generalist, while the press secretary (and all the other secretaries, etc) focus on their own work? Apparently the obvious need to be stated. The Presidential office, and all other elected office, are inherently political. The President has a duty to those who elected him, and to the democratic system, to use his office to advance his policies. That includes political fighting. And, of course, we also pay for Teddy Kennedy's people, John Kerry's people, etc. Heck, we even pay for flacks at the bureaucracies. Sheesh. Posted by: John Moore at April 28, 2006 8:28 PM | Permalink I suspect that in my prior posts in which I argued that Judy Miller and Bob Woodward were participants in a criminal conspiracy by high officials in the U.S. Govt., some people rolled their eyes. Well, I'm happy to read that the judge, Judge Hogan, who sent Miller to jail agrees with me: Miller wasn't an innocent bystander, Hogan said. "She was an actor in the commission of a crime," he said. "She was part of the transfer of information that was a crime." Bob Woodward is still a participant in that crime. He is still providing political if not legal cover for one of the chief perpetrators. If Rove rats Cheney out, as Billmon suspects he might have, Bobby is going to look even more disgraced and discredited than he already does. Posted by: steve schwenk at April 28, 2006 8:33 PM | Permalink MSM... folks don't like the term. That's just so sad. Like most generic terms for large groups of people, it is useful and it is inexact. Controlling the language has long been more the province of the left than the right. Control the nouns and frame the debate in favor of your cause. But the blogosphere is another culture. And, of course, it is developing its own jargon. MSM arose from there. After all, the blogosphere is often at odds with the MSM, but is dependent on media. Shall we rail against Islamofascist? NeoCon? Trickle down economics (yeah, I'll complain about that one)? Liberal? Ironically, the modern illiberal left really doesn't like that one, even though it was expropriated by the left. So it goes. Posted by: John Moore at April 28, 2006 8:35 PM | Permalink Interesting that Judge Hogan has judged the transfer of information to be a crime, without having a trial, and with the prosecutor already having declared that it wasn't a crime. But the press should take note... What ye sow, so shall ye reap. Crusading against Libby's leak has brought the power of the courts down on reporters in a very public way. Shall we see what the NSA and CIA leak investigations lead to? Criminal conspiracy charges? Sounds like it to me! Unauthorized leakers of very highly classified information need to be punished. That's the democratically enacted law. The irresponsibility of the media in this regard is apalling, and in these cases, criminal. Posted by: John Moore at April 28, 2006 8:47 PM | Permalink Whereas Tony Snow is a lean guy, great haircut, slick and a very sharp dresser. .... as long as he does not have to open his mouth, maybe. But since the job requires him to be yapping non sequiturs everyday, it will probably wear thin pretty quickly. Posted by: village idiot at April 28, 2006 9:19 PM | Permalink The swiftboating of Neil Young has begun with the internet release of his new album, which includes the hit, Let's Impeach the President. Fox News' Banner notes "Album Atacks America" and "Canadians Bashing Americans." See it here. The realisty, of course, is that the album attacks Bush and his misadventures, not America. Bush's media puppets always try to conflate criticizing Bush with bashing America. But the album really is not anti-american. It is patriotic, if you listen to it. And pretty good, too. Youngs Album was released for free listening on the internet, here Posted by: steve schwenk at April 28, 2006 9:40 PM | Permalink It is beyond anybody's control now, not Snow's and not Bolten's; it is all unraveling like in a Greek tragedy. Having said that, as hard as I rack my brain for a parallel from the classics, I cannot come up with one. For sheer incompetence, Mr. Bush is nonpareil. -- Village Idiot. I agree, Village Idiot, that historical imperatives cannot be denied. And that it is all unraveling, as these things always do ( Joe McCarthy ... Vietnam ... Iran-Contra ... Watergate ... Monica ... Enron ... the Iraq misadventure). But no parallel from the classics ? Have you forgotten King Lear? Posted by: Ann Kolson at April 28, 2006 9:41 PM | Permalink But no parallel from the classics ? Have you forgotten King Lear? I did think about King Lear, but as flawed as Lear is, it seemed unfair to compare a tragic figure like him with the one ruling us currently because, to my mind, incompetence is the dominant character flaw (if it can be considered a flaw) of Bush. Posted by: village idiot at April 28, 2006 10:14 PM | Permalink Ah, VI, I envy your optimism -- you must be young -- and I devoutly hope that you are right. In an ideal world, incompetence would be punished and competence rewarded. Imagine such a world. Alas, imagine is the operative word. It's late, so forgive the pessimism. Who knows -- tomorrow I may be as perky as Katie Couric ! (It's been known, however briefly, to happen.) So let's hope! Posted by: Ann Kolson at April 28, 2006 10:49 PM | Permalink Ann -- Is there ever a new story worth reporting (i.e., actually learning something about)? Imagine such a world. Or are we forever doomed to the same old Procrustean PressThink, eternally fitting all of reality to the same handful of tired narratives forged between 1968 and 1973? When do the Baby Boomers retire? Posted by: Neuro-conservative at April 29, 2006 1:12 AM | Permalink Not sure about the relevancy of your time frame, neuro, but you question does raise a question: who do we report for? Is there a responsibility to report to a wider general audience? Do we only report to your particular standards, politics and education level? The reality you wish to see is not necessarily reality as everyone else sees. Do we report only for your tastes and write off everyone else? Posted by: Dave McLemore at April 29, 2006 1:33 AM | Permalink I just overheard on a radio some analyst suggesting that when Tony Snow faces the press in his new job as White House press spokesman, he will no doubt know what the Christians felt like when they faced the lions in ancient Rome ... CODA: LtCol Oliver L. North is a nationally syndicated columnist and the honorary chairman of Freedom Alliance. An educational and charitable foundation, the Alliance was founded in 1990 by LtCol North, who now serves as the organization's honorary chairman. The committee works to promote freedom and liberty, support the American military and educate American youth on the military. Open Letter to Tony Snow Terry Teacher has a great post on spin meisters: 'I hate spin. Really, really hate it, with an Orwellian passion. I bristle whenever I see it in print or hear it on TV: Lets imagine any general under Bush saying: 'I claim we took a hell of a beating. We got run out of Burma and it is as humiliating as hell. I think we ought to find out what caused it, and go back and retake it' Posted by: Jozef Imrich at April 29, 2006 1:41 AM | Permalink IMHO, Snow will be just as "useless" to the legitimate working press as McClellan was. Snow's function will be to provide daily "official" soundbites for right wing radio, and "official" television footage for FauxNews --- he'll be all spin, all the time, and real media organizations will recognize that --- the value added that Snow brings is the "White House" is now saying "officially" as "factual information" what FauxNews commentators and Rush Limbaugh and his radio ilk have been saying for years. Jozef, Spin by the press is far more disturbing to me than spin by politicians. The politicians, for various reasons, HAVED to spin. The press does it to further their own political viewpoints, which is fine on the editorial page but grossly improper (but ubiquitous) in "reporting." Posted by: John Moore at April 29, 2006 1:58 AM | Permalink Dave -- Can you elaborate on your question? Why does reporting for "[my] tastes" entail "writ[ing] off everyone else? Posted by: Neuro-conservative at April 29, 2006 2:04 AM | Permalink John Moore, That's more truth than most US media will take responsiblity for. For as long as I can remember (which goes back to the late 1960s) major US media outlets have been afraid to say true things like that. More importantly though, for anyone who was conscious at the time and had the barest whiff of familiarity with world history (like the East coast elitists in small town central Illinois where I was born and raised) the Cold War was defined by spin and the Soviets had nothing on the US media. The idea that you would be surprised by surreal spin in any US media outlet in spite of the Cold War is a shocking confession of gullibility. If you were sentient at the time you would have expected it because of the Cold War. Because that's what we got, start to finish. You may as well tell us you were shocked that Sesame Street repeatedly referred to letters and numbers so you had to give up listening to Soviet educational TV. Wow. Repeated reference to numbers and letters on program after program. Damn. How did you cope? Posted by: Mark Anderson at April 29, 2006 2:49 AM | Permalink aye aye aye...the song remains the same..... Posted by: Calboy at April 29, 2006 3:05 AM | Permalink Yes, history is stubborn like that. History and facts clearly aren't an obstacle for Tony Snow in depicting a revisionist GOP fantasy world, however. Looks like he'll be a perfect spokesman for the teetering funhouse that is Bushworld. Posted by: Mark Anderson at April 29, 2006 3:36 AM | Permalink Apparently psychosis was included as a minimum criterion in the Bush II White House search for a new press secretary. From Rollback to Baghdad Bob? My question is, what will Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert have left to parody if Tony Snow does all the work for them on the White House's nickel? Posted by: Mark Anderson at April 29, 2006 3:44 AM | Permalink OT: I was directed to this by one of the links on this board, and I cannot believe what I see on the CNN screengrab. Is this a photoshopped image, or did CNN's news ticker really say that? If true, that must have left some real scars on Mr. Roberts.;-) First, he gets accused of leaking classified information to reporters, and then he is refused R&R by Cunningham's prostitutes. Washington D.C. must be a fun place. This is turning out to be a memorable week .... Posted by: village idiot at April 29, 2006 10:13 AM | Permalink From the Oliver North open letter to Tony Snow Jozef helpfully linked to, which is quite a good document for understanding why the take-no-prisoners right is lately so frustrated with Bush: I'm confident the President believes that victory in this war is vital, and I'm sure you do too. But the conviction with which that message has been delivered lately has been lacking. It is part of a string of communications gaffes that have emanated from the White House. From the Dubai port deal to the treatment of terrorist detainees, the President's opposition has inflamed the media, framed the issue, and taken the lead. That's rich. About the only political justification the risky policy of Rollback had was to deliver a satisfying put down of the liberal media for the likes of Ollie. The whole point was to put the press in its place, play to the base, and sail through with "never apologize, never explain, never admit an error." He was the constituency and now he's all mad. But now North realizes you need a media-savvy put-downer and place-put-er. Rich. My homework: According to the National Archives publication the first White House Press Secretary was Cabinet member George B. Cortelyou, who invited the press into the White House, over the shooting of President William McKinley at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, NY. A photo from there has him standing next to the President. Nine days later, VP Theodore Roosevelt, rushed down at night on a series of jitnies, would read the telegram in North Creek, NY (he had been at Tahawas climbing Mt. Marcy, please help save) that the President was dead, before boarding a special train for Buffalo, NY from the railhead. George B. Cortelyou, a shorthand teacher in NYC, secretary to three Presidents, held three Cabinet posts under McKinley and Roosevelt, was later a CEO of ConEdison in NYC, and the Chairman of the Republican Party. His house in Washington was recently featured in "Victorian Homes". Historians should look closer at his role in the events of the times. Posted by: George Myers, Jr. at April 29, 2006 11:39 AM | Permalink (OT -- Schwenk, good news, the swifting of Neil Young. Good news for record sales, that is. The music biz doesn't work like presidential campaigns. All publicity is good publicity. Especially "controversy." In this case, the work speaks for itself. (The album is brilliant and patriotic, and catches the spirit of our time the same way Lou Reed's New York nailed NYC in the late 80s.) ON topic, when Ollie North says: a free and independent media is vital to American liberty it is a throwaway line, totally hollow. Especially when it is followed by a plea to "put the press in its proper place"! I suppose a "free and independent media" is "vital to American liberty" when it can be used to submit a handsome young Colonel in uniform as the sympathetic public face of an illegal White House policy. When Oliver North says: But you also know, and must explain to the press, that using the power of the presidency to prosecute a global war against terrorism is not a violation of the constitution just because they deem it so, You just">http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/29/reviews/iran-chronology.html?_r=1&oref=login&oref=slogin">just have to laugh. Posted by: Richard B. Simon at April 29, 2006 1:07 PM | Permalink Listen, attack duck--whose other fake name is "neuro-conservative"--your attacks are getting more and more idiotic, fact-free, pointless and inane. Your latest fake charge--claiming that PressThink is "eternally fitting all of reality to the same handful of tired narratives forged between 1968 and 1973"--neglects to consider that the author was 12 years old in '68, and unaware of politics. (I was quite aware of Bob Gibson, however.) When in 1974 I first registered to vote, attack duck, I registered Republican because that was the only way to get a summer job in my town. My political education began with Watergate, which means it started the year you absurdly, idiotically, ignorantly claim it ended. Left bad, right good. Why do you come here to deliver such non-thought? There are so many places on the Web where they welcome robotic messages like that. Why PressThink? I will tell you why. Because it's one of the few places you can find where there actually is diversity of thought. The exact opposite of your lame-brain charge. Your participation here is joke, attack duck, and for precisely for reasons like this. You don't inquire, you don't listen, you collect no facts before hitting the keyboard-- you simply consult the frozen hateful party line in your head and start quacking at your imaginary opponents. I believe you said at one point that you have an academic job. That's disturbing if true, as you are a role model for demagogues and intellectual quacks everywhere. Getting the message yet, duck? (Quack, quack.) I have told other people who seem incapable of making a useful contribution that they could start to redeem themselves by at least providing a link that other participants might learn from. I'd offer that advice to you, attack duck, but I'm afraid even your links would be a lie. You quack. Jay, Well, yeah, that's a reasonable viewpoint from his and my point of view. We believe the MSM operates too much as an echo chamber with a certain viewpoint. We have had a long time to form those opinions, from interactions with the press, watching its actions regarding situations in which we had solid facts, and predicting its response, based on that thesis, to various driving functions. While you were a kid, I was watching the reporting about Vietnam rapidly get progressively more biased. While you were a kid, I watched the reporting about the USSR become progressively more biased. I had, perhaps, some advantages, having grown up in a community whose primary product was nuclear weapons, having been in the military and subsequently attended anti-war events, and having seen the ravages of Russian imperialism up close - in East Berlin shortly after the wall went up. I have only once been involved in an activity where the press report was accurate or even close to accurate. Reporting on national issues was usually highly biased/selective. I didn't get my views on the press from knowing conservatives or reading conservative publications (that came later) but from direct experience. Sadly, that view was only re-inforced during my national activist activities in 2004. As such, the proper place of the MSM is only slightly different from the proper place of the DNC, in the national debate. Like it or not, agree or not, that is not an illegitimate viewpoint, and in fact is bolstered by activities on this board. Posted by: John Moore at April 29, 2006 1:43 PM | Permalink Neuro, In your question Is there ever a new story worth reporting (i.e., actually learning something about)? you're saying you don't perceive anything new or worthwhile being reported. Why? Because [W]e are forever doomed to the same old Procrustean PressThink, eternally fitting all of reality to the same handful of tired narratives forged between 1968 and 1973? Presumably, it's all the Baby Boomers' fault. You overlooked my first question, which was, "Who do we [the media] report for?" You, who can't see the information and newly developed themes because your eyes are clouded with perceptions of "procrutean PressThink." Or John Moore and his buds, who sit around the virtual Courthouse square bitching about the fellow-traveller press. (Honestly, John, comparing CBS to Radio Moscow is bizarre even for you.) Or do we report to a wider world who may not know the information being imparted - and who might actually be a wee bit more open to information that doesn't tightly conform to their political and social biases? You don't want a free press or an informed press. You want media which give you only what you want to hear. And my final question, then, is what about the rest of the community? Hope that clears things up. Posted by: Dave McLemore at April 29, 2006 2:00 PM | Permalink That CBS, in replacing news and truth-seeking with ideology and propaganda, was worse than Pravda or Radio Moscow is not a legitmate viewpoint, John. This claim dangerously misstates the control of information under the Soviets. It's naive. In fact, it's a way of being soft on communism. It's not a legitimate viewpoint if you're a conservative cold warrior. It's not legitimate if you're a democratic socialist. It's not legitimate if you're a neoliberal or neocon. It's just garbage. Like it or not, no one familiar with the actual history of those two institutions would spend two seconds on your proposition. But it's not really a serious proposition; it's your way of expressing how mad you are at CBS. Which is fine. What attack duck does is not fine. As such, the proper place of the MSM is only slightly different from the proper place of the DNC, in the national debate. Somehow, John Moore, I'd think Howard Dean would disagree with your assessment. From your comments now and earlier, it's clear you're not talking about biased media but rather are upset that news reports don't conform to your interpretations of how events should be reported. Or bolster your world view. Posted by: Dave McLemore at April 29, 2006 2:06 PM | Permalink Oliver North, from Wikipedia: [Oliver] North became famous due to his participation in the Iran-Contra Affair, in which he was the chief coordinator of the illegal sale of weapons via intermediaries to Iran, with the profits being channeled to the Contras in Nicaragua. He was responsible for the establishment of a covert network used for the purposes of aiding the Contras. To my mind, Oliver North and Susan McDougal have about the same level of credibility. But then I am probably implicated in the 'activities' on this board. Posted by: village idiot at April 29, 2006 2:09 PM | Permalink Jay, three questions based on your thoughts from two sources Public Journalism as a Democratic Art, 7-17-2002, and PressThink Basics: The Master Narrative in Journalism, 9-08-2003 1. How could the journalists and reporters covering the White House use the Tony Snow appointment as an opportunity to change the existing “master narrative” and re-frame those “Big Story” choices and emphasis in the coming year? Please forget the White House’s “role” for this exercise…. What specifically could reporters do, what questions could they ask, what citizen inputs could they share, what tone could they use, that would help to create a more productive atmosphere geared towards "cooperative problem-solving"? 2. What would it take to encourage the editors of the nation’s top papers to make a conscious decision to alter the “permanent campaign” master narrative to something that would create a more healthful and cooperative problem-solving environment that would better serve the American public right now. 3. Could the Press take the initiative at this point, with the signals coming from the White House with the replacement of McClellan with Snow, and “renegotiate with sources” -- the White House, politicians, pollsters – and agree to a new master narrative? Your background quotes that I found helpful in trying to formulate my questions: In White House coverage, the master narrative is shaped by a tendency first noticed by political reporter Sidney Blumenthal--the notion of a "permanent campaign." As the story gets told and re-told this way, the approval rating takes on magic significance--more significant, at times, than the president's words or deeds, or even the state of the nation. Clearly, the permanent campaign is a particular way of looking at politics; that is, it's a kind of framing. What I'm emphasizing here is the productive power of the master narrative, the way it generates an almost limitless supply of stories that add up to one Big Story--the story of the president struggling to remain popular. Because journalists do “live” within their narratives, they often don’t see them. William Woo, former editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “The master narrative is a reason why some stories that should get in, don’t get in.” Paul Taylor, a former political reporter for the Washington Post who covered presidential campaigns, wrote this in 1992: Political stories don’t just ‘happen’ the way hailstorms do. They are artifacts of a political universe that journalism itself has helped to construct. They are components of a journalistic master narrative built around two principle story lines: the search for the candidates’ character flaws, and the depiction of the campaign as a horserace, full of ploys and surprises, tenacity and treachery, rising action and falling action, winners and losers. Taylor’s use of “construct” intrigues me for two reasons. Journalists, he’s saying, help create the universe from which they draw news, which is a truthful but disruptive observation. How to report the news—accurately, fairly, comprehensively—is something we know how to teach in journalism school. How to construct the public arena (accurately, fairly, comprehensively? do these terms even make sense?) is not. It’s pretty clear where the authority to report the news comes from; it’s not clear where the authority to construct the world lies, or could lie. Posted by: Kristen at April 29, 2006 5:02 PM | Permalink Kristen: "How could the journalists and reporters covering the White House use the Tony Snow appointment as an opportunity to change the existing 'master narrative' and re-frame those 'Big Story' choices and emphasis in the coming year?" I don't believe the relationship can be saved, Kristen. It's dead. Maturity lies in recognizing that there is no relationship there, and no mutual respect. There's no point in trying to change the narrative or "get along." I think journalists covering this White House should not even be at the White House. It does them no good, and it does the Bush forces--perpetually complaining about a biased, unfair press, like Ollie does--no good, either. (Or at least that's the way they see it.) The real journalists should have quit several years ago and taken the White House at its word-- that they would be treated as special interest group with no public interest role whatsoever. The reason they didn't is simple: they and their organizations are too chickenshit to do something like that. (Which is why John Harris quit on our interview.) Today they should do all their reporting from the outside in, calling Snow's operation when the story is done and running his comments if he has any. They should stop trying to develop sources "inside" the Bush operation. They should run short factual articles from the wire services about what Bush did and said today, and put all of their reportorial energy on finding out from outsiders what's going on, as well as investigative journalism about what's really going down. They should hang up the phone when offered leaks. If their thing is TV, they should use video from the pool when they need it. They should ignore Snow unless he calls and demands to be interviewed. Then they should wait for the White House to ask them back. Most likely, the White House never would. Win, win. Amen, Amen .... Posted by: village idiot at April 29, 2006 6:35 PM | Permalink After all the abuse, perhaps the White House Press is suffering from Battered Person Syndrome: The condition explains why abused people often do not seek assistance from others, fight their abuser, or leave the abusive situation. Sufferers have low self-esteem, and often believe that the abuse is their fault. Such persons usually refuse to press criminal charges against their abuser, and refuse all offers of help, often becoming aggressive or abusive to others who attempt to offer assistance. Posted by: village idiot at April 29, 2006 6:52 PM | Permalink Village Idiot, Besieged by the nattering nabobs of GOP up-is-downism, appeasement is the battered press's path of choice. Posted by: Mark Anderson at April 29, 2006 7:45 PM | Permalink Or are we forever doomed to the same old Procrustean PressThink, eternally fitting all of reality to the same handful of tired narratives forged between 1968 and 1973? --Neuro-conservative. In 1968, I was 3 years old and in 1973 I was 8 years old. So, like Jay himself, I was in no position to observe the insidious insemination of the yet-aborning Press Think with the narrative sperm of the moment. But in 2004, I was 39, and quite a bit more familiar with the creation and marketing of dubious narratives. So 2 years later, it's more than a little amusing -- actually, somewhat touching -- to watch Neuro-conservative trying to swiftboat Press Think. Sorry, Neuro. But as far as I, a novice, can tell, Press Think is infinitely forgiving. Everyone but the most egregious offenders is free to try and try again. Posted by: Ann Kolson at April 29, 2006 8:57 PM | Permalink Ari Fleischer wrote an oped in the Washington Post the other day on the dynamic that exists between the White House Press Secretary - of whatever party - and the White House press corps. In addition to the televised session, I used to brief the press every morning in something called "the gaggle." It was on the record, but no TV cameras were allowed. The gaggle was more informative and serious than the briefing. Reporters didn't posture as much for their colleagues and editors, since their reporting wasn't on the air. If I ducked a question at the gaggle -- such as the ones I was asked immediately after Sept. 11, 2001, about whether a military strike was "coming within hours, days, weeks or months" (I was asked that actual question) -- the reporters didn't attempt to ask me the same thing 17 different ways, as they did at the televised briefing. They got the point: The White House wasn't answering. The problem is that reporters spend too much time trying to impress other reporters, and not enough time researching important questions and making sure that their limited face time with principle subjects move the ball forward in a meaningful way. Instead, they are always trying to impress their colleagues with how aggressive they are, how tough they are, etc. Which is counterproductive. I noticed this as a reporter myself - and to some extent have been guilty of it (I covered personal finance and the 401(k)/Retirement beat during the fall of Enron and the fall of former SEC Chairman Harvey Pitt). I think I played the 401k story well, but I would have been better off not attending Pitt's press conferences, etc., and just making sure that while everyone else was posturing, I was busy understanding and explaining. I got some scoops in the retirement world, and was, I think, one of the better diggers out there. But I didn't move the football much at all on Pitt - even though I was one of the more aggressive reporters at an SIA industry press conference he gave. Yeah, I had a reputation among a few ink-stained wretches who care about that beat, but it didn't translate into good stories at all or serving my readers. To use another analogy - consider a professional interrogator. The most aggressive interrogater is not going to be the guy that gets the information. The best interrogators are the ones that the subject likes and trusts and wants to try to please. (for more on this art, see "The Interrogator," the story of Luftwaffe interrogator Hans Joachim Scharff, a true master of the art.) In the intelligence-gathering world, they are the ones who get the scoops. Not the screamers and posturers. I never got any scoops at a press conference. What's the point of showing up if they're televised anyway? But when your fellow reporters are concentrating on bush-league rhetorical traps (which are incredibly easy to see through and aren't really that clever) or asking the same question 15 different ways, it's probably a waste of time to even watch it. You can have a well-read intern do that. Much better to call some other sources and ask real questions, without the posturing, and deliver the definitive story. I don't recall seeing Sy Hersh at too many press conferences - even back in the day, when his reporting was reasonably accurate. That's what serves the readers. But that's not what gets rewarded in the journalism field. But journos everywhere ought to remember - when they do go to press conferences, their job is to serve their readers - not to look aggressive or tough or on the ball. The best reporter may not even be present. Or he may be smart enough to just keep his mouth shut, and take better notes. I'm getting back in the financial journo world myself again, as a freelancer now, and I hope I'll be a better reporter having shed the stupid "six-gun" mentality that I was guilty of a few years back, and which I see in the White House press corps, and elsewhere, all the time.
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at April 29, 2006 9:33 PM | Permalink By the way, Jay... it's pretty tough to avoid the "stuck on Watergate" charge when just two posts ago you were extolling Murray Waas as "The Woodward of Our Time." Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at April 29, 2006 9:35 PM | Permalink Attack duck just said I was stuck on 1968-73, Jason. The Watergate mythology is from 73-74. I believe he was saying you guys live in the sixties, man. It was more Summer of Love than Nixon's Fall although if so he got the dates wrong too--Duck gets everything wrong--because the Summer of Love, symbolic high point for the counter-culture he's invoking, was 1967. If you're interested in what I think about Watergate's persistence-as-myth in journalism, as against scoring cheap points with evidence like the damning presence of the word "Woodward" in a title (which is totally lame...) then I recommend PressThink, Deep Throat, J-School and Newsroom Religion: "Watergate is the great redemptive story believers learn to tell about the press and what it can do for the American people. Whether the story can continue to claim enough believers--and connect the humble to the heroic in journalism--is a big question. Whether it should is another question..." And if you're interested in the way I interpret the Woodward legacy, see Grokking Woodward. And if after reading them you want to come back here and revise or at least round out your view of my Watergate Repetition Compulsion that would be swell-and-a-half. Much better to call some other sources and ask real questions, without the posturing, and deliver the definitive story. I don't recall seeing Sy Hersh at too many press conferences - even back in the day, when his reporting was reasonably accurate. Jason, for once you and I are in total agreement. You have it exactly right. A Sy Hersh works the phones and digs up the documents. And at any press conference, "the best reporter may not even be present. Or he may be smart enough to keep his mouth shut." I can't swear to this, but I'm betting that Hersh has never once attended the Daily Follies, whether they were presided over by Scott McClellan, or Marlin Fitzwater or by anyone else. He didn't uncover the Mai Lai massacre by attending Robert MacNamara's press conferences. He did it by talking to the boots on the ground. I have had the good fortune to edit several investigative reporters -- including Don Barlett and James Steele, who have won two Pulitizer prizes and two National Magazne Awards. And as far as I recall, Don and JIm -- like Sy Hersh -- have not attended a press conference in their lives. Not one. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at April 29, 2006 10:15 PM | Permalink Much better to call some other sources and ask real questions, without the posturing, and deliver the definitive story. I don't recall seeing Sy Hersh at too many press conferences - even back in the day, when his reporting was reasonably accurate. Jason, for once you and I are in total agreement. You have it exactly right. A Sy Hersh works the phones and digs up the documents. And at any press conference, "the best reporter may not even be present. Or he may be smart enough to keep his mouth shut." I can't swear to this, but I'm betting that Hersh has never once attended the Daily Follies, whether they were presided over by Scott McClellan, or Marlin Fitzwater or by anyone else. He didn't uncover the Mai Lai massacre by attending Robert MacNamara's press conferences. He did it by talking to the boots on the ground. I have had the good fortune to edit several pretty good investigative reporters -- including Don Barlett and James Steele, who have won two Pulitizer prizes and two National Magazne Awards. And as far as I recall, Don and JIm -- like Sy Hersh -- have not attended a press conference in their lives. Not one. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at April 29, 2006 10:17 PM | Permalink Mark: No, I think that would be the press that is suffering from battered person syndrome. The administration lies to them and they come back the next day discredited by having published disinformation from Rove and company, smile and ask for more of the same. That is what I was saying, Mark (not too well, it now appears:-)). Jason, you must be losing your touch, for I found something in your post that I agree with .... Not a good omen. But when your fellow reporters are concentrating on bush-league rhetorical traps (which are incredibly easy to see through and aren't really that clever) or asking the same question 15 different ways, it's probably a waste of time to even watch it. You can have a well-read intern do that. Posted by: village idiot at April 29, 2006 10:35 PM | Permalink As long as the dominant medium for news is television, moving pictures are needed to tell the story. If the story is, as Fleischer puts it, "the White House wasn't answering", then the way for the cameras to tell that story on tv is to have the question asked umpteen times and it not be answered. Posted by: Richard B. Simon at April 29, 2006 11:00 PM | Permalink I have addressed the matter of Jay's histrionics directed toward me previously, with about 10 links that would demonstrate the inaccuracy and unfairness of his screed. To that list I will add yet another, more recent, example. I am still unsure why Jay singles me out for this vitriol -- I can think of at least one prominent commenter here who is almost always snarky, frequently wrong, rarely intelligent, constitutionally incapable of analytical thinking, and seemingly unaware of the existence of hyperlinks, yet who is never on the receiving end of one of Jay's name-calling rants. I will acknowledge that, about 6 months ago, on a comments thread at another blog, I made a somewhat nasty comment directed at Jay's participation in the thread. In retrospect, my comment was inappropriate in its tone and for that I apologize. I stayed away from commenting here for several months after that, out of embarrassment for myself and respect for you, Jay. But I hardly think the same can be said of my comments here. While I have certainly been snarky at times, I don't believe I have ever strayed from the general tone and tenor of the thread in which I was commenting. Jay: If you want to ban me because I am a conservative, please do so openly and honestly. If you want to ban me, or others, from holding certain views or discussing certain topics (as you have on at least two occasions in the past), then please set the groundrules more explicitly, and apply them more evenly. If everyone here were only allowed to make "academic"-level comments, with a 3-link minimum, I would be happy to oblige. Despite your vicious personal attack on my academic integrity, I am probably the only person on these boards to have published extensively in high-impact, peer-reviewed scientific journals (as opposed to the Nation or Tikkun). Finally, I believe my recent comment about Procrustean PressThink was somewhat misinterpreted. I was referring to PressThink as the unquestioned practices, groupthink, and working assumptions of the Press, as described in your introductory note. I was not referring specifically to this blog. Should I have not have employed the caps, or put the word "pressthink" in quotes? If so, I apologize for my lack of clarity. I thought it was clear from the context that I was responding to the litany of media cliches listed in Ann Kolson's preceding post. As for the dates, I chose 1968 because it was the year of Tet/Cronkite and the My Lai massacre. 1973 was a typo -- I intended to type 1974. My regrets for the confusion, but I hardly think it is fair to say I am "always wrong". Posted by: Neuro-conservative at April 30, 2006 12:25 AM | Permalink Your adjustments are appreciated. But there's no three-link minimum. I have occasionally said to lurkers or anyone reading that if you are a trifle unsure as to how and when to post a comment (remember, a majority of users don't...) or how to get a response that you may perceive as lacking in previous tries, one thing you can always do is post a really cool or effective, humorous or interesting--better yet, spectacularly relevant--link. If you give us a good on point or brilliantly tagential or truly amusing link, I may hate what you say but love your link and so I'm glad you wrote your post. That creates more happiness in a thread, less strife. It's a little bit of common sense. Plenty of people do it, sometimes. And sometimes it works. You render that simple bit of advice as "The three-links rule," so you can quack a bit. And that is just so you, Duck. By the way, you and I would agree that ducks don't have academic reputations. I mean I hope we would. I can't attack your academic reputation until I know who you are, where you teach, and what your field is. I haven't said a word about your work for the incredibly basic reason that I have no idea where it is, what it is, if it is. Where do I find the scholarly works of "neuro-conservative?" You could be four graduate students taking turns for all I know. Not involving your academic reputation is the whole point of writing as "neuro-conservative." Surely you grasp that or what the duck? We talk about our history of the free press. What is the definition of free? And we didn't begin with a balanced press. Eric Burns, the Fox News media guy, sought out The Young Turks and appeared earlier last week to discuss his book, Infamous Scribblers. You can listen here. (Hope the link works w/o membership.) Burns' interview starts at the 45-minute area. Here are a few highlights: From the late 17th to mid 18th century, people bought printing presses with the aim to promote their political point of view. Before we won independence that point of view was either pro or anti independence. After we won independence it was even more partisan because then we were discussing whether we should be federalist system(strong central government), or republican (weak federal and strong states.) Partisanship was synonymous with journalism, today it can be quality of journalism. ... Georgia Washington was savaged by the papers. He was attacked first in French and Indian War and Revolutionary war, both of which didn’t started well. And Washington was thought to be too regal that he wanted to be King George. Washington named Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson to his cabinet. Hamilton’s appointment made sense, since he agreed with Washington’s Federalist views. With Jefferson, who believed in a weaker federal government and strong states, Washington was a bit naïve. While employed as cabinet officers, both Hamilton and Jefferson funded newspapers using government money. This was pointed out in the Jeffersonian press, and Hamilton replied, “What is the matter with using government money to advance government policies”? (Armstrong Williams?) Jefferson went even further. He appropriated State Department money to fund a newspaper, which trashed the administration for which he worked. Jefferson would provide the paper’s editor with information by leaving the door of the State Department unlocked at night. Leaving incriminating evidence on his desk and invite the editor in and quote them out of context. (Was it classified information?) Washington was furious, and he never knew of Jefferson’s role in this. But he knew the ideas the paper published where Jeffersonian. Washington called Jefferson into his office and asked him if there is anything he could do about these articles that the National Gazette was publishing. “I don’t know how they get their information, but they’re so unfair and so unkind,” Washington said. “ Is there anything you can do.” Jefferson, to his eternal discredit ( he was otherwise noble in many ways), lied to Washington. “I barely know the people who worked there,” Jefferson said. “I’ll see what I can do, I doubt I can do anything." Washington could have been King George, and he never thought about closing down the papers. He called them Infamous Scribblers. One of this first acts after retirement, he canceled his subscriptions to all 10 newspapers that he had. But re-subscribed to a few later because he felt too far out of touch. Here is one review by fellow Fox regular Cal Thomas: In Colonial journalism, prominent men like Alexander Hamilton would use numerous pseudonyms to comment on, criticize and attack political opponents. Editors, such as they were in those days, saw nothing wrong with the practice and, in fact, encouraged it. The most outrageous and inaccurate items were printed in newspapers with no fact-checking and little sense of responsibility for the damage to career and reputation they might cause. And for she said, she said, an NPR review. Posted by: bush's jaw at April 30, 2006 1:55 AM | Permalink For those who object to my comparison of CBS and Radio Moscow… I owe you more explanation. First, I am talking about the American broadcasting service of Radio Moscow. At some point (I think around 1980) they become much smarter, and much more smooth. Rather than the rank propaganda they had been spewing, they used much more subtle stuff. They stopped using Marxist terminology. CBS, meanwhile was becoming demonstrably more biased. Those are the observations I remember. Certainly I am not implying that CBS was more Communist or more anti-American. Only that, amazingly, it was a less reliable source on interesting events than RM. This is certainly not to imply that RM was anything other than a tool of the Soviet imperialists, or had the slightest bit of press freedom, or that it was accurate. Nor is it meant to imply that CBS was an organization built for propaganda. It is simply my observation of the product of each at that time. I was surprised at RM’s change, which was dramatic - I had been listening to it since the late ‘50s. I was not surprised at CBS, because the change was gradual and linear. I should also point out that Radio Havana did not develop the subtlety of Radio Moscow. It continued to be classic Marxist cant, with all of the appropriate Marxist terminology and silliness. For all I know, it may still be that way. Having listened a bit to communist propaganda since I was a kid, I think it helped me to get a gut feel for propaganda techniques, which affects my views of the press today. My father’s experiences as a visiting scientist in Russia also provided an anecdote to the effectiveness of "the big lie" technique. More interesting was when he was visited in Lawrence, Kansas by a group of Soviet scientists. Other than the usual game of guessing which one was KGB, the fun was when they concluded that my father lived in a Potemkin village, and so he drove them around letting them make all the directions. They just couldn’t find there way out of this America that was dramatically different from what they had learned even though they had known that their news sources were propagandistic.. A variant of that effect, perhaps not consciously employed by the press, exists today. It is simply the near universal adoption of a particular narrative (say, the Bush lied about WMD one. Folks without a varied media diet hear the same thing from all of their sources. In some cases, the narrative is close enough to their personal experience that they know it is wrong. Hence they know that they can’t trust the media (and this is shown strongly in polling). But because they only have one source, they end up believing some of the falsities. That is absolutely characteristic living with only a state dominated propagandistic press, and :"the big lie." That the state doesn’t dominate the MSM doesn’t mean that this phenomenon (which is a result of how humans process information under such circumstances) is not happening anyway. Dave, you can believe anything you want. I am well aware of confirmation bias, and could accuse you of succumbing to the same. I do, however, have a number of direct experiences which reinforce my view, because the facts were solidly known first hand to me, and the reporting was clearly wrong. Furthermore, it tended to always be wrong in one direction. That isn’t a scientific study, but it’s pretty good starting data and means I’m not just naively ingesting the conservative media I graze on. Village Idiot Oliver North’s credibility should be judged by his arguments, not just his past (although I could argue some very important differences between his character and that of Susan McDougal, and the nature of his crimes). If Susan McDougal can make cogent and fact based arguments, her past shouldn’t be an issue either. Kristen On master narrative, all I can say is… I’m deeply impressed by your posting. Posted by: John Moore at April 30, 2006 2:14 AM | Permalink Ouch! I KNEW I would regret not previewing. Obviously, "there" Posted by: John Moore at April 30, 2006 2:15 AM | Permalink Here's a Infamous Scribblers mp3 for those lacking video bandwidth. Posted by: bush's jaw at April 30, 2006 2:47 AM | Permalink Steve: Jason, for once you and I are in total agreement. No, we're not. Ok. Yes we are. :-) Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at April 30, 2006 3:25 AM | Permalink I think Jay has a point there, Neuro... you don't get to claim authority as a published expert on anything if you're using a psuedonym.
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at April 30, 2006 3:52 AM | Permalink ON topic, when Ollie North says: a free and independent media is vital to American liberty it is a throwaway line, totally hollow.I agree with that. What I'm wondering is ... Is there a difference between Rollback and bias warriors "working the refs?" Jay seems to think its a matter of location and degree. We talk about our history of the free press. What is the definition of free? And we didn't begin with a balanced press. [read the whole comment] The history of the press, from Infamous Scribblers, to invited White House insiders and Mukrakers, thru Yellow Journalists and the Dewey/Lippman debates, would seem to be important to understanding Jay's Rollback thesis and whether the press should respond - and if so - how. Of course, this entertains the idea that the Press is a political player, what kind of politics should the press have and how should it be discussed/debated among interested press readers/watchers. Some quick links with teasers ... Three Questions for Kevin Drum Start fighting back were the words that stopped me. It does seem like a time for that. But how is the fighting done? Surely one of the problems is that the press can be warred upon as the Liberal Media, but without a change in its professional code it cannot war back or declare itself “ready to fight.” And there’s the risk of being dragged further into the warring, which to many journalists means bye-bye journalism.Press Politics That is the disingenousness in the self-described "reality-based" community. They are not reality-reflecting, although that seems to be the intent of their claim: "Don't blame the messenger, blame reality." or "Facts have a liberal bias." They are reality-creators. Reality-creators have a philosophy, an ideology, and structural biases. Journalists (reporters and editors) develop stories selectively to present the reality that fits the reality they wish to create and maintain.FWIW, re: Jay's "press hater" and "attack duck" criticisms of commenters, Neuro-conservative might have described a source of the friction previously: It seemed to me, and I assume a majority of the conservative commenters, that arguing about the press's politics was a central aspect of the thread. I can only assume that Jay found the discussion to be politicized, and hence, empty. One more ... What does a great [blog?] want from it's critics? In regard to critics…who attack our believability for political or commercial reasons of their own… That happens. Ax grinders will grind their ax. When criticism is totally politicized (which happens) it loses its value. But some critics attack the Times believability because they think they’ve been asked to believe things that aren’t true. To reason from their “motives” does not seem fair, or especially illuminating. All critics have reasons of their own. And partisan critics often make excellent points. As Matt Welch argues, this is because they have the motivation to watch closely. John Moore: Village Idiot[:] Oliver North’s credibility should be judged by his arguments, not just his past (although I could argue some very important differences between his character and that of Susan McDougal, and the nature of his crimes). If Susan McDougal can make cogent and fact based arguments, her past shouldn’t be an issue either. Mr. North is a convicted felon who got away on a technicality. In most states in the country, he would not even have the right to vote, the most elementary instrument of democratic participation. Not that people in this administration seem to find associations with the Iran-Contra convicts objectionable (what are a couple of felony convictions between friends?), but by what stretch of logic are we to believe that Mr. North has the standing to lecture the President's Press Secretary on how he (Mr. Snow) should do his job? Mr. North may be endowed with above-average IQ and may be able to mouth off a couple of seemingly rational talking points, but that does not redeem criminality in my book. Character is atleast as important as intelligence. Far be it from me to argue that we are all lilly-white, but in our system, there is general agreement that, whatever one's reasons are for breaking the law, there is no escaping payback if one is caught doing so, not the least of which involves one's credibility. PS: Taking a step back, that a convicted felon is given his own show on mainstream TV is, in my opinion, in itself an interesting marker in the evolution of our media landscape, worthy of understanding better. Posted by: village idiot at April 30, 2006 11:35 AM | Permalink The other part of rollback, from the NYT In Leak Cases, New Pressure on Journalists Posted by: steve schwenk at April 30, 2006 11:37 AM | Permalink WH reporters are aware of the need to report from the outside in. “You have to report the Bush White House from the outside in,” says the Times correspondent David E. Sanger, who describes this as “radar reporting. You’re reporting the ping, the sound that comes back.” Dana Milbank says, “There’s little time to do entrepreneurial work. It’s more a stenographic kind of a job.” Milbank often works from his office at the Post, several blocks away. “When I’m not covering the news,” he says, “my job is truth-squadding." As far as Snow, the WH's communications approach does give us a clue into it's overall strategy (as Jay has posited over several posts). Rollback is an interesting sideshow, but the policies (Iraq, NSA warrantless wiretapping, Katrina etc.) are the problems - not the communication of them. Snow is just a different lipstick on the same pig, if the policies don't change. But what can the decider dedide about Iraq (or gas prices at) this point? Posted by: bush's jaw at April 30, 2006 11:50 AM | Permalink Kristen -- Paul Taylor was and is a very bright guy, and his depiction of the "prevailing narrative" construction that the press erects whenever it is faced with confusing facts was entirely correct. What he did not and could not know -- since he was writing, what, 15 years ago ? -- was that a new age would dawn in which political partisans would perceive that the press (especially in election years) constructs a narrative in an attempt to make sense of discrete facts that become available. And that said narrative can be impacted by propaganda. During the first Bush-Kerry debate in 2004, reporters at the scene received in less than an hour a dozen or more e-mails from the Republican National Committee -- all of them trying to bolster a Bush assertion or shoot down a Kerry assertion made during the debate itself. That development alone changes considerably the equation that Taylor was trying to describe in those earlier innocent years. This isn't Kansas anymore, Dorothy, and it's not 1992 either, and the spin artists have figured out that they can mold narratives as well as any reporter. And George Orwell is spinning in his grave. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at April 30, 2006 1:35 PM | Permalink I am probably the only person on these boards to have published extensively in high-impact, peer-reviewed scientific journals. -- Neuro-conservative. Uh huh. And those would be ?? Inquiring minds want to know. Posted by: Ann Kolson at April 30, 2006 1:57 PM | Permalink Oh, so what you really meant, John Moore, was that CBS - and by extension, American media - weren't so much Communistic as they are masters of a more sophisticated propaganda techniques of the Soviet era. You just forgot to clarify from your personal experience. Does this line of reasoning really work for you? When challenged on some particularly outrageous statement you may make, do you claim a verbal mulligan and folks say, "Oh, no problem, John. Of course you didn't mean John Kerry is the spawn of Satan, only that based on some personal experience and private symbolism, [fill in the blank]? Case in point: I don't believe any news REPORTS have used the phrase 'Bush lied' about the ever-changing reasons for going to war. When the media reports that no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq (and please, let's not fight THAT particular round again)or whatever the casus belli du jour happens to be, it's because it's news. Should tomorrow, stockpiles of nerve gas or hidden nuclear reactors be found, that too will be reported. Yet you apparently see anything negative about Bush or his war effort as propaganda. Which leads me to believe that your efforts to link CBS - and my extension, other news media - to communist information techniques as a propaganda effort of your own. Posted by: Dave McLemore at April 30, 2006 3:43 PM | Permalink In my opinion, he was definitely claiming that CBS's "propaganda" was worse than Moscow's. Also, Dave, you can ask, but John has no examples of mainstream news reports saying "Bush Lied." He's heard it so often in the right wing blogosphere--reacting to the left wing blogosphere--that the evidence he's thinking of probably comes from there. Everything you write here has to stand or fall entirely on its own merits. I absolutely agree with Jason. We're all shaped by our various experiences and training. But ultimately, we own our words. Good Lord, if this agreement to common ground keeps up, we'll have to start a commune or something. Posted by: Dave McLemore at April 30, 2006 4:20 PM | Permalink I keep asking, Jay, because I have hope one day they'll answer with something beyond the party line, whatever party that happens to be. And, in some strange twist back to topic, the selection of Tony Snow will likely be a plus for Bush in the short term - especially because he is TV-savvy and come with a rep for 'speaking the truth' to Bush. Sort of an Ari Fleischer with attitude and more hair. Whether this is just more triumph of style over substance or a readjustment in the White House's relationship with the media depends much on how much 'truth' Snow is allowed to speak. My bet: not much. But we'll see. Posted by: Dave McLemore at April 30, 2006 4:27 PM | Permalink Maybe Bush & co. are trying to roll back more than the press. From article Charlie Savage in the Boston Globe: President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution. I know. The excuse will be that all of the presidents do it.... Instead, they referred a Globe reporter to their response to questions about Bush's position that he could ignore provisions of the Patriot Act. They said at the time that Bush was following a practice that has ''been used for several administrations" and that ''the president will faithfully execute the law in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution." But the words ''in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution" are the catch, legal scholars say, because Bush is according himself the ultimate interpretation of the Constitution. And he is quietly exercising that authority to a degree that is unprecedented in US history. When conservatives defend this type of conduct, you have to wonder whether the myth of the 'Bush Cult' isn't true. Posted by: steve schwenk at April 30, 2006 4:27 PM | Permalink Maybe it is time after all for a new White House communication strategy, to be employed by new spokesman Tony Snow if he's up to it: Less defense and more offense. For example, I'd love to see the next spokesman be a composite of Don Rumsfeld and LTG Russel "Don't Get Stuck on Stupid" Honore, at least with respect to the gamekeeping of White House briefing room animals. Since it's increasingly apparent that our dominant media have made themselves players in politics and ideological competition, it's time to expose that fact and treat them accordingly. At the very least it would be great television... Posted by: Trained Auditor at April 30, 2006 5:24 PM | Permalink When are we going to begin swift-boating Colin Powell, does anybody know if the order has been issued? Posted by: village idiot at April 30, 2006 5:48 PM | Permalink It's interesting to me that in saying the Bush Administration needs a more vigorous defense, a universal opinion on the right these days, it never occurs to those saying it that maybe some of the things done have no defense, and so it isn't possible to be more "vigorous." What's possible--in those situations--is doing what McClellan did. Robotically repeat talking points that have nothing to do with the question, and thus embarrass the Administration worldwide, but embarrass it less than trying to give an actual answer. What's the vigorous defense of Bush as a fiscal conservative? What's the vigorous defense of his salesmanship on social security? What's the vigorous defense of "mission accomplished," and of White House lying--yes, lying--about whose idea it was? What's the vigorous defense on being leaker-in-chief? What's the vigorous defense for creating the stealth vice president? What's the vigorous defense for a doubling of decisions to classify data? If Snow starts engaging, and answering questions, as everyone is now urging him to do, the assumption among boosters like TA is that everything will be swell. It could be, to quote Deb Howell, a fucking disaster for the White House. They may have sent Snow into the press room equivalent of a perjury trap. The lid was on tight for a reason-- because of what's in the box. George Will on ABC's "This Week." WILL: [Snow’s appointment is] just what conservatives really want, is government by Fox News. But he’s a man of wit, charm, intelligence, goodwill and it won’t make a particle of difference. It really won’t. Because it’s not a communication problem. It’s a substance problem. Politics is about something. Now, this is an aesthetic improvement in that room in the White House, period. Dave, if you choose to mock clarification, that's your right. But mockery doesn't prove anything. As to the "party line" - has it ever occurred to you that I have arrived at some of my opinions before I even knew what the "party line" was - including my opinions on media bias? Are you simply projecting your own way of forming opinions onto me? How you manage to take the words "bias/spin became worse the Moscow's" as somehow implying that CBS used "communistic techniques" is difficult to fathom. More accurately, RM adopted American MSM tactics. The dramatic change in the style and methods of RM was striking. On the other hand, the MSM seems to believe that a major part of its job is reading entrails to figure out what a public figure actually "meant" instead of just reporting what he said. I find that "analysis" buried in "straight reporting" all the time. That the press somewhere reported a fact doesn't mean that the overall coverage, and the impression on people, is somehow accurate. Radio Moscow reported lots of facts. When it became sophisticated, it simply did more cherry picking and spin and much less overt lying and propaganda. We could argue about the differences in total aggregate propagandizinng between the two entities forever. "Yet you apparently see anything negative about Bush or his war effort as propaganda. Which leads me to believe that your efforts to link CBS - and my extension, other news media - to communist information techniques as a propaganda effort of your own." That is a ridiculous assertion on the face of it, leading to a silly belief. Your mind reading skills are fading. That I am partisan is obvious. That you and Jay are is equally obvious. That we will never agree on our conclusions is highly probable. Jay, at least you interpreted my basic statement correctly... Just because the words "Bush lied" were not asserted by a reporter in a news story doesn't mean make it an inappropriate moniker for the narrative. The media, of course, doesn't have to use the words - it merely gives credence to those who do. The most effective form of propaganda in this environment is cherry picking of facts and sources, selective emphasis, and putting interpretation in the news rather than the opinion pages. I offer the incredibly excessive coverage of Abu Ghraib as one example, and the contrast in coverage of Kerry's and Bush's Vietnam era records. I'm prepared to argue the first, because it's short. The latter would take forever and drive folks nuts. As to having specific examples ready to throw into the debate, no, of course not. I do have a few on the coverage of the first Swiftboat conference, but it is copyrighted, I had to pay for it, and cannot put it out here. But many of you have free access to Lexis/Nexis, so you can find it yourselves. Just read the transcript of the CBS news report of that day, and then, with a straight face, tell me it isn't total propaganda and a vicious hit pice. Trained Auditor, the population has already figured out that the MSM are players, which is why the trustworthiness accorded them is so incredibly low. For those who have actually watched White House press conferences (and remember, most of us have real jobs), they need no further prompting. For those who have been involved in controversial events and read the coverage, they need no further prompting. From this board, I guess I can expect the press to use term "swift-boating" as a pejorative. I suspec the SBVT folks would find that an honor - evidence that sometimes the little guy with the truth can best against the combined power of the MSM and the billionaire financed left. Err, don't you guys pat yourselves on the back every time you think you have "spoken truth to power?" Heh Posted by: John Moore at April 30, 2006 6:27 PM | Permalink I thought Colbert was brilliant yesterday, but many in the media were apparently not too amused: The members of the media elite and political glitterati in attendance gave Colbert a tepid reception, while the president and First Lady Laura Bush couldn't get off the stage fast enough when the drubbing came to a merciful end. And E&P seems to agree. Colbert Lampoons Bush at White House Correspondents Dinner-- President Not Amused? Mr. Colbert's has got to be one of the gutsiest performance in a long, long time, and has the capacity to define Mr. Bush's presidency for posterity. Posted by: village idiot at April 30, 2006 6:31 PM | Permalink "Nearly all of our political comment originates in Washington. Washington politicians, after talking things over with each other, relay misinformation to Washington journalists who, after further intramural discussion, print it where it is thoughtfully read by the same politicians. It is the only completely closed system for the recycling of garbage that has yet been devised." Posted by: village idiot at April 30, 2006 7:14 PM | Permalink John Moore: "A variant of that effect, perhaps not consciously employed by the press, exists today. It is simply the near universal adoption of a particular narrative (say, the Bush lied about WMD one.)" John Moore: "Just because the words 'Bush lied' were not asserted by a reporter in a news story doesn't mean make it an inappropriate moniker for the narrative. The media, of course, doesn't have to use the words - it merely gives credence to those who do." I'm sorry, John, I can't make any sense of what you are saying. You can't produce a single example of the press saying, "Bush lied," yet you say the press universally peddles this narrative, and the proof of this is the "creedence" given to those--not in the press--who do say, "Bush lied?" Huh? What are some of the examples of this creedence? I haven't seen it. Are you sure you're not talking about lefty bloggers. (I think you are, and just "transferred" your perception to the press.) Plus, you seem to have forgotten that, when it counted, the press swallowed almost everything Bush and his team said about weapons of mass destruction, nukes, aluminum tubes-- all of it. And you seem not to know that your average mainstream news reporter is terrified of having to say Bush or the White House lied. They will do anything to avoid it. That's why you can come up with any examples of a narrative you say is nearly universal in the press. Moore segued very early into Cultural War territory, with Kerry and Swift Boats -- those three words never lead to debate. Only to red herrings. It's a sad state when the go-to news hour is a comedy show, and truth telling pundit a phony blowhard. Posted by: bush's jaw at April 30, 2006 7:22 PM | Permalink And Joe Gandelman seems to agree: >Colbert's White House Correspondent Dinner Performance Underscores Irony's Power And Delicacy Posted by: village idiot at April 30, 2006 8:22 PM | Permalink Jay, I'm sorry that you are not aware of the significance or existence of the narrative. For that matter, I don't believe you meant "I don't understand" - sounds like a rhetorical device to me. But perhaps you really don't. Perhaps you are so sensitive to being used by the evil Bush that you don't notice how you are being used by the Democrats and the left - at least in the many areas where the American intelligensia is in pretty much agreement, and in disagreement with at least half of the population. But I frankly don't believe that - at least of the smart folks like yourself. But you do know that in the past I provided a bunch of examples, as they happened. But I don't keep a file around, and you got tired of debate about the election issues, and I have tried to honor that. As for "Plus, you seem to have forgotten that, when it counted, the press swallowed almost everything Bush and his team said about weapons of mass destruction, nukes, aluminum tubes-- all of it."... Gee, really? No reports questioning that stuff? Funny, that's not what I heard. BTW, how about when Clinton was making the same allegations? Same coverage? But there was good reason to believe those assertions - damn near every intelligence agency in the world did, except for some folks in our CIA (an organization not exactly known for its accuracy). Do you think that Colin Powell was knowingly lying when he made his UN presentation? If not, how do you explain it? How many times did I read new reports that Wilson's statements rebutted Bush's claim that Saddam sought uranium from Africa? Nobody bothered to point out that Africa and Niger are not synonymous. Likewise, the attention paid to the refutation of Wilson's claims or the fact that he contradicted himself was given little attention - yeah, it was reported. Whoopee. The Wilson leak is another area of great fun. Here we have a proven liar (inconsistent with himself is pretty good proof) who was given a lot of uncritical coverage. Then we have Libby's leak... great focus on that and the investigation of it to this day. But when a similar investigation of the far more significant NSA leak happens, it gets little coverage except here, where we have all sorts of assertions about Bush suppressing the press. I participated on this blog as the Swift Boaters' credibility was happily questioned by those who obviously didn't want to believe it. I watched statements by Democrat officials claiming they were "Rove operatives" without the reporter mentioning what they well knew - that 527 groups were prohibited by law from that sort of behavior. Yet when I read reports of statements by Bush allies or officials, I often saw "balance" applied - context brought in from an opposing POV - often not even by a spokesman, but as a way of "explanation." Furthermore, I saw remarkably little coverage, none of it critical, about Kerry's after-war behavior, which was exceptionally anti-American, and literally gave exactly the North Vietnamese propaganda position. I could go on, Jay, but you won't believe me any more than you believed the Swift Boat guys. I remember when one guy changed his affidavit slightly and the reporting was that he had recanted, that the Swift Boat story was falling apart. I had a copy of that updated affidavit and that interpretation would have required a vivid imagination, to put it kindly. That coverage provided a rich mine of examples, as did Abu Ghraib and the difference in reporting of Kerry's and Bush's Vietnam era actions. But we went over that in 2004 until you almost threw me off the blog. I challenge you to get that Nexis transcript from CBS re: the first Swiftboat press conference. It is just one example, but it happens to be one that is easy to find, and that I can point at even though I don't have access reasonable to Lexis/Nexis, which I'll bet you do.
And that is BS. I could assert that the press was a bunch of conspirators, continuously trying to figure out how to trash Bush. But that would be BS also. We need to agree to disagree. I don't think we need to assume the other is a nut or an idiot, which some people seem to imply about me. Posted by: John Moore at April 30, 2006 9:04 PM | Permalink BJ - I wasn't the one who brought in the term "swift-boated!" Because of my activities in 2004, the Swift Boat story happens to be one I have a lot of personal experience with. I could go on, but I'd suggest you go to the archives of this blog (if they go that far). I doubt Jay would welcome that subject coming up again. Suffice it to say that in my opinion, the MSM behavior in 2004 was consistent with the assertions I have made here, consistent with being highly biased and strongly anti-Bush. But since people are down to the point of "show me examples," I would either have to spend a bunch of time (and money for Nexis) to provide examples which, like in 2004, would be rationalized away. Posted by: John Moore at April 30, 2006 9:08 PM | Permalink John Moore, I wasn't mocking clarification. I was saying your clarification is a form of propaganda. You get to put the media in bed with the Soviets without actually saying so. Abu Ghraib was the essential 'man bites dog' story. It ran counter to our presumptions of what our military does with inmates and how our soldiers conduct themselves. Are you truly surprised it received extensive coverage? But let's not forget, the press did not invent Abu Ghraib. Did you really think the systematic mistreatment of inmates would remain hidden? Or should? Something was decidedly rotten and needed to be corrected. You would prefer it festered and further corrupted the military? John, it appears you aren't particularly fond of a free press. You'd prefer it to be an organ of government, supporting the president's whims on wars and policy. As long, naturally, as it fits your partisanship.
Posted by: Dave McLemore at April 30, 2006 9:10 PM | Permalink Two more little things... The SBVT press conference which I refer to was on May 4, 2004. That should help anyone find the CBS transcript on Lexis/Nexis. Does anyone know where a video file of the Bush press roast is or will be? A friend watched it and said it was pretty funny. I'd like to see it to. Thanks in advance. Posted by: John Moore at April 30, 2006 9:18 PM | Permalink John, you've twice now said the major media refer to itself as 'reality-based.' You've got that confused with the left side of Blogistan. And if you didn't notice that the major media signed on as early supporters of the war, you just weren't paying attention. Of course if you have examples, that would be nice. Posted by: Dave McLemore at April 30, 2006 9:20 PM | Permalink I am curious as to how we should regard the lies of Mr. Bush's press secretary. Are they the same as the lies of Mr. Bush? Posted by: village idiot at April 30, 2006 9:38 PM | Permalink Does anyone know where a video file of the Bush press roast is or will be? A friend watched it and said it was pretty funny. I'd like to see it to. Thanks in advance. If you have a high bandwidth connection try this. Posted by: village idiot at April 30, 2006 9:50 PM | Permalink Alternately, if you can bring yourself to click on a lefty link, try www.democraticunderground.com for the complete colbert clip. Posted by: village idiot at April 30, 2006 10:15 PM | Permalink Dave... I'll answer the one you just slipped in... I know the people on this board sophisticated enough to not be fooled by the propagandistic implications of the Radio Moscow comparison. In other words, it was not meant to be propaganda, and furthermore, whether you agree with it or not, nce again you attempt to put words in it was *actually* (you know, like a fact) my observation at a point of time in the past. I was making a point using a fact. Not the point that somehow CBS was tied to the evil commies, but that their credibility in my mind was surpassed, at that point in time, by RM. You seem to be engaged in exactly what I accuse the press of doing - deducing (and reporting) what someone "really" meant rather than taking their words at face value (or in the case of the press, simply reporting them). Regarding Abu Ghraib... here are my points: 1) It was an absolutely unsurprising event. No army is perfect, and it is hardly a shock that this happened in a unit assigned what, in the military, would be considered a "sh*tty posting." Having served in the Vietnam War, I find the reaction to this event to be either disingenuous or based on surprising naivette and lack of historical knowledge. The idea that if the press hadn't reported it, the army would have been "further corrupted" is laughably arrogant, and very, very wrong. Furthermore, the assertion that the behavior was systematic is not true. 2) The incident was under investigation (by a high level investigator) and had been for months before the storm broke. Furthermore, that investigation had been disclosed to the press at the time. There was no coverup. The soldiers involved were going to be punished. 3) Some sensational coverage was to be expected given the shocking and salacious nature of the photographs. However, the extended coverage was not necessary, nor appropriate. The story told nothing that should have been surprising - a tiny fraction of the army engaged in improper treatment of prisoners. Intelligence people used some minor (and I think, quite permissible) stressors on to-be subjects of interrogation. The mistreatment was not typical of the American soldier - far from it. It said nothing about the nature of our soldiers, and in fact, because of the significance attached to it, insulted our soldiers badly. It also reminded Vietnam Veterans of how our reputation had been similarly tarnished by overblown reporting and John Kerry's in his Senate testimony at the time. Because of this sort of nonsense, much of the world, and even America, believe that our soldiers, once again, must be monsters. But the American soldier is unusual in his training, his kindness, and his deadliness. That we have jumped through hoops to minimize civilian casualties is a story lost in the noise, to the detriment of our troops. For example, how many people know that, as a result of a clever idea by someone in theater, we started used bombs filled only with concrete to destroy tanks and other equipment when it was too close to civilian structures - simply to reduce civilian casualties. Did you know that? Does that get much press? 4) The widespread publication of the photographs was the best thing any terrorist organization could want. It was a terrible thing. However, the press can be somewhat exonerated because the photos were sent to more than one news outlet and undoubtedly, in this modern irresponsible world, would have gotten out anyway. The person who had the photographs was determine to see them published, and apparently the late Col. David Hackworth, a well known Pentagon hater with many press connections was also involved in this. 5) The Democrats, of course during the election year, wanted to and did make use of Abu Ghraib to attack Bush, and in fact worked to keep it in the news for a long time. The press seemed a mighty helpful tool in that, which didn't surprise me for a second. These attacks, however, clearly harmed the US reputation in the world, embarrassed our allies, helped our various enemies to expect our internal politics to cause our defeat, and as I mentioned before, provided great recruiting propaganda. In my opinion, Abu Ghraib warranted a few stories. The pictures themselves, merely because of their uniqueness and salacious nature, were something I would not expect the press to resist, any more than Fox News can resist boring me with "true crime" nonsense. The fact that this had happened was news, even though it shouldn't have been big news given its lack of significance in the overall picture and the historical certainty that things like always happen, even with the best military. That the Democrats made a circus out of it likewise required some reporting. But the press was on this story like Fox on Natalie Holloway - for no *good* reason whatsoever. One thing that I find striking about the American intelligencia is their ignorance, or feigned ignorance, about military matters. The press constantly shows this in the mistaken assumptions clearly apparent in many stories. Of course, some in the press know lots about the subject, and some have served. But overall, the shock and surprise and horror shown by some in the press is either disingenuous or shows a terrible standard of education for our press corps. .............. Once again, you try to put words in my mouth, imagining that I want a government controlled press. How pathetic. I must conclude that you are trolling. Posted by: John Moore at April 30, 2006 10:25 PM | Permalink VI - thanks a bunch. I will try to download it (may have to install bit-torrent if it isn't already on this machine). I hope it has the whole thing - I have not problem with watching Colbert. Funny is funny, no matter who is the butt of the joke. Posted by: John Moore at April 30, 2006 10:27 PM | Permalink OT Comment One more comment on John Moore's CBS/Pravda meme that has been so roundly rejected by most commenters on this thread. If you seriously investigate the issue from a historical perspective, the CBS/Pravda association works better than most of you are willing to admit, though not in the way John Moore would have you believe. During the Cold War the CIA had infiltrated all of the major US mass media outlets, but the New York Times and the CBS broadcast network were at the heart of the US government's CIA-directed Cold War disinformation campaign. Carl Bernstein researched and wrote the most concise presentation of the CIA's Cold War infiltration and guidance of the mainstream media. When John Moore complains about the clumsy propagandistic style of CBS during the Cold War, much of what he complains about was the work product of CIA employees. CBS was unquestionably the CIAs most valuable broadcasting asset. CBS President William Paley and Allen Dulles enjoyed an easy working and social relationship. Over the years, the network provided cover for CIA employees, including at least one well‑known foreign correspondent and several stringers; it supplied outtakes of newsfilm to the CIA; established a formal channel of communication between the Washington bureau chief and the Agency; gave the Agency access to the CBS newsfilm library; and allowed reports by CBS correspondents to the Washington and New York newsrooms to be routinely monitored by the CIA. Once a year during the 1950s and early 1960s, CBS correspondents joined the CIA hierarchy for private dinners and briefings. That other demonic source of liberal bias, The New York Times, was also effectively a wing of the CIA.: The Agency’s relationship with the Times was by far its most valuable among newspapers, according to CIA officials...Sulzberger was especially close to Allen Dulles. Posted by: Mark Anderson at April 30, 2006 10:34 PM | Permalink "The politico-journalist-complex hacks in the audience were mostly too stunned to laugh; the reaction shots that C-SPAN cut into the performance are absolutely priceless." Of course the Washington press corps didn't laugh. By doing what they never do -- taking it right to Bush, point after point after point -- Colbert was effectively disembowling the reporters present even more than he was deconstructing Bush. That's a little too close to the bone to garner many laffs. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at April 30, 2006 10:37 PM | Permalink Dave, When the media reports that no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq (and please, let's not fight THAT particular round again) Why shouldn't we fight that particular round again (no pun intended) when it is so easily demonstrated to be an outright falsehood? In fact, since May 2004, Since May 2004, ISG has recovered dozens of additional chemical munitions, including artillery rounds, rockets, a binary Sarin artillery projectile, and a partridge in a pear tree. Granted, the munitions found thus far do not demonstrate that Iraq had an ongoing chemical weapons production program after about 1991. But the media's ignorant lie that "no WMDs have been found," droolingly repeated by factually-challenged pundits everywhere, has been falsified dozens of times over. To wit: The Washington Post: U.S. troops raiding a warehouse in the northern city of Mosul uncovered a suspected chemical weapons factory containing 1,500 gallons of chemicals believed destined for attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces and civilians, military officials said Saturday. Monday's early morning raid found 11 precursor agents, "some of them quite dangerous by themselves," a military spokesman, Lt. Col. Steven A. Boylan, said in Baghdad. I mean, how many different ways does this pernicious little meme have to be falsified , and falsified again, and falsified again, until you guys stop mindlessly repeating it? There are lots of questions over degree. But the meme "no WMDs have been found" is utterly unsustainable in the face of facts.
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at April 30, 2006 10:49 PM | Permalink Jason, perhaps we can save a bit of bandwidth if you can answer this question truthfully: If you knew in 2003 what we know today about the WMD capabilities of Iraq, would you have invaded Iraq? Yes, or No? Posted by: village idiot at April 30, 2006 11:03 PM | Permalink We're not going into the Swift boat case in this thread. As John said, anyone who wants to dig in the archives will find many many airings. John: if, as you said, the press accepted Bush's asserions because "there was good reason to believe those assertions - damn near every intelligence agency in the world did," then what you are describing is a press behaving fairly (for when there is good reason to believe an assertion, it does) and actually trusting that the president knew what he was doing. But this is exactly what you say the Washington press does not do -- behave fairly toward Bush, and trust in what he says when there is good reason to. If it did then, but it doesn't now, what caused the change? And is the explanation anti-Bush feeling in the press corps? Where was that feeling in 2002, when the great bulk of the press was quite willing to believe the Administration had the goods? It occurs to me that what the pressies think of as "rollback" is really simply the natural consequence of "Google" becoming a household name. It used to be that primary sources were not reasonably available on the Web. Even if you were inclined to do some digging, you had to go to the library. And even then, only a few urban libraries and university libraries had full collections. So when some reporter reported X, and X was false, the news consumer had no recourse, no way of efficiently fact-checking the reporter. Reporters, on the other hand, often had access to clipping services (old school) and more recently, the Nexis/Lexis or Factiva databases, or their own in-house research departments to track things down. As a result, newsies got used to being thought of as authorities. As credible. Unfortunately, there's little evidence to suggest that such a reputation was EVER warranted. With the advent of Google, the playing field was suddenly leveled. Lexis/Nexis catches some things that Google doesn't (Dave McLemore came over to my blog recently with some stories on a wounded female veteran that I had missed without Lexis/Nexis, and quite rightly busted me for it). But Google is more than sufficient for the consumer to reasonably evaluate lots of claims made by the ink-stained wretches in the high-gloss media. And what do we find? Well, we uncovered a bunch of serial plagiarists (from the left and the right), and loads of just plain awful reporting. It is my opinion as an expert on operations at the small unit level and as one with first hand knowledge of much of the inner game of operations in a small little corner of Iraq called Ramadi in 2003 - 2004, that reporting on the Iraq war is particularly bad. But journalists haven't exactly distinguished themselves on the financial journalism front, either (witness Howie Kurtz's book, "The Fortunetellers"). But it is only now, when the masses have access to Google, and the masses have an efficient way to conduct computer-based hobby reporting AND have an efficient way to distribute their findings to a small group of influential people (blog readers), that it becomes clear that the media emperors had no clothes. And now that everyone is pointing and laughing - and deserting news outlets, sending stock prices plummeting even during the broad equity bull market of recent months (which means that NY Times stock price declines cannot be explained by phenomena external to the NY Times and media sector specifically), mediacs are feeling the heat. Except they're too thick-skulled, thin-skinned, and full of themselves to accept responsibility for strengthening their product, and instead blame everyone else for "rollback." Sorry. The President does not have the power to lessen the importance and relevance of the news media. Only two entities have the power to do so: The news media themselves, and their customer, the citizenry. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at April 30, 2006 11:06 PM | Permalink 50 tons of mustard gas in a turkey farm? Posted by: bush's jaw at April 30, 2006 11:09 PM | Permalink Colbert on YouTube: (Hat tip phichens @ MeFi) Posted by: nedu at April 30, 2006 11:12 PM | Permalink Village is pretending that the only reason given for invading Iraq was WMD. How many times do people have to be told they're busted before they quit making themselves look bad? Posted by: Richard Aubrey at April 30, 2006 11:27 PM | Permalink Aubrey's pretending it wasn't the major reason. That looks bad.... They found WMD? Someone better go tell george bush because he's going around telling everyone that the intelligence was bad, that's why there weren't any WMD found. Wow, the first half of Colbert was something. Bush looked like he wanted to rip his head off. I imagine he probably kicked Barney when he got back to the WH. Colbert is one courageous and extremely smart man. And funny as hell. The goons will be sent out after him now. Posted by: steve schwenk at April 30, 2006 11:32 PM | Permalink So why is the administration not asserting that they have found the WMDs that they set out to find when they decided to invade Iraq (if, as you contend they have found enough WMD material that justifies the war)? Posted by: village idiot at April 30, 2006 11:40 PM | Permalink > That would make it 12 years before we went to war. But Bush & Co. were talking about something a bit more immediate - mushroom clouds imminent and all that. Do you really want to go to war over ancient history? Posted by: Dave McLemore at April 30, 2006 11:54 PM | Permalink Mark, In other words, nice try. Jason, thanks for the links. I think the importance of these finds was disregarded by the press, because everyone expected to find massive amounts, and also because the press did not believe the rationale tying the threat of terrorism to Iraq’s WMDs - i.e. to prevent transfer of these weapons to terrorists. Before the war, there was a lot of pretty ignorant opining (in the press) that Al Qaeda would never cooperate with Saddam because Saddam was Sunni. In fact, a pretty constant idea being pushed, to the point of surprising denial of facts, was that there was absolutely no tie between Saddam and any terrorism that threatened us. Within the latter context, these small amounts of weapons are small only in a military sense. One find in particular demonstrates how sinister this is from a terrorism perspective, and also important in showing the failure of our intelligence. That this find got barely any notice from the MSM is telling. An IED using an artillery round was found. EOD personnel attempted to render it safe, I believe by setting off a small charge to detonate it. But there was no big explosion. It contained sarin nerve agent in a binary formulation. Two EOD people had to be treated for nerve agent poisoning. The formulation is significant for two reasons: no inspections had ever turned up evidence Iraq had the relatively advanced binary technology; and, binary weapons are especially useful to terrorists, because the components are easy to transport safely, only becoming highly toxic when the components are mixed normally after the round has been fired). A terrorist (and Zarqawi in particular is reputed to be knowledgeable about chemical weapons) could thus drill into the shell, remove the components and store them in separate containers. These could be taken to the point of attack - probably the air handler intake on a large building. They would then be mixed and sprayed into the intake. The result would be a lot of deaths in that building with no warning until it was too late to take any countermeasures. I have never once seen this aspect of that find reported (which does not mean it wasn't reported). It is more germaine to the issue of a pre-emptive attack to keep WMDs out of the hands of terrorists than the find of large amounts of non-binary sarin would have been. David Kay reported his opinion that Iraq was more of a danger in the terrorist-WMD context than he had expected before the war, even after no significant quantities were found. Also, the issue of biological weapons raises other uncomfortable facts, but I won’t go into that now. A very important point here is that the WMD issue morphed from a terrorist threat to an expectation of finding large military quantities of that material (and the expectation that they would be used against US troops). This reframing of the issue (and I don't know how it happened) led to much of the improper conclusions drawn by most people after the war. There are other important points but I won't bother with them now. VI - I'll take a stab at your question. My answer is this: If we knew then what we know now about WMDs, I would still have supported the invasion. If we knew then what we know now about the difficulties we would face as a result of the attack, I probably would have considered some other course (perhaps using a much large force, and certainly not counting on Turkey), but with the full expectation that the sanctions regime would collapse and that Iraq would then continue its WMD programs and the recently discovered Al Qaeda training program. Hence some sort of drastic action would still have been necessary. Jay - the press had no information to believe otherwise. They had information from many sources that the WMDs existed, just as did the President and many other decision makers. Heck, the Iraqi generals were only told, on the day preceding the invasion, that they would not be able to use chemical weapons. Furthermore, many intelligence or former intelligence officials believe that Iraq shipped out WMD to Syria during the run-up to the war. The retiring head of NIMA was 100% sure, and he was the top guy in charge of interpreting satellite (and other sensor) information. My argument doesn't rest on the idea that the press is actively making up facts, but what they do with the facts available and how they do it (not to mention the practice of editorializing in news reports). I have don’t know if the press liked or disliked Bush in 2002, although I suspect he wasn’t their favorite guy. I do think that the press has been essentially anti-conservative (a very general, hence overly broad description) for a very long time. For that matter, the intense hatred of Bush (labeled Bush Derangement Syndrome by conservative commentator and psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer) is a puzzle many conservatives are trying to understand. It is not confined to (or even that visible in) the press. The conservative psychiatric blogs have been discussing this some, because it is very odd phenomenon - perhaps akin to the often extreme behavior of mobs. Disagreement and passionate dissent is understandable, but the hatred that led to such things as "keying" cars that had Bush stickers on them, and that is readily apparent in even casual conversation with many folks, is really strange. An interesting question is if modern communications is the cause, and whether the right would develop the same sort of derangement if the situation were reversed (we saw some of it, not as virulent, during the Clinton years). Jason's post on Google hints at some of what many conservatives have been wondering. Richard Aubrey's scolding of VI, btw, highlights another aspect of unreasonable press behavior - the focus on the WMD issue. Large quantities of WMD were never the issue, although we expected to find them. But there were a number of other reasons for war. The neo-cons tend to be idealistic (many other-cons say too-idealistic) and the idea of liberating people and implanting democracy has some of that idealism in it. Yes, Virginia, I am suggesting that one of the motivations was actually altruistic - liberating people from a terrible fascist government. Showing that the US had the power, and more importantly, the stomach for a major land war against an Arab regime was also important, since we started our retreating in our ignominious retreat from Vietnam, Carter's failure to react to a major act of war (taking the US embassy and holding its people hostage), Reagan's pull-out from Lebanon after the barracks bombing, and various other actions seen as cowardice by the shame/warrior-culture of the Middle East. There were other reasons, all available at the time, that have been submerged in the incredible flack over the failure to find large quantities of WMDs. BTW, VI, I couldn't get the bit torrent stream to load, sigh. Posted by: John Moore at May 1, 2006 12:16 AM | Permalink Colbert! some in the crowd cracked up over Colbert but others were "bewildered." That's our razor-sharp press corps.
Posted by: Richard B. Simon at May 1, 2006 12:39 AM | Permalink Even the administration is not making the claim that Jason is making, that WMD remants discovered in Iraq were what they were looking for, and justified the war with. So clearly the conclusion is that they do not believe they have found what they have set out to find. Yet Jason repeatedly claims that WMD were found in Iraq; he does this by deliberately conflating the fact that they found some WMD remnants in Iraq with the scary WMD claims made by the administration to justify the invasion. Based on this conflation, he repeatedly claims to have debunked the 'WMD have not been found' conclusion. It is not like this stuff is the subject of any serious doubt. Many administration experts have, at great expense to the tax-payer, burnt the midnight oil and came to these conclusions: Duelfer Report So, naturally, when pressed on this issue, Jason provides a link that reports on a mass grave from the 1980s that has nothing to do with WMDs; it is the proverbial moving goal post. It is hard to take Jason's assertions on this issue seriously anymore. Posted by: village idiot at May 1, 2006 12:39 AM | Permalink I hope Tony Snow faces the briefing room wolves every day knowing, in the big picture, that the only thing Americans need to do is ask themselves a simple question (which I hope they do every time they're alone in the voting booth): Would you risk America's national security (possibly even the lives of your loved ones, if terrorism strikes at home again) to politicians and ideologues who dithered in the face of WMD threats reasonably believed to exist by almost every responsible informed person; or would you prefer Republicans and conservatives to keep your country strong and safe and keep terrorists on the run? The question is relevant today and tomorrow, too: We have two Iraq do-overs coming up with Iran and North Korea. What's your choice - - act decisively to eliminate the threat, or hope for the best and risk the worst? Posted by: Trained Auditor at May 1, 2006 12:45 AM | Permalink Colbert's performance will live in cultural memory a long time. My favorite: we bring you the news unfiltered by rational argument. Colbert was really funny. I didn't find anything offensive in it. Now, I'd like to have a link to Bush's performance. VI - apparently you totally ignored my argument (bolstered by David Kay) that small quantities of WMD are just as significant as large quantities in the context of terrorism. And that's the same mistake too many people are making. Was the war to stop WMD or to stop the acquisition of WMD by terrorists? Now ask yourself, if a war takes place under the umbrella of TWOT, don't you think the latter just might be more germaine??? But there is another very critical issue here: why does Bush get so much flack of WMD? Did he create the CIA, an organization that has a dissident group actively undermining him, even at the expense of national security? Did he have any reason to believe the multiple intelligence sources that were generating the WMD claims? Did he have any reason to doubt that Saddam was going back to his old ways - making WMDs? After all, Saddam is a psychopath (techically, Malignant Narcissist) with a long history of remarkably evil deeds combined with a long history of stupid mistakes that got hundreds of thousands of other people killed! Furthermore, even if one were to believe Blitz, the fact that NO inspector found even a hint of Iraq's biological program in 4 years after 1991 should cerate a bit of concern about a "clean bill of health" from inspections. In fact, the substiantial biowar program was only revealed by a defector - Saddam's son in law. The evidence, with what we now know, is that Saddam was planning on outwaiting the sanctions, with every expectation that they would be dropped soon (especially since he was bribing lots of folks, including high level Russian and French officials, using the "Oil For Food" program). The Bacillus Thuringensis plant was a very nice facility to have for anyone wanting to produce weaponized Anthrax - since BT and Anthrax are very similar, and the preparation of both is the same. In fact, BT has been used for biowar testing as a proxy for Anthrax. And of course, we do have one other mystery in the WMD front... where did the post-9-11 Anthrax attack come from? Iraqi Anthrax? Russian? Finally, we come to the Bush Administration's reaction to all of this. As I have said before, they are pathetic in their handling of the press and the psywar. I think one of the strongest criticisms conservatives have of Bush (and we have a *lot* of criticisms, believe me) is his inability to get his political act straight. Everyone says that Karl Rove is a genius. If so, why does the White House have such lousy numbers? Why is the battle for image fought so incredibly poorly? While there are substantive matters that are at issue, they don't explain all of the low approval ratings. Some of it is due to pure incompetence in the information domain. Hopefully (wow... I get to tie back to the original subject!) Tony Snow will change that. Posted by: John Moore at May 1, 2006 1:06 AM | Permalink Let's hear what Paul Wolfowitz said about the reasons for war in 2003, courtesy of a DOD transcript of an interview Vanity Fair: "The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason, but [...]there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two.[...] The third one by itself, as I think I said earlier, is a reason to help the Iraqis but it's not a reason to put American kids' lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did it.That second issue about links to terrorism is the one about which there's the most disagreement within the bureaucracy, even though I think everyone agrees that we killed 100 or so of an al Qaeda group in northern Iraq in this recent go-around, that we've arrested that al Qaeda guy in Baghdad who was connected to this guy Zarqawi whom Powell spoke about in his UN presentation." (My emphasis) Maybe spreading freedom came later, John Moore. Posted by: Dave McLemore at May 1, 2006 1:15 AM | Permalink How do you think Tony Snow will change anything? Posted by: Dave McLemore at May 1, 2006 1:16 AM | Permalink Lexis/Nexis catches some things that Google doesn't (Dave McLemore came over to my blog recently with some stories on a wounded female veteran that I had missed without Lexis/Nexis, and quite rightly busted me for it). But Google is more than sufficient for the consumer to reasonably evaluate lots of claims made by the ink-stained wretches in the high-gloss media. Lexis is a great tool. But, my hand to God, I found the information on Google. Really. Posted by: Dave McLemore at May 1, 2006 1:24 AM | Permalink Village is pretending that the only reason given for invading Iraq was WMD. Richard, You can conjure up as many reasons as you like for the Iraq invasion, but this is how Mr. Powell concluded his presentation to the UN Security Council: We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more. Given Saddam Hussein's history of aggression, given what we know of his grandiose plans, given what we know of his terrorist associations, and given his determination to exact revenge on those who oppose him, should we take the risk that he will not someday use these weapons at a time and a place and in a manner of his choosing, at a time when the world is in a much weaker position to respond? I was not left with any doubt after that, were you? How many times do people have to be told they're busted before they quit making themselves look bad? Have you ever wondered who is looking bad lately? Did you come across any recent press reports that a full two-thirds of this country do not like the job your Dear Leader is doing. Let that sink in slowly .... Two-thirds, now that would be a super majority, and if the public had the power instead of congress, and were to be asked the question, your Hero would be toast this very day. Now tell me who is busted and is making himself look bad? Posted by: village idiot at May 1, 2006 1:25 AM | Permalink Dave, I would not consider the GWOT to be nearly as important if it were not for that confluence of trends. Terrorists without WMDs are nasty and deadly (9-11 simply used very dangerous pieces of our transportatino infrastructue), but terrorists with WMDs, especially nuclear or contagious biological can cause catastrophic damage. And that is why the GWOT is so very important. But the issue is sufficiently tricky that it too often gets lost in the noise. People say that Al Qaeda isn't a threat - just a bunch of nutcases that like to kill people, hardly anything compared to a nation. But with a nice weaponized smallpox (and there is reason to believe that Iraq at one time had smallpox seed stock in storage, and may still have), you can kill a major proportion of the world's population. And to folks like the Al Qaeda nuts or the Iranian president, that's okay. That furthers their goals. And that is DAMNED SCARY. Let me add that my daughter is a genetic engineer who has worked with BL-3 viruses. Genetic engineering technology is proceeding at a rate similar to that of electronics - i.e. Moore's Law (no relation). The cost of synthesizing or decoding a DNA sequence is dropping very rapidly. The equipment and reagents are readily available, and the knowledge is widely taught. For example, at her Alma Mater, Johns Hopkins, students in undergraduate molecular biology courses learn, and practice in a lab, genetic engineering. Posted by: John Moore at May 1, 2006 1:30 AM | Permalink Dave, "Leaving Saddam Hussein in possession of weapons of mass destruction for a few more months or years is not an option, not in a post-September 11th world" The key is the bolded clause - it is a clear reference to use of these weapons by terrorists. Also, let us consider that the administration chose to use WMDs as the primary public justification, because they were certain (incorrectly) that they would be found, and they were easy to explain. That hardly means that this was their only actual reason, just the one easiest to explain. Posted by: John Moore at May 1, 2006 1:34 AM | Permalink VI - apparently you totally ignored my argument (bolstered by David Kay) that small quantities of WMD are just as significant as large quantities in the context of terrorism. The trauma of 9/11 notwithstanding, neither is terrorism new nor are rogue regimes novel in this world. They are as old as civilization itself. 9/11 killed 3000 americans. The iraq war already killed almost that many in addition to tens (perhaps hundreds) of thousands of Iraqis, not to mention the trillions of dollars of wasted resources. That, to my mind, is the difference between dealing with terrorist threats the right way and the wrong way, and is fully accounted for by the judgement of the occupant of the white house. Posted by: village idiot at May 1, 2006 1:45 AM | Permalink According to the CIA, Iraq retained some biological warfare-related seed stocks until they were discovered by coalition troops. That justifies the invasion by itself. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at May 1, 2006 1:59 AM | Permalink Mr. idiot, My intent was simply to falsify the statement "no WMDs were found." Either WMDs were found, or they were not. I demonstrated conclusively that they were. Anyone who tries to hold that "no WMDs were found," is, therefore, either ignorant or lying. There is no middle ground - it is a matter of Boolean logic. What the Administration says, or the fact that large stockpiles have not yet been discovered, is simply immaterial. You're obfuscating. I suppose that's all you have. But if you're going to say you don't take my claim seriously, then you need to falsify my claim - not pretend it's something it's not. Really, you're arguing with the assertion you WISH I made - not with the argument I made.
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at May 1, 2006 2:09 AM | Permalink VI... Your analysis is not unusual, but you miss a very critical point: the increasing availability of WMDs in the modern world. That is new. Rogue nations today can, though suitable cutouts, arrange for a terrorist group to obtain a very dangerous weapon, which will be inteded for use in an enemy country. That includes nuclear weapons and biological weapons, with the probabilities going up in the future as more nations get them and the rogue nations get the technology to make them more portable. (A side note: chemical weapons are just not nearly as threatening). We are dealing with relatively low probability events with extremely dire consequences - the sort of thing that human intuition is well equipped to handle (denial is very easy). Imagine that a nuclear weapon is smuggled in a standard shipping container into the US. It goes off, lets say, in downtown LA. Now don't tell me this is hardly a new threat, because that would be nonsense. Lets look at the consequences... Initially, tens of thousands of people are killed by blast, heat and prompt radiation. Because the weapon is a ground burst, large amounts of highly radioactive fallout is lofted into the lower atmosphere and distributed downwind... in this case probably east of downtown LA all the way to the Colorado River. This causes many more deaths and lots of evacuations. This is unlike Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the air bursts resulted in no dangerous fallout. We end up with many tens or even hundreds of thousands of people killed, and a large area uninhabitable for months to decades, depending on the location. Our economy is, of course, trashed. Living in a big city suddenly becomes a real liability. Real estate values in population centers crash, as people flee. The reaction of citizenry is likely to be extreme - they are going to want protection. That means violations of privacy that make the Patriot Act look trivial. Roadblocks, national ID cards, ubiquitous cameras would become the norm. Vigilanteeism would attack people with middle eastern looks - killing them or driving them out of the country. Our population would likely demand that any rogue nation that might have contributed be nuked - millions more, mostly innocent, would die. There are a lot more consequences... So don't trot out the old line about nothing new under the sun. This is a new set of circumstances, a threat that mankind has never before dealt with. It is especially bad because of rogue nations and organizations run by have death cults (Iran, Afhganistan under the Taliban, Al Qaeda), and deterrence is difficult because of the evidence is vaporized. France has recently twice threatened to nuke countries that use terrorism against it. The threat is growing in a technological sense - bioweapons are getting easier to make very rapidly. The production of fissile material is subject to sudden technological breakthroughs, for example using tabletop free electron lasers to make isotopic separation much easire. Don't make the mistake so many do... of assuming that history is linear, and life will just continue pretty much as it has. The United States has not faced a situation where daily life was radically and suddenly changed since World War II, and even then our homeland was never under serious threat. It is human nature to discount threats of this magnitude - to continue to feel, if not believe that nothing that bad will ever happen to one's self. I have observed a similar phenomenon among pilots (I used to be one) when a plane crashed - everyone would sit around and explain why it would never happen to them. The GWOT started with the sudden death of 3000 innocents in our homeland, and the attempted decapitation of our government along with a strong attack on our economy. The attack could have killed tens of thousands, as the 1993 attack against the WTC definitely intended (which should have clued folks in to the newly changed threat from the Salafists). The Iraq war has indeed killed a lot of people. There has been, among other things, a war with Al Qaeda, where we have killed thousands of them. We have also killed thousands (not close to hundreds of thousands) of Iraqis, many of them innocent. I have always considered that war an experiment - war is not simple and results are rarely what you expect. However, the prospect of creating more moderate regimes in the areas breeding the Islamic fundamentalists is certainly tempting - although it may turn out to be unattainable. The GWOT is a whole lot more than Iraq, of course... focusing too closely on Iraq clouds judgement. Life's a bitch, ain't it? If you want to contemplate the historical reality of dealing with big threats and the loss of lots of lives, take a look at Churchill's decision to not warn the citizenry of Coventry when he knew the Germans were going to level it. We have lived during a charmed period, where we have not had to deal with that sort of thinking. Like all such periods, it is now over. Try to understand that. And just to cause you to sleep well, consider the following... Russia continues to have a large number of ICBMs targeted at the US (don't believe the nonsense Clinton spouted about them being targeted on the Indian Ocean - even in the '60s we could retarget our Titan missiles in 30 seconds, and the supposedly secret cryptographic launch code was just all zeros). The Russians are unusally paranoid and suspicious of us... and they have a problem with their own Islamofascists, the Chechens. So Iraq (uninvaded, after sanctions evaporate), run by the always adventuresome but rather unwise Saddam slips a nuke to Al Qaeda or the Islamic Brotherhood. It is to be used against the US, wiothout us knowing the source. But instead, the nuke is set off near the Russian master defense command and control facility near Moscow, suddenly destroying it and taking out a lot of communications facilitites. What do you think the Russians might do? Remember, even Yeltsin ended up with the Russian nuclear "football" activated with 3 minutes to decide, due to a mere bureaucratic screwup which caused a research rocket launch from Norway to be misinterpreted as a sub-launched decapitation attack aimed at Moscow. These are not fairy tales. Those missiles are real, lots of them will still work, and they all have either thermonuclear or biological warheads (probably both, unless they got rid of the latter due to maintenance problems) and thousands of them will come raining down on us if there is a big miscalculation. Now, tell me again that terrorism and rogue states are not novel - in this 21st century context. It is important that people understand the very, very important ramifications summarized in the phrase "post 9-11." Regardless of how well he actually deals with it, Bush does in fact seem to have that understanding. Posted by: John Moore at May 1, 2006 2:28 AM | Permalink John Moore: A very important point here is that the WMD issue morphed from a terrorist threat to an expectation of finding large military quantities of that material (and the expectation that they would be used against US troops). This reframing of the issue (and I don't know how it happened) led to much of the improper conclusions drawn by most people after the war. Here is one possible explanation of how it happenned. The headline of the Washington Post article reads: Deadly Nerve Agent Sarin Is Found in Roadside Bomb; Weapon Probably Not Part of a Stockpile, Experts Say Reading the whole article, you can see that: 1) The authors take great efforts to downplay the finding; 2) contrary to the headline, the experts cited in the body of the article do not say that the weapon was probably not part of a stockpile, but rather they reserved judgement: ""We have no way of knowing the answer at this point,"[Raymnd Zalinskas] ... "This shell may have been scavenged from one of the many munitions storage depots all over the country."[David Kay] 3) the authors don't seem to understand the potential significance of the binary formulation of the sarin. (I am guessing that the problem is ignorance rather than the desire to mislead. But the effect is the same.) The emphasis is placed on the fact that the binary chemicals couldn't mix well when used as an IED, and therefore that the terrorists do not pose a chemical threat. They also quote Gen. Kimmit as saying that the weapon was "an old binary type requiring the mixing of two chemical components in separate sections of the cell before the deadly agent is produced." In the context they provide, a reasonable reader might be led to conclude that this was an ineffective, old technology, whereas I interpret his comment as merely saying it came from the time of Saddam's regime. The subtle twisting of words (often out of ignorance or intellectual laziness) and the application of inappropriate frameworks for interpreting raw data can lead to false memes getting "locked in." This happens time and again, from "No WMD" to "domestic spying" to "SwiftVets were discredited." It even happened to me in this thread -- when Jay mis-read my use of the term "academic integrity" as "academic reputation," but I have little interest in re-opening that battle. Posted by: Neuro-conservative at May 1, 2006 2:44 AM | Permalink John Moore, That goes to editorial judgment and content. I referred to 50s-60s Cold War CBS ties because you raised the subject of CBS's propagandistic behavior "in spite of the Cold War." Thus this reference answers your baseless claim. Your complaint that the CBS/CIA Cold War collaboration was treasonous left wing sabotage does not become any more comprehensible or defensible by virtue of your changing the subject. We know Rummy's Office of Special Plans has outsourced disinformation to a variety of players for GWOT, and it's pretty clear that the effectively mobilized list probably includes bozos like Judith Miller whether they knowingly acted as tools of Pentagon psyops or not. Consequently, the "confined to the 50s-60s" escape route is also closed. The news:disinformaiton ratio is assuredly worse today than during the Cold War given that the Soviet Union was an existential threat to the capitalist bloc in a way radical Islamic fundamentalism never will be absent an invasion of Iran (That would be a perfect Bush II strategic coup to nuke the very Shiites we went into Iraq to "save" from the ethniically Sunni Baathists. Yea, that's the ticket...) One of the reasons we can rest assured of that is the stupendous failure of neo-con interpretations of Soviet capability during the early seventies. They were as catastrophically wrong about the Soviets as they were about the Iraqis. How many times does history have to prove them psychotically and predictably mistaken before that reflects on their credibility with you, John? At least Wolfowitz and his neoconservative allies have been consistent. Since the Cold War ended, they have exaggerated American power in the same way that they exaggerated Soviet power during the Cold War. As if to prove the old adage that people come to resemble their enemies, these former cold warriors treat the United States as a twin of the Soviet Union -- a military empire contemptuous of international law, with satellites instead of allies, justifying wars in its spheres of influence by appeals to ideology ("democracy" rather than "socialism"). In the form of the concentration camps for detainees in Cuba, Iraq and elsewhere run by Donald Rumsfeld's and Wolfowitz's Pentagon, the neoconservatives even provided the United States with a gulag of its own. Party on with the surreality-based community, John. Tony Snow is clearly determined to be good company for you there in making the trip over from the Fox wing of the White House to the West Wing. If it's any consolation, at least you may now rest easy you're safely free of concern over having such unkind epithets as "foreign policy realist" thrown at you. Posted by: Mark Anderson at May 1, 2006 3:11 AM | Permalink Mr. Van Steenwyk, Or is Boolean logic satisfied to tell us that the WMD angels were in fact present on the firing pin of the solitary artillery shell without addressing the question of their choreography, their number, or their gregariousness? Posted by: Mark Anderson at May 1, 2006 3:30 AM | Permalink Mark Anderson thinks he's being clever, but he's actually demonstrating he's "unserious", a word I wish had been invented much earlier. In addition to being snarky, he hopes to influence the rest of us to think binary shells happen as one-offs. To forget to remember where the drums of the bulk agent are. To not worry about the people who would make the stuff once and might, therefore, want to and be able to, make it again. It is such a calculated effort that it is impossible to think he is simply ignorant. He demonstrates that he is aware of such things, or at least capable of being aware of such things if he were to think about the situation for a few seconds. No. He knows. He is trying to discredit that which he knows to be true. Now. Why would he do that? Posted by: Richard Aubrey at May 1, 2006 6:26 AM | Permalink Well, the elite press were yucking it up and laughing like fools last year, as I recall: David Corn of The Nation magazine was one of the few journalists openly critical of Bush, writing on The Nation's website: "This was a callous and arrogant display. For Bush, the misinformation-- or disinformation-- he peddled before the war was no more than material for yucks. As the audience laughed along, he smiled. The false statements (or lies) that had launched a war had become merely another punchline in the nation's capital." MSNBC's Chris Matthews also seemed appalled by the media's reaction (3/25/04): "Well, there's four or five cases where the president told a yuck about the fact he couldn't find weapons of mass destruction, and the press being supportive in their laughter. Maybe sycophantic, but they laughed." And what was Bush getting all those laughs about? He was laughing about there being no WMD in Iraq after he and his administration lied a nation into war. Boy, that was funny. So, it was more than just rewarding to watch Bush get his clock cleaned by a liberal standing a few feet away the other night...he and the oh-so-special pampered press elites. Gee, they can't even take a joke. What'a wrong with them?! Posted by: steve schwenk at May 1, 2006 8:07 AM | Permalink Jay, Defining their dominion The art of framing The capacity to publicly include The positioning effect Shaping a master narrative is the White House mentioned. Didn’t you say, “When in doubt, a sage once said, draw a distinction; a good distinction can get you out of almost any jam” ? I think if ever there was a time for a distinction, or at least a gentle reminder, it is now, so let me take out my brush. Does the Press toil for Us, or itself? If it is Us, then it uses its power for us, correct? I didn’t get the impression you were intending that the piece be utilized only after the results of '04 came out, ’08, maybe, or even 2012. The Press’s “relationship” with the White House is what it is. Although it might make for better daily working conditions for those people in the briefing room to have things more productive, it really is immaterial. There are work-arounds if they’re sought, and negotiations to be made. An imperfect analogy …. Many, maybe most, broken marriages end in divorce. The “conventional” wisdom of the “enlightened” adults of the 70s, 80s, and 90s was that divorce was much better for the children, and it only secondarily, coincidentally of course (!), was much better for the unhappy adults involved. Now, research has found (myths 3 and 6) that actually it’s much better for adults to stay together and work out their problems, with the exception being those marriages that have physical abuse involved. And I don’t recall David Gregory actually punching the lights out of McClellan. Are the theories and ponderings, then, by academics, to be read, discussed, and then ... What? Abandoned when implementation gets tough? Rewritten so as to make implementation easier or to prove their obsolescence that much more quickly so we can move on to the next best theory-du-jour? Posted by: Kristen at May 1, 2006 8:26 AM | Permalink Village …. you really do make it too easy :) ... “Far be it from me to argue that we are all lilly-white, but in our system, there is general agreement that, whatever one's reasons are for breaking the law, there is no escaping payback if one is caught doing so, not the least of which involves one's credibility.” Now you know I’ll hold you to that view when the discussion turns to Mary McCarthy as it’s bound to at some point, so be forewarned! And I love listening to John Dean, for example, expound his respected opinions on CNN, msnbc, NPR and PBS. Posted by: Kristen at May 1, 2006 8:29 AM | Permalink Would you risk America's national security (possibly even the lives of your loved ones, if terrorism strikes at home again) to politicians and ideologues who dithered in the face of WMD threats reasonably believed to exist by almost every responsible informed person; or would you prefer Republicans and conservatives to keep your country strong and safe and keep terrorists on the run? Isn't that precious! What a good little scout. Were you saluting when you wrote that? At least you are right about one thing. The people are going to make that the issue. And after Iraq and Katrina, they know that the corrupt republicans can't shoot straight or do anything well except feed their corporate owners and rob the country blind. THe slogan should be, if you want to get shot in the face, vote GOP! Here's another gem: Now, tell me again that terrorism and rogue states are not novel - in this 21st century context. It is important that people understand the very, very important ramifications summarized in the phrase "post 9-11." Regardless of how well he actually deals with it, Bush does in fact seem to have that understanding. Sure he does. "Bin Laden determined to strike in US." What should we do? Go on vacation!!! Then Bin Laden strikes in US and what did he do? He attacked the wrong country and crippled our ability to deal with terrorists while greatly destabilizing the region and quadrupling terrorist attacks in one year. And not only that, he so ineptly led the occupation that it is now a disaster of epic proportions, our military is hobbled and our country is broke. You people out here defending this guy have NO credibility. None. Bush could do anything, anything at all, and you would support him blindly and in the face of all facts showing what a collosal failure he is. You're the same people who were defending Karl Rove here last year, certain to God that he did not leak Plame's name. When someone claims there were WMD or that Bush did not play fast and loose with the "intelligence," or that Bush and the Gop "get it" and know how to protect us, the response should be loud and boisterous laughter. You're wasting your pixels trying to refute their faith-based "facts" and cultish devotion to this failed president. It cannot be done any more than a moonie can be shown what a nut case the Reverend Moon is. Posted by: steve schwenk at May 1, 2006 8:36 AM | Permalink Steve Lovelady, You did realize, as everyone did I hope, that the material I included after the 3 questions I posed to Jay, including that about Paul Taylor, was actually from Jay’s own postings; they were his words, not mine (and if not, I apologize for not making that clearer). Assuming that you knew that, therefore, you are, in a sense, debating Jay’s inclusion of Taylor’s material in his 2003 analysis of the “master narrative.” And, in that case, I really have to take his side and say that, really, his use of Taylor’s remarks fit perfectly into the points he was trying to make 2 ½ years ago in that piece. That’s actually why I referenced it as well as the linked Democracy Project piece because the writing seemed so “tight” to me… everything really just fit together so well. “This isn't Kansas anymore, Dorothy, and it's not 1992 either, and the spin artists have figured out that they can mold narratives as well as any reporter.” Well, really, can there be any better response than Jay’s own words when he mused in that piece about “negotiating with sources,” hence my original question #3 about re-negotiating with sources ... Jay said, “Yet I repeat: to choose winning as master narrative is a defensible move, non sinister. Its logic has over time settled, the way sediments settle and become earth. Journalists walk that earth. But they are not the only ones— candidates, contributors, consultants, pollsters join them. That’s significant since these people tend to be regular sources for journalists— and one way you negotiate with sources is by agreeing on a common narrative, (W for Winning) the way musicians might settle on the key of F.” You’re an editor. I can safely take it, then, that you don’t want to be part of the group Jay's referring to in his conclusion: “One way to reform journalism is to find a group of people who do it and want a different master narrative generating the stuff they do.” I can appreciate that. Posted by: Kristen at May 1, 2006 8:37 AM | Permalink Kristen: Thank you for your kind words on "Public Journalism as a Democratic Art." After reading that paper and my comments here, you seem to suggest that I have arbitarily changed my views for reasons of ideological convenience. That's a fairly serious charge to hurl about. Also bunk. In fact, I hold to the re-description of press power in that paper: Defining their dominion, the art of framing, the capacity to publicly include, the positioning effect, shaping a master narrative. They are still effective terms, and they help make the power of the press visible. As you noted the paper says next to nothing about the relationship between the White House press and the White House. It says nothing about sticking with rituals that don't work. It says nothing about what to do when an Administration withdraws from a consensus understanding that White Houses Democratic and Republican have held to for 40 years. So your claim that I have "abandoned" those ideas is crap, and you really should withdraw it. In my explanation of the first term on the list, "defining their dominion," I say the press has "the power to define the problem [it] will regard as real and claim responsibility for." The Bush Administration's rollback of the press and its attack on open government--maybe you shrink from those descriptions but I do not, because they are accurate--is a problem journalists should treat as real, and they should define their dominion that way. But I want to be clear: I don't advocate "not covering" Bush and the White House, as in ignoring it. No. In fact, I would be for assigning more reporters to that beat. But they should change their approach, and go with outside-in reporting as their method. By the way, did you see that the new boss wants out of the briefing? "Bolten said it may be worth considering whether to end the daily televised press briefings where reporters and the press secretary frequently air disputes in front of the cameras, but he will leave that decision up to Snow." Jay! In your admittedly mild disagreement with me, you left out the very next paragraph that I wrote, which casts my post in a somewhat different light. To wit: Still, there may be something to the notion that the White House couldn't truly express the depth of its contempt for the media until it had appointed an utterly incompetent spokesman. After all, the very fact that the White House would hire someone with Fleischer's smooth performance skills suggested that, on some level, the administration took the media seriously. I know you can't quote anything, but that strikes me as a significant omission. Cheers, Posted by: Dan Kennedy at May 1, 2006 10:52 AM | Permalink Perhaps doing away with the televised briefing would be an improvement. Without the temptation to mug for the cameras, some of these prima donnas (divas?) might restrain their egos and do that journalistic thingy that they're supposed to be so good at. That would reduce the WH's visceral dislike of them, keep them from looking like morons on television (however great you think you look like, guys, you're wrong), and allow the real news to get out without all the baggage. Presume that's what happens: In the view of journalists hereabouts, is that an improvement? Posted by: Richard Aubrey at May 1, 2006 11:06 AM | Permalink I've said more than once that journalists should just boycott the damned thing, as has Jay. Walk away, and see if you can regenerate your reporting skills which have grown rusty from too many mornings spent batting Scott McClellan around like a badminton birdie, which may make for idle sport but which most assuredly is not reporting. Doing away with the briefing could accomplish the same thing. Stenographers would be forced to try to reclaim the skills they once had as journalists. It's intereting that Bolten/Snow are thinking along those same lines, though for their own reasons. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at May 1, 2006 11:34 AM | Permalink On Howie Kurtz's Reliabe Sources show Sunday, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post suggested, only partly in jest, keeping the briefings, but eliminating the television cameras. The chances of that happening aren't high. Can you imagine ? The networks would squawk like a wounded rooster. And, Snow himself is a TV guy through and through -- and was hired, I presume, partly because he has a TV presence that Scott lacked. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at May 1, 2006 12:33 PM | Permalink Televised or not, the briefings tell us nothing new. As has been said, cover the White House from outside and get the releases off the WH website. Posted by: Dave McLemore at May 1, 2006 12:34 PM | Permalink Bumiller and Milbank think the WH briefings should not be televised. Milbank did concede that maybe 5 minutes of airtime should be allowed so everyone could get their posturing done before they got down to business. Posted by: unnamed source at May 1, 2006 12:35 PM | Permalink Televised briefing, as Conover had noted (I believe), is Kabuki theater. There is a little something in the briefings for everyone. It allows the press haters to throw TV bricks at reporters. And for Bush haters (or strong dislikers for legit or illegitimate reasons) to note his evasive press secretary. Can reporters expect Snow to return calls, if they don't attend the gaggle or briefing? Can we put Genie back in the bottle? Posted by: bush's jaw at May 1, 2006 12:47 PM | Permalink Colbert's performance will live in cultural memory a long time. Via a Slashdot story comment (“Colbert New Comic-in-Chief”), an implicitly contrasting New York Daily News take on Colbert: "It was an insider crowd, as insider a crowd as you'll ever have, and he didn't do the insider jokes," said BET founder Bob Johnson. The “insiders” just do not understand the media anymore. Posted by: nedu at May 1, 2006 12:54 PM | Permalink Jonah Goldberg at NRO posed the following question: ...it is enduringly fascinating how deeply invested many liberals are in comedians (and to a lesser extent, movie stars). There's of course Al Franken and Jeneane Garofalo (a recovering somewhat funny person), but even Jon Stewart is increasingly becoming a Big Thinker according to some liberals (at least from conversations I've had with them and bits and pieces on the web)... it would be interesting to hear a serious liberal explore the reason for why this is so. Posted by: Neuro-conservative at May 1, 2006 1:26 PM | Permalink Mark Anderson thinks he's being clever, but he's actually demonstrating he's "unserious", a word I wish had been invented much earlier. In this case, I agree. He's normally much better. Nobody has attempted yet to shoot down or falsify the fact that the CIA found that the Iraqis retained seed stocks for a biological warfare program yet, either. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at May 1, 2006 1:27 PM | Permalink At least Bush didn't have a hissy-fit like Clinton did in '96. Clinton demanded that C-Span not re-broadcast Don Imus' rant against him at the '96 WHCD. Imus was prophetic, too---he was ranting about Clinton's womanizing BEFORE Monica. No wonder Clinton wanted to suppress it. Posted by: unreliable source at May 1, 2006 1:55 PM | Permalink unreliable/URL, Posted by: bush's jaw at May 1, 2006 2:08 PM | Permalink Neuro, anyone who watched that and thought that Colbert "clunked" had better watch it two or three more times, maybe on slow. Maybe with a dictionary in hand. Colbert is the fastest-thinking political satirist in America. His performance was astonishing -- assuming you get the joke. If he didn't keep the room in chuckles, perhaps it's because he hit the press corps just as hard as he hit Bush. And isn't that what you guys have been calling for all along on this site? Really sticking it to the press? You got it. That conservatives believe it is out-of-line to look to poets and satirists and artists and writers and directors and musicians and even actors for social commentary is a pretty clear indicator that they have no understanding whatsoever of the traditional role of the artist throughout the history of the Western Civilization they so purport to honor and defend against barbarism. Any idea why medieval kings kept court jesters around ... ? It's very, very interesting that Goldberg views a comedian doing hard-hitting political commentary as mere clownery, and views the President of the United States doing standup comedy shtick as worthy of his high office. Goldberg says of "the left", the most appealing figures are ones who get to hide behind clown make-up whenever the kitchen gets too hot? That assertion best describes one man in that room. And it ain't Colbert. Posted by: Richard B. Simon at May 1, 2006 2:21 PM | Permalink For those who complain about the lack of openness in government, how about in the press? At least one good thing about having TV at the briefings is that the great unwashed get to see their journalistic representatives in action. I think that's a good thing. Taking out the TV cameras removes on the few chances that the public has to see journalists before they put on their objectivity suit and their TV makeup and dance for us. Posted by: John Moore at May 1, 2006 2:36 PM | Permalink Colbert was indeed very funny. On the other hand, this "traditional role of artists" stuff has been used to impugn credibility to some real fools. "That conservatives believe it is out-of-line to look to poets and satirists and artists [yada yada] social commentary ... that they have no understanding ... of the traditional role of the artist throughout the history ..." Obviously, you have no clue what conservatives think. Yesterday I was reading an article in either The Weekly Standard or National Review appreciating South Park. Yes, art has sometimes offered useful social commentary - especially when more direct commentary, unlike today, was dangerous. Today it is often totally silly, or simply criticism without a hint of talent or art. Modern artists seem to believe that every one of them has both talent, and all importantly, a "message." Rarely do the two actually coexist. All you have to do is read what artists write to see how they puff themselves up far beyond their real importance by asserting this magical power. If you want to see really bad art, look at the message attempts by almost every artist today - most notably in Hollywood and pop music. Colbert was hardly enlightening. He was funny, very funny. Let's just accept it as that and not hand him the mantle of the immmortal bard! Posted by: John Moore at May 1, 2006 2:45 PM | Permalink Colbert's performance will live in cultural memory a long time. Jay didn't get into the audience's reaction of Colbert, for good reasons. Colbert's should be judged for his routine, words and video with Helen Thomas, not with the audience's reaction. The correspondent dinner is a tough room for any comic, especially after dinner. I remember all the analysis of Jon Stewart after the Oscar's. It's a different live, huge audience. Doesn't make Stewart and Daily Show any less spot-on or funny because movie stars at the Oscar's didn't howl at his jokes. And can we analyze the humor of the Oscar's audience for not laughing hardily? Can't judge Colbert by the audience and the audience by it's reaction, unless you think that WH reporters and the WH are the Colbert's sole audience? Posted by: bush's jaw at May 1, 2006 2:47 PM | Permalink Obviously, you have no clue what conservatives think. - John Moore It's actually fairly obvious what conservatives think: Liberal Hollywood actors ought to shut up. Conservative Hollywood actors ought to have a Constitutional amendment to allow them to run for president. Posted by: Richard B. Simon at May 1, 2006 3:56 PM | Permalink Widely quoted truthyness: Here's how it works: the president makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know - fiction! Editor and Publisher: Several veterans of past dinners, who requested anonymity, said the presentation was more directed at attacking the president than in the past. Several said previous hosts, like Jay Leno, equally slammed both the White House and the press corps. “This was anti-Bush,” said one attendee. “Usually they go back and forth between us and him.” Another noted that Bush quickly turned unhappy. “You could see he stopped smiling about halfway through Colbert,” he reported. After the gathering, Snow, while nursing a Heineken outside the Chicago Tribune reception, declined to comment on Colbert. “I’m not doing entertainment reviews,” he said. “I thought the president was great, though.” Goldberg: After all, does anyone really believe that the press corps in attendance is ill-disposed to Bush-bashing humor? Seriously? The audience didn't laugh — as anyone could tell from watching C-SPAN —because Colbert clunked. Period. Da. Colbert clunked. Pravda. But is it pravilno? Truthyness. Posted by: nedu at May 1, 2006 4:08 PM | Permalink I like the scientific basis portion: None of the circuits involved in conscious reasoning were particularly engaged...Essentially, it appears as if partisans twirl the cognitive kaleidoscope until they get the conclusions they want...Everyone...may reason to emotionally biased judgments when they have a vested interest in how to interpret 'the facts.'" I love Wikipedia, but I have no idea about the truthiness of Wiki's content. Posted by: bush's jaw at May 1, 2006 4:31 PM | Permalink
And Maybe someone should tell Tony Snow that. Posted by: Ann Kolson at May 1, 2006 4:34 PM | Permalink I thought Goldbeg was a little smarter than that. I will have to revise my view "Tyrants of all varieties have always known about the value of providing the masses with amusements as a means of pacifying discontent. But most of them could not have even hoped for a situation in which the masses would ignore that which does not amuse. That is why tyrants have always relied, and still do, on censorship. Censorship, after all, is the tribute tyrants pay to the assumption that a public knows the difference between serious discourse and entertainment -- and cares." -Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death (1986) p. 141 Posted by: Richard B. Simon at May 1, 2006 5:44 PM | Permalink Ann, Either we found bio war seed stocks, according to the CIA or we didn't. I've linked to the report verifying that the CIA says we did. Are you saying the CIA was wrong? Based on...based on...based on your preferences? Journos are supposed to be committed to the facts. So I supplied a fact and you can't get around it. Heck, it almost made Mark Anderson's head explode. Fact: Saddam Hussein maintained biological weapon seed stocks even up to the invasion. Now, you can falsify it if you find something else from the CIA saying these stocks turned out to be something else. But for now, I think you need to concede the point. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at May 1, 2006 6:37 PM | Permalink I guess the NRO and fellow sycophants feel the need to come to the President's defense because they sense that Colbert scored, which they find very troubling. When Bush is shown to be a fool, they are shown to be a fool's fools, or something like that. And they know that mockery is lethal and often irrefutable. In the end, once again, these tough guys can sure dish it out, but they whine like a bunch of girls when they are the ones being mocked. Posted by: steve schwenk at May 1, 2006 6:45 PM | Permalink Jason, Would those be the same seed stock that predates Gulf War I? And that we knew were there because US firms sold it to Saddam after the US government approved the same of such material? Following the Iraq/Iran war: "Washington restored full diplomatic relations [with Iraq] by November 1984, extending financial support, agricultural credits, military technology and intelligence, the seed stock for biological weapons, and political support to the regime in Baghdad, then, as now, led by Saddam Hussein." If your sole point is some legalistic one that remnants of Saddam's bio-chemical and nuclear weapons arsenal existed in Iraq at the time of the 2003 invasion, OK. We knew that. Your own words above indicate so: "Granted, the munitions found thus far do not demonstrate that Iraq had an ongoing chemical weapons production program after about 1991." The U.S. government knew where they were and pretty much what they were because we okayed the sale and shipment of much of it. But these remnants were not usuable, offered no immediate harm to our troops or to the region and certainly weren't worth the alarums of 'mushroom clouds' that the Bush administration made as the reason for war. Again, so you really want to go to war over ancient history? Posted by: Dave McLemore at May 1, 2006 7:07 PM | Permalink Ann, No, Jason, I'm saying that even the President of the United States acknowledges that we found no WMD's. What we did find, as you have acknowledged yourself, were 12-year-old scraps of a WMD program abandoned in 1991. Similarly, in the summer of 2003, the administration disavowed those phony words about yellowcake in the earlier State of the Union address that some here are still trying to defend -- and George Tenent subsequently took the fall. You guys are chasing ephemera that even Bush himself has distanced himself from. Try to pay attention to your own president. And then try to catch up -- although I will admit that is difficult to keep up with the pace at which this White House backpedals. Posted by: Ann Kolson at May 1, 2006 7:29 PM | Permalink Jason, show us those links to some tube(s) a guy in Iraq buried in his garden. Now put those tube(s) together with yellowcake from Niger (or for you guys, uranium from anywhere in Africa) that Iraq attempted to buy, (had a meeting with someone, somewhere in Africa in 1999 or some year, no proof any uranium was ever purchased), not to include the technology and ability to enrich the uranium that were never bought, then we have mushroom clouds (in America) in how many years? Posted by: bush's jaw at May 1, 2006 7:48 PM | Permalink Sisyphus -- Yup. Couldn't have said it better myself. Lawrence of Arabia redux, 80 years later. Another "empire" sinks into the dust of Arabian deserts. The more things change, the more they stay the same ... and there is nothing new under the sun. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at May 1, 2006 9:24 PM | Permalink Schwenk, go ahead and mock my formulation of the choice that Americans face, if it grates your sophisticated sensibilities. But I agree with you that "the people are going to make that the issue." Although, by the time Republicans and their political allies are finished with the campaign (I can't wait for paid advertisements to start), I think you'll find a majority of Americans will conclude that the Democrat party is unserious about, and should not be trusted with, national security. Despite President Bush's imperfections, in the global war on terror moonbat Democrats are ceding to Republicans the same advantage on national security that the GOP enjoyed during the Cold War; and well justified in my view. Posted by: Trained Auditor at May 1, 2006 9:56 PM | Permalink Would those be the same seed stock that predates Gulf War I? Since Saddam Hussein was required to destroy them, your question is irrelevant. If your sole point is some legalistic one that remnants of Saddam's bio-chemical and nuclear weapons arsenal existed in Iraq at the time of the 2003 invasion, OK. We knew that. 1.) "Remnants" are not "seed stocks." One does not go through the expense and hazard of maintaining seed stocks of smallpox, anthrax, etc., without having some intent to use them going forward. 2.) Under the 1991 cease fire aggreement, Saddam was required to destroy all his WMD. That includes stocks of bio agents. Indeed, the cease fire is meaningless if it DOESN'T include stocks of bio agents. There is no possible reading of the UN Resolutions and the cease fire aggreement that would allow Saddam to keep them and remain in compliance. Following the Iraq/Iran war: "Washington restored full diplomatic relations [with Iraq] by November 1984, extending financial support, agricultural credits, military technology and intelligence, the seed stock for biological weapons Let us stipulate for the sake of argument that your claim is true: Some of the seed stocks are of US origin. Now please point out in the cease fire agreement that Iraq agrees to dismantle and destroy all bio weapons programs and stocks "except those of US origin." That's the absurd logic you're desperately trying to cling to. I can't believe how you people will twist yourselves in knots trying to make excuses for Saddam Hussein. The origin of the components of ANY WMD program in Iraq are irrelevant to Husseins obligation to destroy them. Your own words above indicate so: "Granted, the munitions found thus far do not demonstrate that Iraq had an ongoing chemical weapons production program after about 1991." A quick review of some basic reading comprehension skills are in order. Note the presence of the words "ongoing" and "production." I put them in there for a reason. It seems pretty clear that if Hussein was maintaining stocks of bio agent, he had an ongoing research program and/or he was planning to restart production at a later date, when the heat was off. No other explanation suffices, and that is consistent with the burial of the centrifuge. The U.S. government knew where they were and pretty much what they were because we okayed the sale and shipment of much of it. Again, there is no clause in the cease fire agreement that requires Saddam to destroy all WMD programs "except those of US origin." So stop trying to blow chaff by flogging this stupid red herring (Yes, I mix metaphors. Deal with it). It might work with the muddle-heads you're used to dealing with around the water cooler. Saddam was supposed to have destroyed his bio stocks. He did not. He kept them. He was therefore in violation. Q.E.D. But these remnants were not usuable, Sure they were. They were useable as seed stocks. offered no immediate harm to our troops There you go reaching for excuses. If Saddam Hussein maintained these stocks, you cannot rule out the possibility that he could transfer them to someone else. It's pretty easy. There is nothing in the cease fire agreement that requires Saddam to destroy his WMD components and program "except those which offer immediate harm to US troops." That's just stupid. or to the region And stupider. Tell that to the Kurds and Shia. certainly weren't worth the alarums of 'mushroom clouds' that the Bush administration made as the reason for war. Hate to be the one to have to break it to you, Ace, but bio weapons don't make mushroom clouds. And you can't be certain of a damn thing except this: Saddam Hussein was required to destroy these stocks. He didn't. Again, so you really want to go to war over ancient history? I'm not. You're the one going into ancient history, not me. I'm just looking at affairs as they existed in 2002 and 2003. Saddam Hussein maintained stocks of biological agent which could be used to kick start a larger production program when the heat was off. The stocks could also have been transferred, at any time, to Al Qaeda, another rogue state, or another terrorist group. You cannot rule it out. That's why Hussein was required to destroy those stocks. I hate to sound like a broken record, but getting through to journalists on factual issues is like housebreaking a puppy...you have to shove their noses in their mess and beat them again and again and again before they will grasp the point. And you must concede the point: Saddam Hussein maintained stocks of biological agent as late as 2003. Anne: What we did find, as you have acknowledged yourself, were 12-year-old scraps of a WMD program abandoned in 1991. No. If that were the case, we would have found empty petri dishes and a refrigerator. The CIA specifically mentioned "seed stocks." Saddam Hussein was required to destroy them. He didn't. Maintaining your seed stocks is not "abandoning your program." Maybe he put production on hold. That was exactly the conclusion of the Kay and Dulfeur reports. "Ongoing weapons of mass destruction programme activities," etc. Similarly, in the summer of 2003, the administration disavowed those phony words about yellowcake in the earlier State of the Union address that some here are still trying to defend Anne, you are so breathtakingly poorly informed you could join the flat-earth society. Specificall which of those 16 words from the State of the Union can be shown to be false? Go ahead. Take the challenge. I believe there's a reward out there of $10,000 dollars if you can prove them false. No winners yet. Good luck. You guys are chasing ephemera that even Bush himself has distanced himself from. Where did Bush say that the CIA was wrong and that Hussein did not maintain those stocks? Show me. Bush's jaw: Since you, too, are firing irrelevant chaffe rather than engaging on the facts, I must assume you concede the point: Saddam Hussein maintained stocks of biological agents right through the end of his regime in 2003. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at May 1, 2006 9:57 PM | Permalink the more things change, the more they stay the same (Memo to self: Regularly check Jay's original posts for new additions.) I noticed Hiltzik lost his column and blog (also by reading Kurtz' Q&A). I know it's not proper to go into your own blog comment and post under a pseudonym to praise your real-name points or blog. (Hitzik also debated -- with and w/o his pseudo minions -- with right-wingers on their sites about LATimes editorials.) But what are the marching orders for reporters and pseudos? What if a reporter on his or her own time, in off hours or the middle of the night, goes to firedoglake or rightwingsparkle (or any conservative blogs with active comments), and posts under a pseudo. Is that wrong? Can't journos be anons on their own time, with their own thoughts, like most people on the web? If a reporter posts comments under his or her real name during the work day, his or her editor might think that the reporter has too much free time. Even the blogger who argued with and outed Hiltzik didn't think he should be disciplined beyond ... Posted by: bush's jaw at May 1, 2006 10:07 PM | Permalink It seems some folks are living in a partial world. This is a kid's world, with the blackboard wiped clean of inconvenient marks. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at May 1, 2006 10:08 PM | Permalink But I agree with you that "the people are going to make that the issue." Although, by the time Republicans and their political allies are finished with the campaign (I can't wait for paid advertisements to start), I think you'll find a majority of Americans will conclude that the Democrat party is unserious about, and should not be trusted with, national security. The problem is, your rhetoric is dated to the point where it sounds like self-parody. People will laugh in your face with that kind of talk nowadays. With a 68% disapproval rating, based largely on this president's failure to provide the national security promised, it's the last thing the gop is going to win on this fall. Moonbats have more appeal to the American people on national security now than do failed and incompetent wingnuts. And if you promise them more of the same, as you seem to propose, they will likely run you out of town mighty quick like. In case you have not noticed, people are fed up. The thrill is gone. They're not going to listen to a bunch of huffing and puffing from the gang that can't shoot straight. Posted by: steve schwenk at May 1, 2006 10:29 PM | Permalink Mixed metaphors are the least of your problems, Jason. Whenever you feel backed into a corner, you fall back on legalisms and calling people's reasoning 'stupid' or 'moronic.' Predictable as high tide. No one here supports Saddam Hussein or doesn't acknowledge he was a crook and a monster. Just noting that this evidence of WMD you keep flogging doesn't meet the standard for sending young people to war. Posted by: Dave McLemore at May 1, 2006 10:30 PM | Permalink Schwenk, you sound as overconfident as Democrats in 2002. This guy was a bit more careful. Please understand that odds set against Republicans and conservatives are unreliable before our paid advertising reduces the communication advantage conferred upon the left by their accomplices in the dominant media. We'll see. Posted by: Trained Auditor at May 1, 2006 11:10 PM | Permalink Jeez, I guess Iraq is not the only place with dead-enders. Posted by: SpinMD at May 1, 2006 11:16 PM | Permalink And for good order's sake, I reproduce once again the relevant portions from the Duelfer Report: Duelfer Report Jason et al are desperate for something, anything really, to hang their hats on. Their argument apparently is no longer about the WMD claims that were used to back up the Iraq invasion, but about a narrow 'boolean question' of whether or not Mr. Hussein fully accounted for the pre-1991 CBW stocks. I now realize that I have been wasting my time trying to argue an inanity. Posted by: village idiot at May 1, 2006 11:19 PM | Permalink But VI, they couldn't be the old stuff because that was ordered destroyed. Ipso facto. Or something. I now realize that I have been wasting my time trying to argue an inanity. Me too. Posted by: Dave McLemore at May 1, 2006 11:38 PM | Permalink I have been wasting my time trying to argue an inanity. Posted by: bush's jaw at May 1, 2006 11:39 PM | Permalink Anne, you are so breathtakingly poorly informed you could join the flat-earth society. Specificall which of those 16 words from the State of the Union can be shown to be false? First of all, Jacob, it's not "Anne." It's "Ann." You'll need to know that to make out the certified check properly. Secondly, I'm afraid I'll have to share that $10,000 reward with Ari Fleischer, Condoleeza Rice and George Tenet. But, hey -- I'll take $2,500. Forward payment soonest. In order: On January 28, 2003, Bush said: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.". On July 7, 2003, exactly one day after Joseph Wilson's original Times article, White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer took back the 16 words, calling them "incorrect:" Fleischer: Now, we've long acknowledged -- and this is old news, we've said this repeatedly -- that the information on yellow cake did, indeed, turn out to be incorrect. Four days later, Condoleezza Rice acknowledged that the 16 words were, in retrospect, a mistake. Rice: "What we've said subsequently is, knowing what we now know, that some of the Niger documents were apparently forged, we wouldn't have put this in the President's speech -- but that's knowing what we know now." That same day, CIA Director George Tenet took personal responsibility for the appearance of the 16 words in Bush's speech: Tenet: "These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the President." Between Ari, Condi, Tenet and me, the "flat-earth society" is getting a little crowded. But, honestly Jason, we invite you to join us. Posted by: Ann Kolson at May 1, 2006 11:39 PM | Permalink It seems some folks are living in a partial world. It doesn't contain details from Duelfer and Kay. It doesn't contain various WMD and dual-use facilities. It doesn't contain the barely-avoided mass death in Amman, which consisted of truckloads of high explosive and chemical weapons which came from Syria. It doesn't include the Israeli intel and Iraqi officials saying the stuff was shipped to Iraq. It doesn't include US aerial and satellite coverage of heavy convoys to Syria whose cargoes are unknown, at least publicly. Richard, since you swear by Mr. Kay and Mr. Duelfer, this is what they said on the question of Syria: March 2005 Report Addenda Posted by: village idiot at May 1, 2006 11:44 PM | Permalink Village …. you really do make it too easy :) ...“Far be it from me to argue that we are all lilly-white, but in our system, there is general agreement that, whatever one's reasons are for breaking the law, there is no escaping payback if one is caught doing so, not the least of which involves one's credibility.” Go for it, but promise me that you will be similarly gleeful when Mr. Roberts (R., Kansas) gets busted for sharing classified information with reporters .... :-) Posted by: village idiot at May 2, 2006 12:02 AM | Permalink That’s fine, vi… We’ll call it a race between Jay Rockefeller and Roberts. I don’t know, though, Mr. Loose Lips himself, may have trouble not blurting something out under the pressure to win, though, like he did to Chris Wallace during a November, 2005, interview. “I took a trip by myself in January of 2002 to Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria, and I told each of the heads of state that it was my view that George Bush had already made up his mind to go to war against Iraq – that that was a predetermined set course which had taken shape shortly after 9/11.” Posted by: Kristen at May 2, 2006 12:43 AM | Permalink Well, it appears folks have had some fun while I was at work. Just a couple of issues. David dragged in the "we knew where they were because the US sold them the seed stock" meme. This is both flogging a red herring (that the seed stock came from the US) and making a totally ridiculous assertion (so we knew where they were). Furthermore, it is a standard trope when people want to criticize the US, especially Reagan. The correct assertion that "we" sold them is never cited with the appropriate context. The stock came from a private non-profit company (American Type Culture Collection) which provided that sort of stuff to anyone who asked, and specifically calls itself a global resource. Any lab could have ordered up Anthrax or Botulinum, back in the innocent (and naive days) before folks were paying much attention to bio-terrorism dangers. Trying to implicate the government in something nefarious this way is simply pathetic. "We" didn'[t sell it - a scientific supply cooperative which happens to be in the US did. The inference that we knew where they were because we sold them requires no refutation beyond what an 8 year old could immediately derive. VI's posting quoting "military significance" a "proliferation concerns" is yet, once again reverting to the prevailing narrative rather than the actual historical context. The GWOT is not about proliferation or military threats from WMDs - no matter how many times the press and the Democrats imply otherwise. It is about terrorism, which in this context means small quantities of those weapons coming into the possesion of terrorists. Proliferation concerns are of course involved, because large quantities means some can be given to terrorists. But small quantities are equally useful. Does anyone here understand the difference? Is anyone willing to accept the relevance of the, uh, terrorist implications of actions in the Global War on Terror, as opposed to the usual nonsense about large scale production and militarily significant stocks? Let's also get into the science a tad, although I realize (from reading Columbia Journalism School's requirements) that journo's don't need to ever study a real science (as opposed to intro anthropolgy). The scientist told to keep seed stock in his fridge had Clostridium botulinum. That bacteria produces several toxins, one of which is the most powerful toxin known to man - in other words, a bacteria culture is essentially a chemical weapons factory for stuff vastly more lethal than VX nerve agent (which is far more dangerous than small quantities of Plutonium). But... Botulinum is really not all that hard to come by. If it was, people wouldn't periodically die of botulism poison. But... that seed stock was most likely an optimal strain for bioweaponizing. So one one hand, Iraq was purposefully keeping seed stock of a very deadly weapon, but on the other hand, somewhat similar feedstock isn't too hard to get. The first shows the intent was clear and establishes the likelihood that they kept other stuff that hasn't been found. It shows an intent to be ready to produce WMDs when the impending collapse of the sanctions happened. The second shows that this particular find didn't represent as much danger as it did evidence of future danger. Burying a centrifuge is also not the act of a nation which has peaceful plans. It is the act of a nation which expects to need that centrifuge in the future, and probably not to plant daisies in. The assassinations of a number of senior weapons scientists shortly after the war is, to put it mildly, also a bit suspicious. Killing is a pretty effective and long established way of silencing people who know where naughty things are hidden. Lets also remember that 4 years of an intensive inspection regime in the '90s NEVER found any evidence of a biological warfare program. As I said before, only the defection of a Saddam son-in-law brought out the news that there was in fact an enormous biowar program. So when the ISG says they didn't find X, they mean that. This is not the same as saying that they proved it doesn't exist - a much more difficult task. Finally, keeping seed stock of certain biological agents is easy and it can be hidden in a small medicine bottle buried in the desert. For a regime which that buried entire MIG fighters in the sand, it does lead one to wonder. Do you really believe that we found everything? While botulinum may be relatively easy for terrorists to get, good strains of Anthrax, which can be stored for at least 100 years just by drying them out, are quite a bit harder. Iraq was also one of the last countries to eradicate smallpox, and very likely kept some samples (in the old days, this was normal medical practice - put a few infected scabs in the fridge in case you later wanted to run a test or something). As for what did or did not go to Syria, the question is problematical. The head of the National Image and Mapping Agency, who retired just after the war, was convinced that he saw WMDs transported to Syria. He no doubt knows more about remote sensing data and how to interpret it than anyone here. ISG found no evidence. Who is right? I don't know - do you? There was certainly imagery of a lot of stuff moving to Syria - so what was it? Gold bars for the soon to be exiled Saddamites? Chemical weapons to be used during the planned insurgency (yes, the insurgency was planned before the war by M14, even though Saddam didn't believe we would make it to Baghdad)? Radioactive waste to be used in a dirty bomb in the future? Furniture for the soon-to-be exiles? Russian technology being removed so we wouldn't have concrete evidence of the high level of Russian involvement with Iraq (the last disclosure on which was Russian intelligence giving the Iraqi's our complete force dispositions and war plans, probably from a mole in Centcom). Of course, all of this is squabbling about history. Why are we battling about this now? I would suggest that (gasp) it's because of MSM's strong commitment to the "Bush Lied, People Died" narrative. After all, it makes not a whit of practical difference about the future, and history can be left to historians. That is, unless there is policial hay to be made in the present - say, by continually reinforcing the idea that Bush is a liar. So I hold to my assertion that the Bush Lied narrative is very much part of MSM thought and hence steers MSM reporting, as clearly evidenced by the discussions right here on this board. [RELEVANCE ALERT:] I wonder what Tony Snow will do with that situation. Posted by: John Moore at May 2, 2006 12:50 AM | Permalink Jay, clarification ... I haven’t “charged” you with abandoning anything. The opposite of my intended meaning. I’m the one who linked to the paper(s) in the first place and I could just have easily simply said to all the press people out there, “Hey -- What Jay Said,” except that really wouldn’t have made for a very productive post, or so I thought at the time, although now I regret that choice entirely. Your response to the first of my questions was that because there is no relationship with the White House, “there's no point in trying to change the narrative.” I completely did not and do not follow that logic – made no sense to me. In both of the pieces I referenced, you seemed to be saying that the power to make changes to the master narrative(s) lies within the Press itself. So I then felt that perhaps a reminder to you that no where in the Public Journalism piece in particular do you mention the White House (hence my reference to the elections of ’04, ’08, and 12 b/c, again, I presumed that your stated theses applied to whoever is in charge), so why does it show up in your response to me as “no relationship with WH, ergo no change in narrative.” ? To rephrase my last remark, where I used the term “abandon,” to which it sounds you took personal offense….. “Am I, a reader of your papers (you being the academic for this exercise), but more importantly, all those other readers of your papers --- those press people out there somewhere --- are we to just talk about our problems, retheorize why they’re happening over and over, and then just give up and take our notepads and go home when the going gets tough? What about the public good then? And you know what? Don’t even go to that “It's the power to define the problem you will regard as real and claim responsibility for” quote. Believe it or not, that section, actually, Defining Dominion, was really where I was originally going to start in commenting on what I perceive to be one of the biggest mistakes that we, the public, are paying the price for in reportage and coverage by much of the press!!! I decided not to go there b/c I felt by sticking to the master narrative tract, it fit very nicely in with Snow’s appt.; that is, if one looks for opportunities rather than obstacles to move forward not look back. But, now that you brought it up, actually, :), when you said that originally, in Public Journalism, you immediately followed it with “That's what the disease model did. It limited the problem the medical profession chose to own. “To me, this describes precisely what “The Press” is doing now—choosing a dominion, exercising its power, in a way that excludes large numbers of the public and actually works against the public good, in time of War, so even though you may hold up a Value --- speaking truth to power --- using facts (whose?) to keep us all in reality (whose)? ---- it’s just like examining campaign ads….. You even add that defining dominion can be abused (certainly, as it’s currently being practiced) and “Any redefinition of the journalist's domain must be grounded, not in professional prerogatives, but in public values.” All of these thoughts that you wrote from this piece spoke of the misuse of Power…. Hence my reference to “If the Press works for Us, then it uses its power for us, correct?” in my comment to you. Enough clarification. Enough trying to talk about press theory and practice, not press stories. It’s just way too much work! I suppose it’s easier to focus comments on refighting policy, ideology, “facts,” and comedy but that gets boring after a while. No challenge. Anyway, here’s a link ... HotAir I like this whole idea of video. Posted by: Kristen at May 2, 2006 12:58 AM | Permalink We have also killed thousands (not close to hundreds of thousands) of Iraqis, many of them innocent. Check this out; it puts the total death toll of the Iraq war at 227,000 and the number seriously injured at 477,000. According to this site - * For each of the 2,986 people killed in the attacks of September 11, 2001, about 75 Iraqis and 4 Afghans have been killed during and since the US attacks. * More than six times as many people have been killed in these wars, than all the people killed in all terrorist attacks worldwide since 1968. Some kick-ass GWOT, eh? If that does not sober you up, I don't know what will. Posted by: village idiot at May 2, 2006 1:00 AM | Permalink Village. That's a resource? That explains a lot. Where did the terrorists get the stuff that almost blew up downtown Amman? You are aware of recent intel, Iraqi and Israeli, about the WMD in Syria, right? And, as you probably know but wish you didn't, the administration has released, and is slowly translating, a huge number of documents captured in Iraq. Drip, drip. Drip. Some have been verrrry interesting. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at May 2, 2006 7:50 AM | Permalink TA, I am not a devotee of any political party and am well aware of the ability of the dems to fall for traps set by the GOP campaign machine. I concede that the GOP has a vastly superior operation. That's how they manage to win while advancing policies very few people support. So you are right, it's not in the bag for the dems yet. But the rhetoric from 2002 is not going to cut it this time. You know the tired old 'been there, done that' routine. As one great Republican said, you can fool all of the people some of the and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. If the election were held today, the GOP would experience a blood bath. Few dispute that. The big unknown between now and election day is Iran. That's the only issue of sufficient magnitude to really shake things up. Bush is desperate and weak, and we all know how reckless the man is, so he could try to force a war on the nation again, another unnecessary and foolish war just. Because if he loses congress, he's going down in history as one of the great failures of modern times. But this time, everyone knows how the game is played. The president is seen by more people as a liar than a straight shooter. I have my doubts that he will be able to get away with it. Posted by: steve schwenk at May 2, 2006 8:11 AM | Permalink The net neutrality "debate" is advancing. It appears that the WaPo is siding with the large telecoms. If this is the case, is it because of sour grapes again? Or perhaps the WaPo really does feel threatened to the bone by blogs and sees this bill as a way to hobble the competition. I'm worried about this. We could lose this great medium for communication and political discourse. Just listen to Snow's predecessor, Mike McCurry. He sounds like a lunatic, and he's the main point man for the telecoms: Reading lots of comments on my last post, I guess my point got made: the culture and discourse of the Internet is not what you would teach kids at the dinner table -- unless you kept a bar of soap handy. On net neutrality, I feel like screaming "puh-leeeze." The First Amendment of the Internet is under assault! If the telecoms get their way, beore long, it will no longer be economically feasible for people to blog for a living. The corporations are going to want to take that option away from the independent bloggers by jacking the fees up for bandwidth so high that only low-traffic blogs can survive. That real estate is just too valuable and too threatening to leave it to a bunch of smart citizens unrestrained by the "free (for GOP donors) market." Corporate blogs will replace the ma and pa operations. They will do to the internet what they have done to every other public means of communication, such as radio, TV, phones. No more small operators allowed, sorry. Posted by: steve schwenk at May 2, 2006 8:54 AM | Permalink I'm sorry, Kristen, I guess I just didn't understand your question. Still don't. Why would Snow be an opportunity to change the press narrative of the Bush Admistration? (Is that what you're asking?) Bush in announcing the pick said, "He understands like I understand that the press is vital to our democracy. As a professional journalist, Tony Snow understands the importance of the relationship between government and those whose job it is to cover the government." In other words, "I've always been a press person, Tony's a press person, everyone in my Administration is a press person. We may not love everything said about us, but gosh darn it we respect the press corps. Vital to our democracy. Just vital. I was saying to Josh the other day how vital the press was to our democracy, wasn't I Josh?..." No change there. Same dissembling Bush. Won't take responsibility for nuthin. The buck stops somwhere over there. Forgets, "The best way to get the news is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world." Andrew Card never said there is no fourth estate and the press has no check-and-balance function. "Just another special interest group" was never a part of our philosophy. If we say it didn't happen, it didn't happen, and so on. And on. That's Bush, Mister Mission Accomplished. As for... is an academic paper just a paper, and "are we to just talk about our problems, retheorize why they’re happening over and over, and then just give up and take our notepads and go home when the going gets tough?"... Maybe I don't understand this question either, but I'm sure you're aware that "Public Journalism as a Democratic Art" corresponded to a public journalism movement that actually influenced what went on in hundreds of newsrooms around the U.S. I don't think you can say it was just ivory tower theorizing (Is that what you meant by "theory-du-jour?") As for, "Does the Press toil for Us, or itself? If it is Us, then it uses its power for us, correct?" Correct. It's supposed to do that. But how that is done, whether it's being done now, how to make sure it's done tomorrow-- these are always going to be matters for argument. That's why I started PressThink. The only improvement in the relationship that I can see will come when the press leaves the White House, and lets the Adminstration communicate its decisions and policies itself, with Hugh Hewitt's help. Instead of going around the filter, the filter packs up and leaves. But the people who could accomplish that are (excuse my ivory tower language) chickenshit and won't do it. Thank you for your thoughts, Jay. Actually, I'm going to think more about them during the day today and respond later when I can try to be very concise. I've already devoted a few minutes this morning giving in to a rather juvenile impluse to spar with Village, so now I find my self running late for something. Posted by: Kristen at May 2, 2006 9:41 AM | Permalink Well, village, I suppose I’ll have to give you credit for trying on that one, but really, do make it a little tougher next time. It didn’t take more than a few minutes of googling to place Marc Herold, along with his other like-minded chums, Ward Churchill, Paul Sweezy, Michael Albert, Diane Johnstone, Bertell Ollman, et al, looking for more “friends,” or I guess the term could be comrades in some circles, outside of the US. Guess they’re having trouble making them here at home. I wonder why? But you know what, that’s OK, b/c that’s what freedom of speech is all about – we can all express our opinions. Posted by: Kristen at May 2, 2006 9:48 AM | Permalink Maybe Village would want to comment on the Pearl Harbor/WW II ratio. What, 2800 Americans dead at Pearl? A million Japanese, something like that. Or maybe it was two million. Something like that. See Shelby Steele's recent column. He's right. We restrain ourselves to an extent earlier folks would think insane. Instead of flattening Fallujah from the air and killing every living soul in it, we warned the civilians to leave, and then we sent our young men from door to door like Fuller Brush salesman, getting a number of them killed in the process. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at May 2, 2006 10:54 AM | Permalink VI Your Iraqi death toll figures are quite debatable. I have seen lots of different estimates, by different groups using different methodologies, and huge variances in results. Your source is hardly credible. Using "the methodology" used for disease outbreaks is hardly appropriate (disease outbreaks have specific patterns different from war casualties). Using historical ratios is really dumb - care to tell me that last war, where any kind of accurate counts were available, that those ratios were based on? How many of those involved almost purely precision weapons, vastly more accurate and ubiquitous surveillance means such as Predators, Global Hawk, and thermal imaging manned aircraft? How interesting is it to count deaths inflicted by both sides, when one side's tactic is to use massive bombs directed at civilians and the other side tries hard not to hurt civilians? How dishonest is it to use the casualties intentionally inflicted by by the other side in an attempt to indict the side that is the most humane? How disingenuous is it to to extrapolate a toll from the earlier stages of the war, which included wide scale massive warfare? How disingenuous is it to ignore the death rate and lack of freedoms in the same place before the war? What is the motive is it to throw out this criticism without advocating actions we can take to alleviate the alleged problem? How disingenuous is it to ignore the doctrine of pre-emptive war by comparing inflated current casualties with the past history of terrorism, when the attack that triggered the GWOT was the first of its kind, carried out by a rapidly growing movement which is openly attempting to acquire and use WMD against our civilians and certainly will carry out attacks as deadly or vastly more deadly when they can? But of course, more interesting is that you even mention the subject? You are demonstrating again the tendency towards attacking the Administration through history, in a discussion to which it has zero relevance. Steve, what does net neutrality have to do with this discussion? Net neutrality is indeed in danger and needs its own discussion (which is taking place all over the blogosphere and to some externt, in the press. A more interesting question would be: is it getting appropriate press coverage, or are big journalism operations, with corporate ties to the last-mile providers, censoring or minimizing reporting and opinion pieces on the issue?, In my opinion, bandwidth provided by monopolies should have protection against content-based billing - in the same sense that telephone service does. As to the cost of blogs, most bloggers are already on corporate run blog sites, from blogger.com to independent ISPs. My entire website, part of which is a blog, costs $24.95 and the provider has direct high-speed pipes to several primary internet nodes. Hence, that model is not in danger. If you want to run a blog from your home, expect bandwidth restrictions (or pay for extra bandwidth) because that upstream bandwidth *is* more expensive to deliver in most modes, and high bandwidth servers of any sort operating from one's home will hog network bandwidth. Posted by: John Moore at May 2, 2006 11:20 AM | Permalink Sorry for the numerous little grammatical and typo errors. That's what happens when I edit in a hurrty because I need to get to work. Posted by: John Moore at May 2, 2006 11:24 AM | Permalink Jay -- During the depths of the McClellan phase at the White House, when you elaborated the concept of Rollback, your insistent refrain was that the press itself had to rethink its role since the White House had changed the ground rules. You argued, famously in describing the aborted posting with the Washington Post, that sticking to their guns was an inappropriate strategy for the White House press corps. In fact, sticking to guns was being complicit in their own Rollback. Now, for the sake of argument, let’s imagine that the replacement of Card with Bolten and McClellan with Snow can be taken on face value. Namely, that this administration has realized that stonewalling, non-responsiveness, sticking to talking points, insisting on the assent of the governed does not work. It confirms its opponents in their opposition, does nothing to persuade independent swing voters and demoralizes its own base. If true, this change would mark a return to the status quo ante of government by persuasion, in which the press is treated as a legitimate interlocutor in the business of mobilizing support for the President’s policies. Again, if true, the White House press corps could feel vindicated in their response to Rollback: they ignored your advice; they did not change their role; they knuckled down; they waited McClellan out; and Rollback as a project collapsed under its own misunderstanding of the business of governing in a republican democracy. Yet, Jay, you still argue for a change in role for the White House press corps, evoking the virtues of independence from the Bully Pulpit, not interdependence with it. You still advocate withdrawal from the relationship with the office currently held by Snow, irrespective of whether he turns back the clock to a pre-Rollback mentality. It is not clear whether your continued insistence derives from skepticism or from some other logic. So my question is: was your demand for a new role for the White House press corps a response to Rollback per se? or do you assert that the political press corps should disengage from the White House anyway? Are you, at bottom, arguing that the press should discontinue treating the Presidency as imperial? That it should return to a view of power in our nation’s capital where agendas are set by all branches of government and even by non-governmental special interests inside the Beltway? That the Bully Pulpit should be rolled back? This would be counterrevolutionary Rollback: the White House has tried to prove that press has no special role in political communication -- is it now time for the press to try to prove that, when communicating to the body politic, the White House too is only one, albeit very special, interest among several. Regards -- Andrew Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at May 2, 2006 11:34 AM | Permalink Richard, do you really want to argue the irrelevance of U.S combat deaths in Iraq because more soldiers were killed in other wars? That's twice you've made that suggestion. How many deaths count before it really means something? Oh, and John Moore, no offense but are you the one to lecture others on topic drift and what subjects are suitable for the discussion here? We've all strayed from the topic and I count myself among the guilty. But good Lord, man, you've dragged in Kerry, your daughter's credentials as a scientist and hyped the possibility of biological warfare to near-dead certainty. (Hint: Because our sun will likely burn out one day, it doesn't mean it's going to happen next week.) Jay will let us know if it gets too out of hand. Posted by: Dave McLemore at May 2, 2006 12:16 PM | Permalink John, I tied net neutrality to Snow through Mike McCurry, a former presidential press secretary. A thin reed, I admit, but a reed nonetheless. Posted by: steve schwenk at May 2, 2006 12:32 PM | Permalink Ann, Your fund of information, frankly, does not equip you to engage in an informed discussion on the 16 words. You're lost. You don't know the timeline or the fact pattern. The truth or falsity of Bush's 16 words has nothing whatever to do with Rice's or Fleischer's statements. Rice and Fleischer could have said the 16 words were made of green cheese, and it would still not alter the underlying fact pattern: British Intelligence concluded that Iraq had sought Uranium from Africa, and shared this intelligence with the United States. If you were anything more than superficially familiar with the matter, for example, you would not have even tried to mention the forgeries, which are entirely irrelevant to the discussion. Why? Because the forgeries didn't even come out until AFTER MI-6 had reached its conclusion that Iraq had sought yellowcake from Niger. Britain confirms that they did not rely on the forgery in reaching their conclusion. Further, again, a little reading comprehension is in order - The President said that we had learned this from British Intelligence. And this, too, is factual, since that's exactly what British Intelligence reported. And Lyin' Joe Wilson's very own verbal debriefing to the CIA upon return from Niger supported the finding. Further, if you were more than superficially informed, you would also be aware that the Italian and French intelligence services also came to the same conclusion: More specifically, in 1999, a gentleman by the name of Wissam al Zahawie, a long-time Iraqi nuclear honcho and the Iraqi delegate to the 1995 NonProliferation Conference, left his office in the Vatican on an official junket to Niger - the original source for the Uranium used at the Osiris plant back in 1981. Italian intelligence had been monitoring him the whole time. The intelligence was shared with French intel, who had better contacts in Niger, who corroborated the report with their own sources and passed it on to the UK, which apparently passed it on to us. (Clinton had so thoroughly gutted our HUMINT capability abroad with his misguided and naive idealism that we didn't have a similar capability of our own in one of the world's primary sources of uranium ore, and so we had to rely on the French and Italians. Scary.) If you were also more than superficially informed, you would also know that a similar document which is believed to be genuine confirms the same facts in the forged document. A couple of Nigerian diplomats in Rome were on the take, and betrayed their country by selling documents to Italian spooks. Apparently, they were paid by the document, since they forged al Zahawie's signature on another document in an effort to collect more money. The problem was, it was an incompetent forgery. As if they had the Mona Lisa, xeroxed it, and tried to sell the copy as well as the original. A moment's reflection would render it obvious that just because one document is a fraud does not mean the original is a fraud. In relying on subsequent statements from Rice and Fleischer, you are arguing from authority - a logical fallacy - rather than arguing from the facts. Indeed, you seem to be arguing from authority in order to avoid having to deal with the facts, or to distract from them. I guess they don't teach critical reasoning in journalism school. With predictable results.
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at May 2, 2006 12:57 PM | Permalink Dave. Gee. You sure can miss the obvious. I was responding to village, who was concerned that we killed too many people in proportion to the dead of 9-11. Would he like to see the WW II ratio? Direct your concern to village. He's the one with the numbers issues. However, as others have pointed out, we lose soldiers all the time in peacetime, to the extent that Desert Storm had negative casualties (fewer dead than would have died had they been home in peacetime). Nobody laments those poor guys. Year and a half ago, a chopper at Ft. Hood hit a comm tower guy wire. Seven men were killed, including a one-star. Not many days in Iraq that bad. No ink at all from the founts of all crocodile tears. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at May 2, 2006 1:10 PM | Permalink Whenever you feel backed into a corner, you fall back on legalisms and calling people's reasoning 'stupid' or 'moronic.' Sorry, but fundamental logic and the application of critical reasoning are not "legalisms." The statement "No WMDs were found" has been conclusively falsified, yet we see so many people clinging desperately to that illusion - because they have so much of their political identities that depend on that lie being true. It's pretty sad, really. It's also sad to see otherwise articulate people get their noses rubbed in the fact that Hussein did keep seed stocks for a biowar program and attempt to explain it away, saying that the US transfered those stocks to them to begin with. Sorry, but that argument IS stupid. It IS moronic. Because the origin of those stocks is completely irrelevant to the terms of the cease fire and Saddam's obligation to destroy them. Just noting that this evidence of WMD you keep flogging doesn't meet the standard for sending young people to war. That's an opinion, not a fact. Apparently you're having trouble keeping them straight. Bad habit for a journo. But because the journo world has become so intellectually inbred, it's becoming more difficult for people in it to apply rigorous analysis to their own assumptions. Obviously, the President of the United States and both houses of Congress felt otherwise, because they voted to authorize force, and so we did.
Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at May 2, 2006 1:14 PM | Permalink Again, if true, the White House press corps could feel vindicated in their response to Rollback: they ignored your advice; they did not change their role; they knuckled down; they waited McClellan out; and Rollback as a project collapsed under its own misunderstanding of the business of governing in a republican democracy. In Colbert's video segment, he tells the story of Rollback as transformed into a cheap horror flick. Or at least he relates Rollback up to the present, with the ending promise (or threat) that now the press will drive the story forward. I get the sense, though, that Colbert's adaptation did not deeply resonate with a large audience—in or out of the room. Noam Scheiber at TNR characterized it as “a way-too-long video presentation whose big joke was that ... Helen Thomas is old and batty. (Stop me if you've heard that one.)” It could be merely that low production values and atrocious pacing detracted from the power of Colbert's metaphor. Or it could be that the metaphor lacks power. Posted by: nedu at May 2, 2006 1:22 PM | Permalink British Intelligence concluded that Iraq had sought Uranium from Africa, and shared this intelligence with the United States. First Jason has evidence of WMD in Iraq that even the president doesn't have. Now he has apparent access to intelligence reports the British have refused to release and have not released. Either that, or Jason is taking them at their word that the "conclusions" they leaked (just like the conclusions Libby selectively leaked to Miller) are truthful and accurate and complete accounting of the underlying intelligence at issue. (But then why not release it?) Sorry, does not pass the fact test. Or the smell test. It stinks pretty badly, actually. You can be sure that if the intelligence supported the conclusion you are pushing, it (the particulars, not the so-called "conclusion") would have been on page A1 of every paper before the invasion. It's too late in the day for these arguments. Even Bush & co. have given up on them. Besides, what do they have to do with Snow or other press secretaries. Posted by: steve schwenk at May 2, 2006 1:29 PM | Permalink Ha ha! The tough guys can't take a few jokes from a comedian: Comedy Central star Stephen Colbert's biting routine at the White House Correspondents Association dinner won a rare silent protest from Bush aides and supporters Saturday when several independently left before he finished. http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060501/1whwatch.htm Posted by: steve schwenk at May 2, 2006 1:48 PM | Permalink Jason, we disagree. Posted by: Dave McLemore at May 2, 2006 2:01 PM | Permalink Sorry for another post, but this is right on topic and may be one of Scotty's last stands: Q Scott, simple yes or no question, could the President stand under a sign that says -- Why is it that no one ever cites the time Bush actually said 'Mission Accomplished' a few weeks after the aircraft carrier incident? Watch him say it on June 5, 2003 in Qatar here. Posted by: steve schwenk at May 2, 2006 2:17 PM | Permalink Still no attempt by Bush to ban replay of Colbert's schtick. Also, could someone please explain the idolatry by some on the left of entertainers like Colbert? Posted by: senior government official at May 2, 2006 2:20 PM | Permalink Thank you Steve, for an excellent example of immature, partisan, and substance-free posturing on the part of the press. The American people were going to be informed by that "question"? I hope that one gets wide television airplay. Posted by: Neuro-conservative at May 2, 2006 2:21 PM | Permalink Year and a half ago, a chopper at Ft. Hood hit a comm tower guy wire. Seven men were killed, including a one-star. Not many days in Iraq that bad. No ink at all from the founts of all crocodile tears. Wrong, as always, Richard. Below is a sampling of U.S. newspapers that carried reports on the death of Brig. Gen. Charles B. Allen and seven members of the 4th ID aboard that Black Hawk. Many carried multiple stories. Included is a story by yours truly that began: KILLEEN, Texas - The death of seven members of the 4th Infantry Division in the crash of a Black Hawk helicopter near Fort Hood on Monday underscores the soldier's reality: Combat isn't the only risk of danger. Newspapers (27) Posted by: Dave McLemore at May 2, 2006 2:22 PM | Permalink Thanks, Dave, for finding a couple of major outlets who mentioned the tragedy. The rest were regional--is the Army Times usually a fount of crocodile tears?--who could reasonably think some of their readers may "have a son on the good Reuben James". I should have been clearer: Where were the concerns akin to those we see when somebody is killed in Iraq or Afghanistan? Doubts? References to a bad day at the casualty office? Where were the lefties and liberals who can be counted upon to worry about casualties in, um, different political circumstances? I am sorry I was not clearer. I figured the thing would be mentioned in various outlets. I was concerned about who was concerned--besides NOK--and whether they were as worried about training dead as combat dead. And a particular group is not. One commenter did some math on another blog. Figures we lost 10,000 people from about 1985 to 2000, not counting the Gulf War. May or may not be correct by a thousand or so, but the complete lack of interest on the part of the usual suspects is obvious. No political points to be gained by worrying about peacetime casualties. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at May 2, 2006 2:34 PM | Permalink First Jason has evidence of WMD in Iraq that even the president doesn't have. Now he has apparent access to intelligence reports the British have refused to release and have not released. Either that, or Jason is taking them at their word that the "conclusions" they leaked (just like the conclusions Libby selectively leaked to Miller) are truthful and accurate and complete accounting of the underlying intelligence at issue. (But then why not release it?) Sorry, does not pass the fact test. Or the smell test. It stinks pretty badly, actually. You can be sure that if the intelligence supported the conclusion you are pushing, it (the particulars, not the so-called "conclusion") would have been on page A1 of every paper before the invasion. Two whole paragraphs and not a single fact. On the contrary, the British did, in fact, release a report. Two of them, in fact, that I know of. The Hutton Inquiry and the Butler Report, both of which are publicly available. The Butler Report was critical of some other aspects of the British case for war - noteably the 45 Minute Claim. But with specific regard to the the Uranium-from-Africa, issue, the Butler Report authors concluded that the original assessment that Iraq was attempting to procure uranium from Africa as "well founded." Which, of course, vindicates the 16 words as correct in every respect. Sorry Ann. You ain't getting a check today. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at May 2, 2006 2:39 PM | Permalink From a quick Lexis-Nexis search, it appears that the NY Times didn't run a single story. WaPo had a brief story on A6. Other large regional papers either didn't cover it or only did so in connection with a local victim. Posted by: Neuro-conservative at May 2, 2006 2:42 PM | Permalink Sorry, Dave. You're entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts. At issue is a factual matter - Did the United States discover seed stocks for a biological warfare program or not? Was Saddam Hussein entitled to keep these stocks, under the specific terms of the cease fire or not? Are biological agents considered weapons of mass destruction or not? Now, you can muster facts to dispute the CIA report (good luck). You can argue that there was a clause somewhere in the cease fire agreement that allowed Saddam to maintain these stocks provided they were of US origin (good luck). Or you can argue that biological agents do not qualify, under the terms of the cease fire and the UN Security Council Resolutions as weapons of mass destruction. (Good luck with that one, too.) Sorry, Dave, but your position is wholly factually and logically bankrupt. To its core. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at May 2, 2006 2:45 PM | Permalink
Well, my goodness, have you told Ari, Condi and George ? Posted by: Ann Kolson at May 2, 2006 3:02 PM | Permalink No, Jason, they never handed the info over, only the so-called conclusion. It is also unclear why British intelligence has not withdrawn its claim that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa. Enough flogging a dead horse already, at least for me. Even if you were technically correct, it would only be so in the most literal sense, and it would not change the fact that the statement was highly misleading and unsubstantiated war hype. Posted by: steve schwenk at May 2, 2006 3:04 PM | Permalink Hmm. I wonder which Colbert line made Bush the angriest. Do you think it was the one about how our grandchildren won't know what a glacier was? Posted by: Richard B. Simon at May 2, 2006 3:35 PM | Permalink Hey Simon, maybe you can explain why entertainers (Colbert, Stewart, Franken, Sarandon, Clooney, etc.) hold such esteem for some on the left. These people have no real power----why the idolatry? Posted by: senior administration official at May 2, 2006 3:50 PM | Permalink Imho, the most interesting part of the U.S.N.&W.R. story was the final sentence: In fact, some aides crowed over reports that the president easily bested Colbert in the reviews of both comedy acts. This theme also ends a Washington Times story: "After Bush was finished, Colbert should have just looked at the audience and said, 'Mr. President, you have just won the Olympics of humor,' and then sat down." It's fascinating that some folks feel that the inherent dignity of the President's office requires him to be funnier than a satirist. Posted by: nedu at May 2, 2006 4:00 PM | Permalink Don't include all of the press in that, Neuro. Adam Nagourney, for example, reported on page A1 of the NYT on 9/27/04, during the close of the presidential election campaign, that Bush, and I quote, "never said 'mission accomplished.'" The times refused to issue a correction, although Nagourney claims he did ask his editor about it after he was shown the transcript of the Qatar speech. What an interesting correction that would have been for all concerned. The article is no longer available for free, but here's the abstract. Posted by: steve schwenk at May 2, 2006 4:00 PM | Permalink Andrew: Great questions. Thanks for taking the time to think them through. For the sake of argument, I suppose it's possible that the Snow appointment really is the end of Rollback, and the Bush White House will start communicating again in an attempt to persuade, which would mean re-engaging with the press. I don't think it's likely, but it's possible. That would be an argument for waiting around to see if it's any different under Snow and Bolten. Different would be a return to the status quo ante. And I'm sure that, if it happened, the White House press corps would "feel vindicated in their response to Rollback." They would point out as you did, "They ignored your advice; they did not change their role; they knuckled down; they waited McClellan out." Although they might believe that, doesn't mean they're right. I believe that if the press just quit the White House (but not the beat), McClellan would have been gone a lot sooner. It's not like I didn't try, in my own 5,000-readers way, to warn them. Here's what I wrote many posts ago: I believe Big Journalism cannot respond as it would in previous years: with bland vows to cover the Adminstration fairly and a firm intention to make no changes whatsoever in its basic approach to politics and news... particularly in the face of an innovative Bush team and its bold thesis about the fading powers of the press. That was posted the day after election day, 2004. See Are We Headed for an Opposition Press? My suggestion that the press should leave is a continuation of a suggestion I have been making for a while, but, yes, it is partly based on my skepticism that Snow means Rollback has been rolled back. I doubt it. Can one reasonably argue that the press should wait and see? Of course, but they would pick wait and see whether or not one could reasonably argue it. Within the press corps, I don't think there's enough collective wisdom, nerve, leadership or historical sense to make a move back when the syndicate, er, the White House makes a move on you. It's not, as so many on the left argue, that the press is in the pocket of the Administration. It simply isn't organized to take organized action, but it can be acted upon. The pressure to describe an irregular situation as a "regular" one--historically continuous--is intense for this reason. I'd estimate that 90 percent of the Washington press corps will take that option when asked about Rollback. Example from another field. When you know no government intends to do anything about it, there's enormous pressure within government not to call the killing "genocide." Description follows from the anticipation of no-action-taken, and excuses it in advance. I see the same thing happen in Big Journalism constantly. My view is not that the press should withdraw because executive power is out of proportion (an interesting idea, though.) Rather, if the White House won't locute there is no hope for the interlocutor. If the White House withdraws and attacks the press, gives out no information, and sends a robot out to repeat meaningless phrases at you, the possibility of doing the job you are there to do evaporates. Switching over to a 100 percent outside-in reporting is a rational and defensible choice. On top of that when you have the attack on open government that this crew has launched, I think the press has an extra obligation to resist. Whether the Bully Pulpit itself should be rolled back is a fascinating question. I don't know. But in a way Bush has been doing that. Replacing the politics of persuasion with assent-or-be-attacked was rolling back the Bully Pulpit. And now two thirds of Americans won't assent, and they are unpersuaded. What's the Bush team going to do: attack them? No, Jason. We disagree. And you don't get to single-handedly decide the debate point. Besides, I think Jay wants to get get back on topic. And I have to go play reporter for a while. Posted by: Dave McLemore at May 2, 2006 4:23 PM | Permalink Jay, you appear too bitter and angry about George Bush to offer objective criticism of the WH and it's press corpse. How many times have you gone to the well with "rollback" and "decertification"? Lots. I think you need to think about whether or not you have anything useful to say about Bush/WH press...or whether you are just offering bitter partisan rants. PressThink has become BushThink. Try something different. I say this as a long time reader of PressThink. Posted by: senior administration official at May 2, 2006 4:34 PM | Permalink Where does one go for some of that "objective criticism" you speak of? My guess is that you could find "objective criticism" in other areas beyond the Bush WH. Or at least press criticism that isn't poisoned by your opinions about GWB. I'm sure you don't believe that all "PressThink" happens at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. DC. Or do you? And please spare me, I don't believe the press is capable of "objective" anything, but you're not the "press" are you? Or are you? Posted by: senior administration official at May 2, 2006 5:07 PM | Permalink Jay – Spending, as I do, so much time examining the journalism of the television networks, their infatuation with the Presidency and its powers has long been a pet peeve of mine. Consider the disproportionate time spent on Presidential election campaigns compared with elections for control of the supposedly co-equal branches of government. In the calendar year 2004 the three broadcast networks devoted 2,538 minutes of the weekday nightly newscasts to the race for the White House compared with 24 minutes (yes, no typo, 24) on all of the races for control of the US Senate. The explanations for the TV networks’ obsession with the Presidency are too detailed to be spelled out here. Suffice it to say that the institutional interests of broadcast television (to create a top-down, mass-market, nationally-unifying, symbolically accessible, visual medium) happen to coincide almost eerily with the ideological interests of the imperial Presidency. One would not need to demand total Rollback of the Bully Pulpit in order to make a plausible case that political coverage has to change. It should be refocused to everywhere where power is truly deployed inside-the-Beltway--away from the White House towards Capitol Hill, the Federal Reserve, the Cabinet departments, the Supreme Court and, of course, K Street. It would be perfectly justified to cover this President’s spokesman less, or that of any of his successors or predecessors, without any evidence of partisan animus. Following this logic, it would be appropriate for the press to remove attention from the White House, whether or not it had a strategy of press decertification. I suppose that was the gist of my earlier question: you appear to have arrived at the recommendation that the press walk away from the White House as the conclusion of a train of thought that began with Rollback; I think that might be the correct conclusion any way, with or without Rollback. It reminds me of the earlier Professor Rosen of Public Journalism days (alluded to earlier in the thread). That Rosen was a republican seeking to nourish the civic discourse of the public forum. These days seem (the ones you define as beginning with Teddy Roosevelt) to belong to a post-republican mass-democratic empire where those rules of civic discourse do not apply. You may not be stating flat-out that our emperor has no clothes. You do seem to be implying that he deserves no megaphone. Regards -- Andrew Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at May 2, 2006 5:08 PM | Permalink Kilgore won't say where he goes for objectivity. He just wants more diversity, whatever that vague notion is. Are you a senior government official or a senior administration official? You can't keep track of your pseudos? Posted by: bush's jaw at May 2, 2006 5:18 PM | Permalink I'm whoever you want me to be b-jaw baby. Posted by: senior government/administration official at May 2, 2006 5:25 PM | Permalink haha, senior gov't/admin or was it "unreliable source?" you're whoever you want to be. Posted by: bush's jaw at May 2, 2006 5:34 PM | Permalink Look out, senior unofficial, it's a trap! Posted by: Dave McLemore at May 2, 2006 5:53 PM | Permalink Thanks for the heads-up McLemore. Posted by: senor wences at May 2, 2006 6:02 PM | Permalink sr. gov't offal, Posted by: senior cia official(s) at May 2, 2006 6:08 PM | Permalink I'll be on Chris Lydon's Open Source radio tonight discussing the press, Bush and Colbert. (You can listen at that link, I believe.) This evening, 7-7:30 or so...show goes to 8 pm. Jay Rosen: Within the press corps, I don't think there's enough collective wisdom, nerve, leadership or historical sense to make a move back when the syndicate, er, the White House makes a move on you.I still disagree with that. I think the press corps has all that and more. What has prevented a successful pushback by the press is a loss of public credibility. From Deference to Outrage: Katrina and the Press ... What appears to be a struggle between the White House and the press is always a triangular relationship among journalists, the Administration and the public. Each leg—the President and the American people, the White House and the press, the press and the public—counts. If we look at two sides without reckoning with the third we’ll always go wrong.For your historical entertainment: The Man with the Muck Rake (with pictures) "Yes, Haven, most of us enjoy preaching, and I’ve got such a bully pulpit!" [link] Senior Whatev said: maybe you can explain why entertainers (Colbert, Stewart, Franken, Sarandon, Clooney, etc.) hold such esteem for some on the left. These people have no real power----why the idolatry? Your question tells me more about you than it asks about me. I have little respect for folks who are so addled with powerlust and power and admiration for the powerful that they will gladly lead or follow over the nearest cliff because they are too busy sniffing their own anuses and claiming "bananas!" to notice. I do have great respect for folks who have the power of the microphone and use it to point out the folly of those same anus-sniffers and bananas-whiffers. Sarandon? I dug Thelma and Louise. Clooney? He takes your money when you go see Ocean's 14 and uses it to make movies that Franken? Stewart and Colbert took the week off last week, it appears, getting good and ready to tell the Most Powerful Man in the History of the World to his face what his own advisors don't have the courage to tell him behind his back. If you don't get why an American would admire that, you never will. You might try reading the Declaration of Independence. Posted by: Richard B. Simon at May 2, 2006 7:23 PM | Permalink Jason, you have to calm down, because as it is you're giving too many people the giggles. As a correspondent of mine observed, "If he found a broken arrow at the site of the Little Big Horn, he'd wave it around in the air, declaring that it's proof that Custer won. "And he wouldn't care if the president's former press secretary, the president's former CIA director, the president's current Secretary of State and the president himself all acknowledged, 'No, actually, Custer lost.' " Posted by: Steve Lovelady at May 2, 2006 7:54 PM | Permalink Well, village, I suppose I’ll have to give you credit for trying on that one, but really, do make it a little tougher next time. And you call that argument? and you want a tougher one next time? what has freedom of speech got to do with it? 'Grade inflation' is wasting a generation .... Posted by: village idiot at May 2, 2006 7:58 PM | Permalink Maybe Village would want to comment on the Pearl Harbor/WW II ratio. What, 2800 Americans dead at Pearl? A million Japanese, something like that. Or maybe it was two million. Something like that. He hasn't seen kick-ass. I have a friend who figured the tee-off number is 10,000 dead Americans. He added Pearl Harbor, the Phillipines, Wake, Guam, and a few others, and says with that many, you end up with Hiroshima. Perhaps if you do some research and point me to a link on that, instead of the 'stream of consciousness' we usually get, I might think about it. Try it; it is work, but is rewarding. And better still, it might end up neutralizing some of that vitriol. Posted by: village idiot at May 2, 2006 8:13 PM | Permalink Village. Link to what? You need a link to be able to know about WW II? We had under 3000 killed at Pearl Harbor. We killed several million Japanese, IIRC. You're the one with the numbers issues. My point is we've done better than the current GWOT. But, depending on Iran, and other things, we might aspire to such a ratio. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at May 2, 2006 8:35 PM | Permalink VI: Why don't you show us a more credible source whose methodology you agree with? Tell us what the range of casualties is, why you agree with possibly the lowest of them all, and while you are at it, explain to us why you consider yourself immune from "confirmation bias"? Posted by: village idiot at May 2, 2006 8:40 PM | Permalink My point is we've done better than the current GWOT. But, depending on Iran, and other things, we might aspire to such a ratio. Do you even recognize that you are gloating over the number of human beings killed, most of them non-combatants? With statements like that, you think you are doing yourself proud? and would like us to believe that you are capable of soundness of thought? If I were you, I would seek help, Richard. Posted by: village idiot at May 2, 2006 8:50 PM | Permalink Declaration of Independence=anuses=bananas=Colbert/Stewart, et al. Posted by: Senior Moment at May 2, 2006 8:51 PM | Permalink If there anything more ridiculous than fact wars among people who agree on nothing? Billmon on Colbert: It's no great surprise, then, that American Dreamz has come and will soon go without much critical or political reaction of any kind -- not even from the professional hysterics of the Michelle Malkin right. Which you definitely can't say about about Stephen Colbert's gig at the White House Correspondents Dinner. Posted by: village idiot at May 2, 2006 9:21 PM | Permalink To me the issues are simple: Did Iraq have a NCB weapons programmes (dormant or otherwise) in contravention of their 1991 ceasefire conditions? Was the risk of a "state-sponsored" terrorist attack, aided by weapons from such a programme *acceptable*? Once you answer those questions (honestly), you effectively arrive at the root of the arguments here. ==//== The over-all, largely-undisputed, conclusion is that the programmes were in a state of suspended animation, until such time as sanctions ended, whereupon, these programmes would undoubtedly restarted. Dual-use facilities would easily be converted to production, the knowledge and technology remained, the only thing lacking was the industrial capacity to ramp-up. A problem the collapse/removal of sanctions was to solve at a stroke. Conclusion No.1 : ==//== But before, leaping to conclusions that this risk was minimal - or not enough to "send young men into harms way", consider this: Now consider that even a clumsy attack with a NCB would have the potential to inflict casualties 1 or more orders of magnitude higher (thats 10, 100 or 1000 times higher, for those that dont see the maths), destroy an economy and have far-reaching impact around the world, the judgement becomes not only about risk, but about consequences. Can we afford to get it wrong again? For anyone wishing to do harm to the United States (or any country), watching television on September 11 provided them with an insight into an excitingly novel delivery mechanism. No longer would they have to mount a conventional attack which would be likely be successfully detected, defended, and thereafter draw incredible retribution - all they would have to do is get a weapon into the hands of anonymous suicidal jihadi fanatics, and stand back and watch. Now, the question is, did Saddam have such a plan? Or more to the point, COULD WE RISK IT? We know he had plenty of links to terrorism. 1) Al Quaeda operatives (including WTC 1993 bomber, Zarqawi, etc) were given shelter in Iraq. (and no-one got into Saddam's Iraq without approval) 2) Iraq met with and funded AQ in Indonesia, and provided logistical support. 3) Iraqi intelligence envoy, with Saddam's approval, attended meetings with Bin Laden and AQ in Sudan to discuss "carrying out joint operations against foreign forces". 4) Evidence of explosives and chemicals training of AQ personnel in Iraq - and various other training facilities at which AQ members were known to have attended. 5) More alarming was the fact that the Kay report mentioned that Saddams authority was eroding, and that some of his generals had started making independant contact with buyers for Iraq's weapons knowledge. Ultimately, it cant be said that there was *NO* relationship between AQ and Iraq/Saddam. The question is how long would it take for either the weapons/materials to make their way into Jihadi hands - or of more concern, the know-how to make such weapons. Now, granted, Iraq isnt the only source of such weapons, materials or know-how - but it can easily be argued that Saddam was the front-runner in a list of candidates most like to cooperate with such terrorists. Many people point to ideological differences between Saddam and Bin Laden, but while there were significant AQ attacks on non-theocratic states in the decade before the 2003 war, there were none on Iraq during that period. So, to bring this argument to a close: We know the weapons programmes still existed. Fact. So, ultimately, its a judgement call: Deal with Saddam now? Or later? Ultimately, the burden in making the decision for a pre-emptive war weighs on making this judgement call correctly. And ultimately, this is where most of the rational disagreement stems from. Could we afford to wait until attacked before retaliating? Would it be too late then? My opinion before the war, and to this day, is that we didnt have much choice. It was either do it now while its relatively easy (in the conventional military sense) or wait until later when he has more capability. Given the record of Saddams deception of UN inspectors from 1991-1995 and thereafter, I had no intention of taking him at his word that Iraq no longer had such active weapons programmes and weapons stockpils. To me, there wasnt a "right" choice, just several choices between bad and even-worse. That choice was made in 2003. Today is 2006. Posted by: Nigel at May 2, 2006 9:25 PM | Permalink That is way too nuanced, and I don't do nuance sorry. Posted by: village idiot at May 2, 2006 9:41 PM | Permalink Maybe , maybe, what if, maybe, and furthermore what if ? What if indeed. What if the moon were made of green cheese ? Hi, Jason. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at May 2, 2006 9:43 PM | Permalink Steve you mean that isn't a valid scientific alernative viewpoint? Let's see there's NASA and the Raelians. That's a tough call. Posted by: George Boyle at May 2, 2006 9:48 PM | Permalink "Seven men were killed, including a one-star. Not many days in Iraq that bad." Are you serious or just not able to listen or see? Many, many days are worse than this and recorded. There's more than that dead every night on PBS Newshour at the end. Take a gander if you dare. I swear I still can't believe the comment dichotomies here and frankly all over the blogosphere. It's flippin scary. Posted by: George Boyle at May 2, 2006 9:59 PM | Permalink Here's a first: Jack Shafer decides I was right about something, and actually mentions it. With links. If my memory is accurate, I believe that's never happened before. In his current Slate column: Rather than crying "war" over the Bush-press disputes, I subscribe to Jay Rosen's more modest idea that the Bushies ambition was to "decertify" the press from its modern role as purveyor of news and portray it as just another special interest. (Rosen advanced his "decert" idea in late 2003 and then again in February 2005 and March 2005.) Bush's preference for "unfiltered" news, received directly from his staff, is well-known. Disciplined and silent, as The New Yorker's Ken Auletta put it, the administration has factored the press corps out of the equation. I was also on Hugh Hewitt's show again. He was mad at Bill Keller for making himself the judge of what's okay to give our enemies, as against trusting in the President's word. (Keller's WSJ letter .) I don't think there will be a transcript of this one. I said I didn't trust a word of what Bush said, and the interview wrapped up pretty quickly after that. Jay, You asked if this was my question: “Why would Snow be an opportunity to change the press narrative of the Bush Admistration?” Well, that’s really not my question, because I already know that answer: because they should take any opportunity they can get, directly related or not, to signal a significant change in their strategy/style/substance just to build public trust! I thought my original questions were exactly what I meant and I think perhaps I’m just not speaking the right “Press Speak,” the jargon, the dialog the examples I could give to make it any clearer. But I’m just not able to b/c I’m not familiar with the arena. I’m sorry. But I refuse to believe that the briefing Steve Schwenk highlighted, with his big “HA HA isn’t Bush a Fool” confirmation of the prevailing narrative down pat, is the best the American Press has to offer right now. You yourself said there are others. What would be a more healthful narrative that would move us as a country towards unity and victory, but still keep the accountability factor in place? Well, that’s it then. Now. I suppose the words “public journalism movement” should have clued me in. Okay. So I underestimated the problems involved. Their size and scope. Oh, alright, fine. I’ll give you complexity, too. But you’re telling me you’ve been working on public journalism reform since 1988 (according to wikipedia, not that I trust that but it’s convenient)? Good Grief. Jay, tell me, please that you can at least appreciate how John Bolton feels over at the UN. Well no wonder you get a little testy now and then. But seriously, now. Remember. I’m not a journalist. I’m not an editor. I’m an average citizen, although maybe being a news reader today is not average. Outside of the Press itself, who would ever hear that for almost 2 decades people have been working on press reform? We just look at the product, not what goes on behind the scenes. No, in fact, it goes beyond that….we just look at the products and societal results that come from incomplete, inconsistent, and non-universal reform. Wow. Not only did this movement die…you still have people actually fighting against this? Where’s Donald Trump when you need him? Some links to articles I’ve read today for some general background on “public journalism” for whosever interested. http://www.imdp.org/artman/publish/article_14.shtml
Posted by: Kristen at May 2, 2006 10:19 PM | Permalink Shafer's got one thing right: "The recent clandestine CIA prisons and NSA surveillance scoops by the Washington Post and New York Times illustrate the limits of White House control on information: Other, non-White House parts of the bureaucracy rebelled against Bush. Viewed from this end of the telescope, Bush secrecy 'caused' the Post and Times scoops and may well cause many more, no matter who gets fired or prosecuted." Always happens. Sooner or later, the civil service guys who deal with the real world (see Felt, Mark) rise up and say, "Enough. Listen to this ..." That's what the General's revolt against Rumsfeld is all about. And Shafer is also right to note that there may be "many more." Or, as Jay has put it, the wheels are coming off of the wagon. It's not nice to fool Mother Nature. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at May 2, 2006 10:28 PM | Permalink OT: There are some interesting comments accumulating over at Mike McCurry's post attacking bloggers in the latest battle of the net neturality war. The comments are impassioned and eloquent. Mike really kicked up some dust, and it looks like it's blowing back in his face now. You have to scroll down to read them after his post. Posted by: steve schwenk at May 2, 2006 10:57 PM | Permalink Andrew You lament the infatuation the press shows towards the president, as demonstrated during the election. But the press loves drama, and turns what should be serious events into a day-by-day, play-by-play sport, focusing on the minutiae of the race and not the issues. One reason advertising money has become so important (and consequently, so corrupting) is the press is not doing its job. Instead of reporting what candidates (or elected officials) say, we are lucky to even hear *about* what they say, an indirect way which of course injects conscious or unconscious bias. It also inevitably injects cynicism, which poisons the whole debate. I suspect the presidential race special because the other races are regional, parochial, and don’t attract as much public interest. As a conservative, I can’t help but say that the transfer of immense power from the states and the citizenry has made Washington vastly more important than it used to be. Of course, the press incessant focus on trivia - the daily "who’s ahead today" or "so-and-so’s strategy…" - too often replaces reporting on the important. It’s pathetic. Keep the sports reporting to sport, where I can avoid it. The MSM treats the political races the way Fox News treats the Natalee Holloway "story." Richard Simon Hollywood stars, just like TV news anchors, get a very inflated view of their own importance and wisdom, because they have lots of fans and make lots of money, which causes them to be surrounded with sycophants. They don’t recognize that their importance is only as marketing brands. Once they have the name recognition, they are valuable property for that - not for their wisdom or talent. I once wrote a blog posting called "Why Dan Rather is no different from Tide Soap." Well, at least Tide didn’t get caught in a vicious lie. Jay It is sad when people actually give credence to Keller’s letter. It’s misleading, and beyond that, simply wrong. The NYT, in spite of his insistence, loves to set liberal agendas. Whatever their official editorial policy, their actions are highly partisan. It was good of the WSJ once again to speak truth to nonsense. Its also nice that Hewitt chimed in. The Pulitzer is already bloodstained (the NYT would do well to remember how Duranty won his Pulitzer). The prize is becoming less and less relevant. The cloistered elite award themselves for serving themselves. Steve Lovelady Why do you applaud bureaucrats who arrogate to themselves decisions that our republic gives to the elected, now matter how flawed? Do you think that’s democratic? Miffed bureaucrats should take matters of national security break democratically enacted laws designed to preserve national security? They do this not in the honorable spirit of civil disobedience, but as anonymous cowards. Doesn’t this seem a bit arrogant, not to mention dangerous to our system of government? I know the press just loves leakers, and today with its well trained ability to rationalize, has no qualms about publishing highly damaging information - especially if it will win a Pulitzer or sell a reporter’s book. ………… Well, I have to admit it. I have been called for calling people on thread drift. And indeed this pot was calling the kettle black. Oops. Posted by: John Moore at May 2, 2006 11:36 PM | Permalink George Boyle. Just to cite an example of such hypocrisy in a different area: Matthew Shepard's death got floods of ink, Jesse Dirkhising's did not. Andrew Sullivan wrote a scorching piece on the hypocrisy. The same phenomenon is seen in many areas, but, as I say, in this case we were talking about US casualties. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at May 2, 2006 11:41 PM | Permalink A note. CSPAN now has streaming video of what appears to be the entire White House Correspondents' Dinner. Posted by: John Moore at May 2, 2006 11:42 PM | Permalink Well, I was wrong. There is a transcript of my interview with Hugh Hewitt today. One bit: JR: When people say there's always been leaking, they don't know how right they are. Leaking actually goes back to the very beginning of the press as a political instrument. And if you look at British politics in the early 1700's, you find that for the first time, because there are papers that circulate widely around London, the loser in an internal dispute within the parliament discovered it had a new recourse, which was not just a struggle with its opponents in parliament, but to go outside, or they called it out of doors, and appeal to public opinion. And the reason we have leaks is fundamentally that, that the government can't resolve everything within itself, and so there are always going to be factions to try and go outside. Sometimes for extremely self interested reasons, sometimes for reasons of conscience, very often it's simply to gain tactical advantage over their opponents. That's a permanent dynamic in government. And even though it causes a lot of problems, in the end, it's like a pressure valve or a release, and it's probably good for the republic in the long run. I said 1800s on the show, but I meant 18th century and said "eighteen hundreds." I would appreciate it greatly if people would opt out instead of replying to the tendency some participants have to turn each thread into a clinic on totally disputed facts about the Iraq War, or in some cases the 2004 election, which facts are invariably described as "beyond" dispute so as to trigger more anger, and more dispute. We have some first class baiters and bait takers here, and I'm just asking you to take more passes. It's too much on things way beyond the scope of the post or the blog, for that matter. Steve, As a correspondent of mine observed, "If he found a broken arrow at the site of the Little Big Horn, he'd wave it around in the air, declaring that it's proof that Custer won. "And he wouldn't care if the president's former press secretary, the president's former CIA director, the president's current Secretary of State and the president himself all acknowledged, 'No, actually, Custer lost.' " That's a very clever analogy. That is, it would be, if it made any sense. And you and your friend are still engaging in the fallacy of arguing from authority rather than arguing on the facts. It's not that you can't cite an expert. But spokespeople aren't experts on biowarfare or intelligence, number one. And number two, I have already presented a specific fact: Coalition forces captured seed stocks for a biological weapons program in Iraq, which Iraq kept in violation of the cease fire agreement. None of what Fleischer, Rice, or anyone else has undercut that in anyway - nor were they even trying to address that particular incident. Which is why your argument is a fallacy. By the way...Custer didn't win. But Custer's SIDE sure as hell did. Some of us can tell the difference between a battle and a war. Something the press seems to find hard to grasp. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at May 3, 2006 12:45 AM | Permalink Jay, You cannot have a meaningful discussion about the media and avoid the subject of the media's incompetence in covering the Iraq war. The debate over WMDs, etc., and the "No WMDs Were Found" myth goes precisely to this topic. All roads converge at this point. Rollback? If the press were even vaguely competent at assessing and reporting on the war, they wouldn't have to worry about rollback. The sloppy reasoning skills exhibited here also bear directly on the inadequacy of the press corps, and the inadequacy of journalism education. The tendency has been to make it a trade school -- and to deemphasize critical reasoning skills, the rules of evidence, etc. And so we have some of the leading names in journo criticism here displaying poor critical reasoning skills rooted in this unfamiliarity with pretty basic expository writing concepts - and concepts any law student, for example, would regard as basic. WMD are simply the most obvious example now. I could make the same case with financial journalism, of course, and discuss the press's utter failure to cover the impending collapse of the S&L industry until it was already a fait accompli. But peoples' eyes would glaze over. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at May 3, 2006 12:58 AM | Permalink Kristen: I actually started working on public journalism stuff in 1989, and I wrote my book on it in 1999, so that was ten years for that cause. It wasn't a failure, even though it didn't succeed in fundamentally changing the press. One reason I say it wasn't a failure is that the basic warning we had for journalists--you're becoming dangerously disconnected from the public itself, and losing your authority because of it--was pretty accurate. And it only became more relevant as time went on. Another involves the subtleties of class bias within the press fraternity itself. The people in New York, DC, LA, Boston (also Philly at one time) have a tendency to believe that if you were any good at being a journalist you would be in New York, DC, LA, Boston, Philly-- with them! The notion that good ideas could come from St. Paul, Madison, Charlotte, Orange County, Wichita was too much for their psychic traffic to bear. They didn't believe it, and because they didn't believe it they didn't bother to dig into what the public journalists were really saying. When nominal "peers" in St. Paul, Madison, Charlotte, Orange County, Wichita saw this happen, the scales fell from their eyes about the press elite. It could, and did, dismiss as a bad idea what it knew almost nothing about, or knew only through hand-me-down stereotypes. This was a dress rehersal for the reaction to blogging. It's not surprising to me that a reader and citizen would never have heard of public journalism. The movement wasn't warmly received in the press. Yet the movement was the press-- a dissident faction of it, which tended to be people in smaller markets and regional hubs, not NY, DC, LA. They warned their colleagues about the dangers of the disconnect. In effect, they started a breakaway church in journalism. For the long run, I think the significance of those ten years, 1989-99, will grow, not shrink, because at that time there was no contest of ideas within the American press about what the American press was for, and how it could repair its connection to the public and to democratic politics. Thus, the title of my book, which was written for the long run, and pretty much ignored by the working press. (I'm having better luck with PressThink.) But of course a lot of people to this day disagree with me about all of this. See Spokesman for Press Priesthood Laughs. Steve Lovelady: As a correspondent of mine observed, "If he found a broken arrow at the site of the Little Big Horn, he'd wave it around in the air, declaring that it's proof that Custer won. Your correspondent has really pulled a lot together here. The fact that the publicly stated opinion of the president's former press secretary, the president's former CIA director, the president's current Secretary of Stte and the president himself don't even slow this narrative down never fails to astonish me. Whatever happened to cognitive dissonance? How does a mind following this line of thought make that entire boxcar full of contradictions just go pfft!? It reminds me of Japanese army officers in the 1930s who were constantly organizing coups and assassinations of corrupt civilian politicians in the name of reclaiming the Imperial Way from the forces of evil, in the name of the emperor, but frequently in explicit opposition to the stated position and preference of the emperor himself! In both cases, the appeal to obedience, authority, and tradition as a source of legitimacy is belied by interpretations of the principles and causes at stake that are so radical they patently contradict the claim to obedience and traditional authority they ritually claim for themselves. Perhaps this is one of the lesser understood inflections of the term "neo-conservative." An avowedly conservative individual who routinely violates all known precedent in the name of adherence to and revival of "tradition." Neoconservatives are more accurately described as anarchists in "traditional values" drag. This has everything to do with the translation of democracy from explicit sufferage to the presumption of popular assent, the "don't ask, don't tell" doctrine of popular sovereignty. The "rule of law" in the liberal sense is too corrupt (i.e., insufficiently authoritarian and unilateralist) to capture the "purity" of the anarchist's vision of the cause. I've spent quite a few years trying to figure out how people as intelligent as Okawa Shumei or Leo Strauss and his followers can seriously believe the nonsense they spout, but I've really hit a dead end. The more information I have on the subject, the more mysterious it becomes. I've almost started to think of the requirement to trust authority and force (vs. law) implicitly as an existential inclination like a lack of tolerance for spicy food--it just doesn't seem to be something that is up for negotation. But finally, the most impressive trick of all--like Colbert's Cirque de-Soleil guy pulling himself up by his bootstraps--is the fantasy that trusting authority and force implicitly is a form of anti-authoritarian rebellion. This loses me every time. The tyranny of the majority as rebellion--WTF? Did your correspondent have an anecdote for that one? Posted by: Mark Anderson at May 3, 2006 2:00 AM | Permalink Here's the audio for Open Source with Christopher Lydon on Stephen Colbert, the Washington press, and Bush. In the first part I joined Norm Scheiber of The New Republic in sifting through the episode. I also cluelessly pronounced the T in Colbert's name. Other guests Ann Althouse, Robert Thompson, Helen Thomas. Jay, Posted by: Mark Anderson at May 3, 2006 2:18 AM | Permalink But I refuse to believe that the briefing Steve Schwenk highlighted, with his big “HA HA isn’t Bush a Fool” confirmation of the prevailing narrative down pat, is the best the American Press has to offer right now. No, Kristen, you missed it entirely. It wasn't that Bush was a 'fool,' rather it was "Ha Ha isn't Bush a big fat hypocrite crybaby." This isn't the prevailing narrative in the press, either, by the way; far from it. If you watch the video, you'll see not many were laughing. But it is the truth. Sometimes the truth is impolite. And it often, as colbert pointed out, has a liberal bias. But it's still the truth, not the cheap shot you are making it out to be. Do you forget the mockery of Al Gore and John Kerry by this president? Do you forget the narrative the press gave about Bush landing on that aircraft carrier and prancing about with his over-sized codpiece and how all America had to love this courageous president? Do you forget the taunts, "Help is on the way" to the military. Do you not remember Bush saying the grownups were taking over. Well he looked like a petulant child king about to blow his top at that dinner the other night. He can sure dish it out. He and Karl Rove smear people and destroy careers as a matter of routine. But he can't take it, not even when it is mere jokes from a comedian. I am sorry you are put off, but it is only because you miss the point. Posted by: steve schwenk at May 3, 2006 9:45 AM | Permalink Village. You're the one who started with the numbers. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at May 3, 2006 9:50 AM | Permalink Jay, I heard a good chunk of the middle of the Open Source show, from maybe 7:25 to 7:45 or so. I got the sense that Ann Althouse just didn't get it. What's really interesting to me here is that most commentators -- particularly those critical of Colbert -- are judging the routine purely as entertainment. They are also evaluating Colbert as a "comedian" -- rather than as a satirist. There's no sense of understanding that the funniest thing about Colbert was that he was dead serious. And no sense of irony whatsoever in judging Bush's comedy shtick as "one of the best performances of his Presidency." Althouse kept saying "oh, America has always been like this, we always take our politics with comedy." But she doesn't take context at all into account. This is the bubble president and to some degree a bubble White House Press Corps, and someone from the outside is coming in and really taking the piss out of them in a way that isn't just giving them a gentle ribbing, but is really expressing a simmering dissatisfaction with the way things are going. Why is this night different from all other nights? Because most of the country believes that most of the people in that room are not performing their jobs satisfactorily. That's why Colbert has such resonance. Posted by: Richard B. Simon at May 3, 2006 10:15 AM | Permalink He was shot seven times. Then 40 pieces of super-heated shrapnel melted into his flesh. Wow. What a riveting story. That's as good a human interest story as it gets. Do any outlets outside of Southern California outlets in the Camp Pendleton market and near this Marine's home town pick up the story? Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at May 3, 2006 10:59 AM | Permalink I made some of those points in the first 20 mins of the show, Richard. The Times finally gets around to covering the Colbert reaction. Headline: "After Press Dinner, the Blogosphere Is Alive With the Sound of Colbert Chatter." Meanwhile, in the story itself no bloggers--dead or alive--speak. The fact that the publicly stated opinion of the president's former press secretary, the president's former CIA director, the president's current Secretary of Stte and the president himself don't even slow this narrative down never fails to astonish me. Well, that's because you're engaging in sloppy thinking - and still wallowing in the fallacy of arguing from authority. Here's something that I shouldn't have to explain to a working journalist: Facts trump authority. No matter who the authority is, if they are saying something that is directly contradicted by the established facts, and you're still citing the authority without pointing that out, you're wrong - and you're not doing your job as a journalist. Facts trump authority figures. Geez, this is as basic as it gets. And the fact remains that the CIA reports that coalition forces captured seed stocks for a biological weapons program. Biological weapons are a WMD. Therefore, the narrative "no WMDs were found," is false. Nothing these officials ever said or can say can alter that underlying fact pattern. Similarly, the fact is that two chemical munitions exploded in Baghdad in the spring of 2004, requiring two US soldiers to be treated with atropine for nerve agent poisoning. Chemical munitions, under the terms of the cease fire and the UN Security council resolutions, are a WMD. Therefore the narrative "no WMDs were found" is falsified twice over. Fact: Twelve chemical 122mm rockets were discovered in Baghdad in January 2003. Under the terms of the cease fire and the UNSC resolutions, chemical munitions are a WMD. Therefore the narrative "no WMDs were found is falsified thrice over. Fact: 1500 gallons of chemical precursor agents in drums were seized by coalition troops in Fallujah in 2004. Chemical weapons are a WMD. Therefore the narrative "no WMDs were found" is falsified four times over. Secretary Rice, Ari Fleischer, or Jesus himself can come down and say "No WMDs were found" a thousand times, and it would still not change the fact that that statement has been falsified several times over by facts on the ground. You guys write pretty paragraphs, and can write a catchy phrase once in a while. But somewhere along the line, you never learned how to THINK. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at May 3, 2006 11:13 AM | Permalink Next repetition of this point--no matter who it comes from--will be killed. Andrew, you said: “It [political coverage] should be refocused to everywhere where power is truly deployed inside-the-Beltway--away from the White House towards Capitol Hill, the Federal Reserve, the Cabinet departments, the Supreme Court and, of course, K Street. It would be perfectly justified to cover this President’s spokesman less, or that of any of his successors or predecessors, without any evidence of partisan animus.” How true that is and how much could be gained by executing that focus and creating new narratives. Jay, you brought up “genocide” and the use of the term as an example of another point but it connected for me how much Bush’s use of language, his un-sophistication and plain sometimes mis- speak, has been a hindrance for him, particularly when the people who cover him, and those Washington and New York “intellectuals” who are used for quotes and as sources, use it to mock him continuously. You said, “When you know no government intends to do anything about it, there's enormous pressure within government not to call the killing "genocide." Description follows from the anticipation of no-action-taken, and excuses it in advance.” In Break With UN, Bush Calls Sudan Killings Genocide, Jim VandeHei, June, 2005 “Axis of Evil” 2002, State of the Union --- remember that hoopla and the criticism he received for actually naming names? Oh... how provocative. His inaugural UN speech , actually naming two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side --- Interesting “framing”, though, in that wash post article. Even the whole “metaphor” vs. “real” debate in the last thread was interesting b/c it boils down to some people hearing him say “Real War” and thinking he means it and others hearing him say “Real War” and thinking he doesn’t mean it, that it’s actually a metaphor for something else. Would this President be one who has demonstrated he’s more likely to be speaking in metaphor or plain speak? I actually appreciate the real-life humor and satire found in the reaction to his total rejection of the language Hollywood and the glitter and glam “intellectuals” use. It's funny to watch. It's got the whole "novel within the novel complexity" that I find amusing. Posted by: Kristen at May 3, 2006 11:24 AM | Permalink The Colbert reaction [BlogPulse] peaked on May 1. Posted by: nedu at May 3, 2006 1:07 PM | Permalink Google News search also shows a "Colbert" peak on May 1. Apr 27: 46
Posted by: nedu at May 3, 2006 1:35 PM | Permalink Yahoo News search disagrees: Indicates "Colbert" reaction peaked on Sun, Apr 30. Apr 27: 37 Results captured 3 May 2006, 18:15-18:25 UTC /nu Posted by: nedu at May 3, 2006 2:25 PM | Permalink Technorati disagrees other direction: Max in blogosphere on Tues, May 2. (Not peak due to lack of data today.) Posted by: nedu at May 3, 2006 2:40 PM | Permalink Contrarian Noam Scheiber, with whom I was on Open Source last night (listen here) has written about it at the contrarian New Republic's contrarian blog The Plank. As you might be able to predict, he's a contrarian on the subject. See his post, Jay Rosen: Original King of Comedy. "I had a truly bizarre experience appearing opposite NYU media critic Jay Rosen on an NPR program called 'Open Source' last night." Check it out. By my count there are five errors in 659 words.
Posted by: Steve Lovelady at May 3, 2006 5:12 PM | Permalink After discarding false positives in the Google News search results, "Colbert" online news mentions actually peaked on Apr 29! Apr 26: 6 Results captured and coded 3 May 2006, 21:15 - 22:30 UTC /nu Posted by: nedu at May 3, 2006 6:31 PM | Permalink nedu -- It's clear that you attach some importance to which day that online sites mentioned Colbert, but clue me in -- why ? Is a Colbert mention on Tuesday more important than a Colbert mention on Sunday ? Or vice versa ? Seems to me the interesting measure is how often Colbert is getting bounced around the Internet -- not which day, or hour, or minute, each mention occurred. What am I missing here ? Posted by: Steve Lovelady at May 3, 2006 7:44 PM | Permalink Nigel/Jason: Maybe you missed this post: Next repetition of this point--no matter who it comes from--will be killed. Posted by: Jay Rosen at May 3, 2006 11:21 AM Posted by: Steve Lovelady at May 3, 2006 7:52 PM | Permalink Our reply I would have liked to see Heller in that list! Posted by: village idiot at May 3, 2006 8:25 PM | Permalink Richard B. Simon: "Ann Althouse just didn't get it." Steve Lovelady: "Scheiber doesn't get it." Satire makes a point but, as humor, it cannot be taken negatively. If satire is to be humorous it cannot be malicious. We can then make a distinction between humorous satire and hostile satire. Hostile satire is not humor. Humorous satire is not ridicule. What am I missing here ? Steve, A Colbert mention on Tuesday was probably influenced by some Colbert mention earlier in the week. Most probably, the reaction here is feeding back into itself as the story moves completely into the spin cycle. The actual numbers aren't really that important; the shape of the curve is most interesting to me right now. Except that the number of days from event to news peak is a kinda, sorta rough measure of how fast the story is spreading--except that it's probably heavily influenced by day of the week. Anyhow, you aren't really missing much... These are just some very preliminary looks in case anyone else here is interested in analyzing this reaction quantitatively. Posted by: nedu at May 3, 2006 8:44 PM | Permalink I think you nailed it, Sisyphus, with your Truthiness link. Meanwhile, at latest count, I'm told that the Colbert performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner now ranks as the second most-downloaded event on the Internet. (First place still belongs to Jon Stewart's takedown of Tucker Carlson and Paul Begula on CNN.) And I see that Jason is still contending that Ari Fleischer, Condoleeza Rice, George Tenet and President Bush himself are lying when they disavow those 16 words in the 2003 State of the Union address. Tip to Jason: If you're right, they are the problem, not us. So tell them, not us. Good luck with that -- and, by all means, tell us how it all works out. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at May 3, 2006 9:50 PM | Permalink more truthiness. This part is apropos of familiar debate about this WH and Iraq: Michael Adams, a professor at North Carolina State University who specializes in lexicology, said "truthiness" means "truthy, not facty." "The national argument right now is, one, who's got the truth and, two, who's got the facts," he said. "Until we can manage to get the two of them back together again, we're not going make much progress."' Who gets the settle the argument? Or how is the argument settle? Posted by: bush's jaw at May 3, 2006 10:37 PM | Permalink Who gets to settle the argument? Or how is the argument settled? Posted by: bush's jaw at May 3, 2006 10:38 PM | Permalink Settle the argument? Shall the world end tomorrow? The difference between "facty" and "truthy" is an interesting one. I would combine those thoughts with DIKW, correspondence theory and embodied theory. Because our conceptual systems grow out of our bodies, meaning is grounded in and through our bodies. Because a vast range of our concepts are metaphorical, meaning is not entirely literal and the classical correspondence theory of truth is false. The correspondence theory holds that statements are true or false objectively, depending on how they map directly onto the world--independent of any human understanding of either the statement or the world. On the contrary, truth is mediated by embodied understanding and imagination. That does not mean that truth is purely subjective or that there is no stable truth. Rather, our common embodiment allows for common, stable truths. As Steve would say, "Good luck with that -- and, by all means, tell us how it all works out." No, Steve. I'm not contending that they're lying. You are. And since you're the one making the assertion, the burden of proof is on you. So prove they are lying when and if they say "No WMDs have been found in Iraq." What evidence do you have to offer? (This ought to be good. We're about to see Steve imitate a pretzel!) Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at May 4, 2006 5:12 AM | Permalink Nice reply, Jay. Those folks over at Joe Lieberman Weekly wouldn't recognize satire if it hit them in the head. It's really fun to see everyone weigh in on Colbert. What's really funny, though, are the people who insist that those of us who found it funny are 'wrong.' What? Posted by: steve schwenk at May 4, 2006 8:28 AM | Permalink AOL has a poll on Colbert with roughly 175,000 votes cast so far: How funny was Colbert? Very 50% Were his jokes appropriate? Yes 65% Notice that the percentage of those who found Colbert funny, or somewhat funny, as well as those who found his jokes appropriate, closely track Bush's disapproval numbers while those who did not track his aproval numbers. 65-70% vs. 27-35%. That's makes a lot of sense. It also helps put the whining by some in the media in perspective. Posted by: steve schwenk at May 4, 2006 9:01 AM | Permalink Settle the argument? Shall the world end tomorrow? It's tomorrow, and Jason is still entitled to his facts on the 16 words, although his facts are contrary to what our gov't and most of us already stipulated to. If we can't stipulate to facts then we're just going round and round. I'm just waiting for the complete denial of Iraq. We invaded Iraq? Jesus himself can say we invaded Iraq a thousand times, it would still not change the fact that that statement has been falsified several times over by facts on the ground. Posted by: bush's jaw at May 4, 2006 9:19 AM | Permalink Bad kairos?... Same thing as asking whether he was funny, really. The karios issue is embedded in that question. Isn't this just a clever way to paint those who found him funny as being inferior and crass, assuming you assume that those who found it to be bad karios are correct. How could a satirist be accused of bad karios by delivering satire at a dinner where humor and satire are what have always been delivered? Just imagine the ruckus had Mark Twain spoken instead of Colbert. Posted by: steve schwenk at May 4, 2006 10:05 AM | Permalink A couple of tiny observations on the casus belli for the invasion of Iraq… Q.Why is such heat expended on the veracity of those 16 words? A.It is not their content but their context. They were spoken not at some press conference or campaign rally but by the President in the performance of his Constitutional duty to report on the State of the Union. If it were proven that he knowingly gave false testimony while performing that duty about the need for the nation to go to war, that would qualify, prima facie, as a “high crime or misdemeanor.” Q.How do we know, once and for all, that oil is discredited as a rationale for going to war? A.Secretary of State Condoleeezza Rice, in answer to George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week on Sunday actually said this: “I can tell that if anything has surprised me as Secretary of State, it is the degree to which the kind of search for hydrocarbons is distorting international politics.” When Rice was National Security Advisor, advising the President about whether or not to invade, she literally cannot have comprehended the anti-war slogan No War For Oil. Rice believes that there is a normal conduct of international politics that the search for hydrocarbons distorts. Those who believed that oil was a rationale for war assert that the search for hydrocarbons itself is a driving force in the normal conduct of international politics. Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at May 4, 2006 10:45 AM | Permalink Andrew: If oxygen were not evenly distributed, there might be some disputes over finding it, too. But oil as a casus belli for either action against Saddaam is backwards. As usual, war costs more than oil and Saddaam would have had to sell to somebody. Only if he had gotten Kuwait and either taken or co-opted Saudi Arabia would he have been able to distort the world oil market. Today, it appears that unrest in Nigeria has a major effect, while Chavez is buying Russian oil to avoid defaulting on oil contracts the Maracaibo fields should have been able to manage. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at May 4, 2006 11:17 AM | Permalink Good stuff, Sisyphus, thank you. (Though this is all a bit too much like Albert Brooks roaming painfully around India, asking "what makes ya laugh?") I think this is a great key for gauging response: Satire makes a point but, as humor, it cannot be taken negatively. If satire is to be humorous it cannot be malicious. Satirical humor, in this case, is in the ear of the beholder. That's why the folks in the room -- all of whom were implicated -- did not think it was funny. They felt it was hostile ... toward them. And they were right. But to many of us out here in the country, it was a fitting and refreshing remedy to an overwhelming climate of hostility that has pervaded and poisoned the national discourse -- emanating from the White House -- since August, 2003. Hence, the humor disconnect -- or, if you prefer, the kairos disconnect. Time's Poniewozik, nails it: To the audience that would watch Colbert on Comedy Central, the pained, uncomfortable, perhaps-a-little-scared-to-laugh reaction shots were not signs of failure. They were the money shots. They were the whole point. And this ... In other words, what anyone fails to get who said Colbert bombed because he didn't win over the room is: the room no longer matters. ... is very interesting and quite topical here. He's pointing out yet another dimension of Colbert's performance: he was using Bush's "bypass the filter" technique exactly by playing to the folks at home, not the room. It is also something very similar to the Bush tactic of Press Rollback. As Jay writes, "Bush changed the game on the press" by denying White House reporters any legitimate purpose. And the press never knew what hit 'em. Likewise -- and largely because this emasculation of the press has happened without much of a whimper from the victims -- Colbert changed the game on the President and the WH Correspondents' Dinner. Instead of a good-natured ribbing, the entire room received a dressing-down for failing to do their respective jobs. If this is a watershed moment, it is because Colbert has seized the outside-the-beltway ground and left Administration dittoheads like Tucker Carlson (who purports to be a libertarian) arguing that Colbert was not funny because he "doesn't understand Washington." That's it exactly, on so many levels. Posted by: Richard B. Simon at May 4, 2006 11:23 AM | Permalink Richard -- I agree it seems self-evident that part of the thinking by the war planners was, as you put it that "the problem with oil and Saddaam is not us having the oil, it's him and all his bad attitude having the oil money..." Isn't it astonishing, then, that this concept appears not to have occurred to Dr Rice until after she became Secretary of State? When she was running the NSC, apparantly "the search for hydrocarbons" never shaped her decisionmaking. Posted by: Andrew Tyndall at May 4, 2006 11:29 AM | Permalink Take it down a few notches, Sisy. -- bush's jaw Too funny. Thanks, bj. It helps me to know when you think a comment or phrase is over-the-top, even if only "a few notches." I especially appreciated you addressing the content of my comment by bring in Jesus. That helped a lot. Same thing as asking whether he was funny, really. - steve schwenk I'm pretty sure that kairos and the rhetorical situation play a role in how Colbert was received by his many auditors. I'm not sure that "bad kairos?" is the same question. I do think you should ask Andy on his blog: "How could a satirist be accused of bad karios by delivering satire at a dinner where humor and satire are what have always been delivered?" No, Jason, I'm not contending the admin hacks were lying in their disavowals; to the contrary, they were confessing that the 16 words themselves were a lie. At this point, you are the one clinging to the infamous 16 -- not Fleischer, not Rice, not Tenet, and certainly not Bush. You're declaring fealty to an empty castle -- one that even the king has disavowed and walked away from. There's something sort of earlyish Peter Sellers about such peculiar behavior. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at May 4, 2006 11:39 AM | Permalink I especially appreciated you addressing the content of my comment by bring in Jesus. Actually, that was a not-so-subtle-use of Jason's words to address Jason. I look closely at other's diction (but not my own typo-filled comments). I can spot Kilgore a mile away by his phrases (a laff riot). Are you offended by the Jeebus reference, Sisy? As far as oil. ... Our politicians can't do much about energy prices. (Gas prices follow oil prices. Oil prices are higher now then last fall after Katrina.) Some politicians can. The problem is in our hemisphere. Forget Iraq (as far as oil): things could get very interesting, very quickly, right in our own back yard. Venezuela is our third-largest source of oil imports. Posted by: bush's jaw at May 4, 2006 12:08 PM | Permalink I do think you should ask Andy on his blog: "How could a satirist be accused of bad karios by delivering satire at a dinner where humor and satire are what have always been delivered?" Actually, I think the question answers itself. The issue isn't the satire, it's whether he went too far. It's a matter of proportion, as the link from Andy's post illustrates with this example of bad karios:
After voting to fire the popular principal, the sympathetic parent might grab the microphone and scream invectives at the board. This would be bad kairos. Perhaps a better choice would be to recognize that a mild rebuke fits the situation followed by a well-timed letter to the editor or column in the school newsletter. And whether Colbert went too far, i.e. whether his jokes were appropriate, or whether "a mild rebuke" would have been "a better choice," is going to be a matter of subjective opinion. Just as whether one found him funny or not is. However, it is unlikely that many people would find the presentation funny if they believed Colbert went too far. The two questions overlap to a large extent. The AOL poll bears this out. The proportion of those who found Colbert very funny or somewhat funny (73%) is very similar to the proportion who found his jokes to be appropriate (65%). Only 8% found him funny but inappropriate. Posted by: steve schwenk at May 4, 2006 12:18 PM | Permalink Noam the clever contrarian cops a plea to two of the five counts of error I charged him with. He had me saying something that Lydon and Scheiber said, and he had "Open Source" as an NPR show. Nothing he could do with those. I thought he would also cop to getting the question the show asked wrong. The evidence was pretty strong there, but he decided to stick with his story and look like an ass to anyone who heard the thing. FOR BOTH OF YOU WHO STILL CARE...: I have to say, reading this Richard Cohen column was really disturbing. to recognize that a mild rebuke fits the situation followed by a well-timed letter to the editor or column in the school newsletter. Yes, exactly. The folks who think Colbert is right on recognize that in six years of slow-motion disaster for this country, the only thing that well-timed letters to the editor and newspaper columns have accomplished is the substitution of Sam Alito for Harriet Miers. Such a fitting example here. It is exactly that phony decorum, which maintains the top-down flow of authority by making "mild rebuke" the only legitimate form of criticism of power, that is being subverted. Posted by: Richard B. Simon at May 4, 2006 12:37 PM | Permalink "He was shot seven times. Then 40 pieces of super-heated shrapnel melted into his flesh. And at three different moments, in nanoseconds laced with adrenaline, confusion, sweat and blood, Marine Corps 1st Sgt. Bradley Kasal took account of his life. Then he decided it would be OK if he died. His decision earned him the Navy Cross on Monday. Wow. What a riveting story. That's as good a human interest story as it gets. Do any outlets outside of Southern California outlets in the Camp Pendleton market and near this Marine's home town pick up the story? No." Jason - If you mean Sgt. Kasal's receipt of the Navy Cross, then no. But if you mean the story of his valor, then yes Posted by: js at May 4, 2006 12:41 PM | Permalink Funny is what funny does. Michael Fletcher's Q&A: Washington, D.C.: Good morning- This WH does set many new precedents (signing statements, rollback, tax cuts at the time of war time: are we at war?) and now the Correspondents Dinner as a roast. And the people getting roasted are expected to laugh out loud. If they don't then they don't get it. Seems like every story is a proxy or allegory for and/or against Dubya. Posted by: bush's jaw at May 4, 2006 12:57 PM | Permalink Cohen says (in a British accent): Rudeness means taking advantage of the other person's sense of decorum or tradition or civility that keeps that other person from striking back or, worse, rising in a huff and leaving. This is actually a pretty fitting description of the GOP's electoral strategy beginning in August, 2002, and it is certainly how they dealt with Kerry. It's also not much different from saying: "Tony already knows most of you, and he's agreed to take the job anyway." Posted by: Richard B. Simon at May 4, 2006 1:16 PM | Permalink Richard is right. What was the setting by which to judge karios, a private dinner among D.C. and national elites with close professional ties to one another, or the nation's living rooms where millions of voters watched along on the internet? It would be one thing if it was just a private dinner party, but it was not; moreover, the media typically treat the president the same way in their stories (kid gloves) that theyy apparently expected Colbert to treat him at that dinner. That's why Colbert was brillant and seemd to so many of us to have perfect pitch on the karios scale. To those of us, the satire was not too strong, it was just right, given all that has gone down and wrong with this president and this media/press during this administration. Posted by: steve schwenk at May 4, 2006 1:17 PM | Permalink Sorry, Steve, but you're still relying on the fallacy of arguing from authority rather than grounding your discussion in fact. The notion that what someone says in Washington can retroactively alter the as yet undisputed facts on the ground as they occured in Sudan or in a bioweapons lab in Baghdad is evidence of some pretty sloppy thinking on your part. You're firing chaff, but you're doing everything you can to avoid addressing the following established facts. 1. Coalition forces recovered biological weapon seed stocks from an Iraqi facility, according to the CIA. 2. Saddam's chief nuclear weapons architect and his lead negotiator in nonproliferations conferences personally visited Sudan in 1999, and had other contacts later (Which is why, of course, the Butler report considers the conclusion that Saddam did seek quantities of Uranium from Africa "well-founded, and goes to the truth of the second clause of the 16 words). 3. The U.S. learned of this development from British Intelligence sources (goes to the truth of the first part of the 16 words). I hope you expected better critical thinking skills of your reporters than you've been able to demonstrate here. To quote an old journo maxim, "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." Did you bother to check out Rice and Fleischer? Because if your characterization of what they said is accurate, what they said does not withstand analysis in light of the facts established above, and which have not been specifically disputed by anyone here. Your naive faith in the pronouncements of Ari Fleischer and other state officials is touching, Steve - but when the facts are so clearly established, as they are here, your faith is unbecoming for a journalist. And I doubt you would stand for such critical sloppiness on your own staff. Well, then again, if you didn't understand the rules of evidence or the fundamentals of logic and reasoning, maybe you would. Posted by: Jason Van Steenwyk at May 4, 2006 1:41 PM | Permalink Everything you want to know about oil and gas. Interesting quiz. Top 5 US sources of imported oil. I think the proposed fence is on the wrong border ;-0 Posted by: bush's jaw at May 4, 2006 2:46 PM | Permalink "Because if your characterization of what they said is accurate, what they said does not withstand analysis in light of the facts established above." --Jason So you are calling them liars. (This, as I recall, is where I came in ... ) Raise your eyes from the ground for a moment Jason, and look at the bigger picture. Because if in fact Fleischer, Rice and Tenet were all backpedaling as fast as they could from a demonstrable truth that would have vindicated the administration -- then you're on to a much bigger story than a bunch of empty tin cans in the Iraqi desert. Namely, the story of insubordination at the highest levels of the administration. Hey, go for it. These days, that could get you a blog at washingtonpost.com, plus the requisite book contract. Me, I'll wait here. ;-) Posted by: Steve Lovelady at May 4, 2006 3:15 PM | Permalink BJ. Doesn't matter from whom we get our oil. Oil is fungible. If we buy from oil producer X, oil producer Y sells to somebody else. If we switch, producer X sells to somebody else. The market is a unit. Picture a big bucket full of oil. Some people are being paid to put oil in, others are paying to take it out. For the latter, the question of who, exactly, put in the stuff that's coming out into a particular country's dipper is not totally irrelevant, but has little to do with the price. If we drop Saudi Arabia altogether, and make it up with Canadian oil, whoever was previously buying the Canadian oil we're now buying will have to get his stuff from someplace. Since Saudi Arabia, now that we're no longer buying there, has a substantial inventory, the guy Canada is no longer selling to will probably be able to figure out where to go to make it up. But if Canada is too pricey, we might not switch, so Canada will probably have to be about where Saudi's price is. All Econ 101. The only real question is whether we can get it internally and pay ourselves rather than somebody else. Of course, if that became possible, the MSM would be howling about how Bush's buddies are now making zillions. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at May 4, 2006 3:18 PM | Permalink (The only real question is whether we can get it internally and pay ourselves rather than somebody else. Yes, and the answer is no. The U.S. hit peak oil in the 1960s. I've written some on it here, if you're interested. Actually, our most powerful resource for getting it internally is conservation. A few added mpg in fuel economy could displace billions of barrels bought overseas. Far more than drilling in ANWR, which by all accounts wouldn't yield for ten years anyway.) Posted by: Richard B. Simon at May 4, 2006 3:34 PM | Permalink This Colbert thing is fascinating for several reasons. Colbert has a bipartisan fan base (including uber-conservative Hugh Hewitt) but the left sees Colbert as their culture/bias warrior, defending the faith. Does Colbert think about himself this way? If so, what to make of this quote: "This was predictable, Bush-bashing kind of humor....Because he (Colbert) is who he is, and everyone likes him, I think this room thought he was going to be more sophisticated and creative." I guess it's hard out here to be both sophisticated and polemic. I couldn't really get an answer here about why Colbert was idolized (although Simon's anus-banana-Colbert-Declaration of Independence screed gets my vote for the most hilarious comment on this thread), so I wandered off to HuffPo to see what they were saying about it. I saw two separate trains of thought there: 1. Colbert speaks for me (us). What I garnered there reminded me of how conservatives describe the national press before the advent of alternative media (after all, isn't Rush Limbaugh an entertainer?). In other words, Colbert fans don't see their thinking or views reflected in the national media. If you think Bush is a war criminal, and the Iraq invasion was illegal, you won't find this in MSM. The frustration of conservatives lead to the rise of (dare I say it?) diverse media. The Bush Is A Criminal crowd want their views reflected in the mainstream too. I say, power to 'em. Maybe Al Jazeera will do it for them. 2. The description of what Colbert did at WHCD by some on the left (like schwenk) makes me think of those obnoxious parents who bring their out-of-control kids into an upscale restaurant and stand idly by, smirking all the while, when their precious darlings shout, run, hide under tables, throw food, etc. knowing the management and their fellow patrons will do nothing. Like people who let their dogs run wild, pee on everything and everyone, with nary an uplifted eyebrow by the owners. What's up with that? I get the feeling that some on the left see Colbert as their undisciplined child/dog. As I said, fascinating. Posted by: BXB&B at May 4, 2006 3:37 PM | Permalink Now now Aubrey. It does matter where we get our oil from especially when we consume more than we produce. (I bombed Econ 101, my professor was a supply sider who loved the Laugher Curver.) Along with supply and demand, the market price of oil (or any commodity) is impacted by world events, whether that is in the Mideast or South America. The price that we import and Canada export is tied to the rest of the world. One note on plagiarism, Peter Melhman is hilarious, this is before we know she did the 10-finger discount from a second author. Melhman is not moved by this. Woodward episode. yada yada yada. Posted by: bush's jaw at May 4, 2006 3:39 PM | Permalink Why Colbert was idolized by the left this week ? As noted earlier, even as Colbert was eviscerating Bush, he was also indicting the assembled and self-satisfied Washington press corps as just so many lapdogs. To their faces. And their discomfort, even indignation, at finding themselves targets was evident. And, if there is any interest group that despises the MSM more than the frothing-at-the-mouth far right, it is the frothing-at-the-mouth far left . Thus some lefties spent the week elevating Colbert to sainthood. Posted by: Steve Lovelady at May 4, 2006 4:35 PM | Permalink Hey nedu, Colbert still has legs (a news quant). Remember Laura's stand up from last year? That was considered stealing the show. We've come a long way from Desperate Housewives. Froomkin wrote about it, again. And the jaw gets a nod or a twitch. The YouTube version of Colbert's speech has apparently been deleted for copyright reasons. Bummer. But you can read the transcript here. And a reader called my attention to this ABC News video of Colbert, which has an added bonus: During the showing of Colbert's video -- a fantasy sequence in which he becomes press secretary -- the ABC video keeps the camera right on Bush. Posted by: bush's jaw at May 4, 2006 5:14 PM | Permalink BJ. As regards the curve, the last few times the marginal rates went down, revenues went up. You apparently bombed reading, too. I did point out the Nigerian issue, and I did say that the Canadian price would be about the world price. So "now, now" somebody else. I don't know if our peak production had to do with reserves or profitability. Obviously, price would affect the amount of oil people would be willing to try to get out of US rocks. I've heard about the Alberta tar sands attracting some big dollars in processing research. Big, big numbers about availale oil, given, as usual, the right price. Posted by: Richard Aubrey at May 4, 2006 7:32 PM | Permalink |
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