I wouldn’t want you to think the L.A. Times is the only major media outlet that falls into the fetal position before the mighty BushCo. Check out the New York Times story today about Feingold’s censure resolution:
Though polls on surveillance are mixed, Republicans say the public generally backs the idea of eavesdropping on people suspected of being in contact with terror suspects.
“The American people already made their decision,” Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday in an appearance in Mr. Feingold’s home state, The Associated Press reported. “They agree with the president.”
Maybe it’s just me. But if I were the copy editor on this story, I’d insist that the story list those “mixed” polls - you know, the one about people who don’t agree with the president. And then I’d remind people of the many, many experts in constitutional law who also say Bush broke the law.
But again, that’s just me. I mean, I don’t live in Bloomfield with most of the Times staff and maybe I just have the wrong perspective on these things. I keep thinking journalism is about informing citizens.
Obviously, I’m wrong. The New York Times newspaper proves it.
Hmmmm. I’m possessed of an exceedingly dark and ironic sense of humor, and thus find the rhetoric from the elephants to be more and more humorous, the more it resembles the trumpeting of a stampeding herd.
This one had a particularly resonant, Edgar Alan Poe, Masque of the Red Death ring to it.
Cornyn and his cronies also conjure images of Fortunato, chained and being walled up into the wine cellar in The Casque of Amontillado, laughing because he wants to believe that being buried alive is only a joke, that he isn’t being “snuffed” by someone smarter, more clever, and more motivated than he.
Feingold is clearly now the pre-eminent legislator in America.
The Republican noise machine will throw mud at him, the GOP legislators will shout and spit, and most democrats will cower in the glare of public scrutiny, but when the dust settles, regardless of what all the cowards do, Russ will have his own page in history as a Senator of integrity, courage, and loyalty to the law and his constituents.
**I don’t believe that anybody who’s talking about it is willing to say what they really believe yet.**
These days, journalism seems to be about informing citizens of the administration’s latest interpretation of reality.
Which is why we need new (or new Old) words for the two views of news-handling.
I’ve been using Professional Journalists, or ProJos, for the kind that phone it in from the Administration’s press leak, and Reporters (remember reporters?) for the kind that, in dear Joe’s words, write what they’ve seen, in the old “Who,” “What,” “When,” “Where,” “Why,” and “How” style that I’m greyingly old enough to remember.
Because they’re really two different kinds of writers … hell, they’re two different kinds of people.
Kind regards,
Dog, etc.
searching for home
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Facts are like the bricks we build houses out of. Taken one at a time, bricks are weighty, rectangular, undeniable. “That is definitely a brick.”
Journalism is building a house of bricks. A house with mass and weight, a very believable house.
Journamalism is building a big brick facade in front of a shack, and being famous for being famous — as the folks who built that big brick mansion. “Look at the size of that place! The people who work there must know a lot of things the rest of us don’t.”
Infotainment is leasing out that big brick mansion to any paying party to throw shindigs. Soon it’s a Grand Old Party carrying on in there, always getting in the news, making headlines like, “What A Great Party!”
Propaganda is signing over title to that big brick mansion, to clients who insist that all bricks are round, carry no weight, and spin easily. Anything goes, anything becomes perfectly possible, behind that facade.
Despite this grand evolution of journalism from a trade to a business to PR to performance art, Susie remains a brick head, read by people who believe in rectangles, and weight.
despite the fact that polls say otherwise, what cheney is saying does not in fact constitute a representation of the way our laws work.
just because the majority want it (though they don’t in this case) doesn’t make it legal. if our laws worked this way, we’d be out of iraq and bush and cheney would be out of office.
Remember when 51% was a mandate?