Dumbing Down and Tarting Up

This media thing has been increasingly a killer in terms of the on-going erosion (20 years?) and now potential destruction of what thinking people used to understand to be the most enlightened, benevolent, and farsighted form of government the world has yet seen.

We may be a bit fatuous in seeing ourselves that way. We've always been pretty full of ourselves, and the sorry Little Bush captures that perfectly.

But there's no doubt that whatever one might think about the "American Way," its egalitarian and we're-all-in-this-together motif is definitely not on the menu with the present pathologic demagogues. "Here's a finger in your eye, and how do I get mine" seems to be their mindset. "With us or against us." That is definitely not me. Is it Us?

I want to believe that for thinking folks, it is clear the major media have flat-out failed us, for a good long time. If you reject my premise, I ask that you sit through a segment of "Today" or competitors in the AM or any mainstream "news" show in the PM. (I'm counting on you actually being coherent and free-thinking.) Would you call the material truly important in terms of the big issues in the world these days? How much of it is sheer "entertainment" (typ. titillation) and how much is propaganda?

Frankly, I can't imagine trying to work through an issue like this without input from the folks in the trenches (e.g., see prior post!). This time around I'm featuring Mr. Rather:

When asked about his view of CBS Evening News during a radio interview with MSNBC’s Chuck Scarborough on Monday, Dan Rather said network execs had tried to boost ratings by “dumbing it down and tarting it up.”

The media firestorm that’s followed illustrates the very point–the larger point–Rather has consistently tried to make about the degradation of the mainstream, corporate news biz and the obliteration of the line between news and entertainment.

Watch as CBS dances, deflects and dodges the valid and valuable criticism levied by Rather and plenty of other media watchdogs. Les Moonves, CBS CEO, called Rather’s remark “sexist” and said, “Let’s give [Katie] a break.”

But it’s got nothing to do with Katie Couric. Nor does it really have anything to do with the messenger, Rather (whose colorful, native Texanspeak has gotten him into hot water in the past–much as it did for the late former Governor Anne Richards). It’s about the message.

Rather’s predecessor at CBS, Walter Cronkite–no fan of Rather himself–offered a similar take in a recent keynote address. According to the Associated Press, Cronkite suggested that the pressure for profits is “threatening the very freedom the nation was built upon.”

“It’s not just the journalist’s job at risk here,” Cronkite said. “It’s American democracy. It is freedom.”

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Rather has also described a culture of fear that permeates the newsroom. In an interview with BBC he said, “It is an obscene comparison–you know I am not sure I like it–but you know there was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tyres around people’s necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be necklaced here, you will have a flaming tyre of lack of patriotism put around your neck. Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions, and to continue to bore in on the tough questions so often. And again, I am humbled to say, I do not except myself from this criticism.”

And, speaking to Moyers: “Fear is in every newsroom in the country. And fear of what? Well… a combination of: if you don’t go along to get along, you’re going to get the reputation of being a troublemaker. There’s also the fear…particularly in networks, they’ve become huge, international conglomerates. They have big needs, legislative needs, repertory needs in Washington. Nobody has to send you a memo to tell you that that’s the case…. And that puts a seed in your mind of, well, if you stick your neck out, if you take the risk of going against the grain with your reporting, is anybody going to back you up?”

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A Welcome Voice in the Wasteland

Is it just me who perceives that there is routinely more statesmanship and gravitas to be found in the words of Bill Moyer than in the spewings from the entire Executive Branch of our federal "government" and their innumerable enablers? The latter of course prominently feature the vast majority of the staffs of the so-called mainstream (read corporate-ized monopolistic) media.
To my mind, this piece is to the outrageous outpourings of crocodile tears over Libby's sentencing like a machete is to kudzu vine. He calls it "Begging His Pardon." No prisoners, Bill!

We have yet another remarkable revelation of the mindset of Washington's ruling clique of neoconservative elites - the people who took us to war from the safety of their Beltway bunkers. Even as Iraq grows bloodier by the day, their passion of the week is to keep one of their own from going to jail.

It is well-known that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby - once Vice President Cheney's most trusted adviser - has been sentenced to 30 months in jail for perjury. Lying. Not a white lie, mind you. A killer lie. Scooter Libby deliberately poured poison into the drinking water of democracy by lying to federal investigators, for the purpose of obstructing justice.

Attempting to trash critics of the war, Libby and his pals in high places - including his boss Dick Cheney - outed a covert CIA agent. Libby then lied to cover their tracks. To throw investigators off the trail, he kicked sand into the eyes of truth. "Libby lied about nearly everything that mattered," wrote the chief prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald. The jury agreed and found him guilty on four felony counts. Judge Reggie B. Walton - a no-nonsense, lock-em-up-and-toss-away-the-key type, appointed to the bench by none other than George W. Bush - called the evidence "overwhelming" and threw the book at Libby.

You would have thought their man had been ordered to Guantanamo, so intense was the reaction from his cheerleaders. They flooded the judge's chambers with letters of support for their comrade and took to the airwaves in a campaign to "free Scooter."

Vice President Cheney issued a statement praising Libby as "a man ... of personal integrity" - without even a hint of irony about their collusion to browbeat the CIA into mangling intelligence about Iraq in order to justify the invasion.

"A patriot, a dedicated public servant, a strong family man, and a tireless, honorable, selfless human being," said Donald Rumsfeld - the very same Rumsfeld who had claimed to know the whereabouts of weapons of mass destruction and who boasted of "bulletproof" evidence linking Saddam to 9/11. "A good person" and "decent man," said one-time Pentagon adviser Kenneth Adelman, who had predicted the war in Iraq would be a "cakewalk." Paul Wolfowitz wrote a four-page letter to praise "the noblest spirit of selfless service" that he knew motivated his friend Scooter. Yes, that Paul Wolfowitz, who had claimed Iraqis would "greet us as liberators" and that Iraq would "finance its own reconstruction." The same Paul Wolfowitz who had to resign recently as president of the World Bank for using his office to show favoritism to his girlfriend. Paul Wolfowitz turned character witness.

The praise kept coming: from Douglas Feith, who ran the Pentagon factory of disinformation that Cheney and Libby used to brainwash the press; from Richard Perle, as cocksure about Libby's "honesty, integrity, fairness and balance" as he had been about the success of the war; and from William Kristol, who had primed the pump of the propaganda machine at The Weekly Standard and has led the call for a presidential pardon. "The case was such a farce, in my view," he said. "I'm for pardon on the merits."

One Beltway insider reports that the entire community is grieving - "weighted down by the sheer, glaring unfairness" of Libby's sentence.

And there's the rub.

None seem the least weighted down by the sheer, glaring unfairness of sentencing soldiers to repeated and longer tours of duty in a war induced by deception. It was left to the hawkish academic Fouad Ajami to state the matter baldly. In a piece published on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, Ajami pleaded with Bush to pardon Libby. For believing "in the nobility of this war," wrote Ajami, Scooter Libby had himself become a "casualty" - a fallen soldier the president dare not leave behind on the Beltway battlefield.

Not a word in the entire article about the real fallen soldiers. The honest-to-God dead, and dying, and wounded. Not a word about the chaos or the cost. Even as the calamity they created worsens, all they can muster is a cry for leniency for one of their own who lied to cover their tracks.

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More Lucky Me!

The Yogi B version might be "coincidental serendipity" or some other memorably comic misaprop. I'm going to settle for Serendipity. (But, aside, the mere syllabification also brings to mind the sorely missed Mr. Zevon's title "Sentimental Hygiene"!)

Last Thursday PM late, inspired by what I do not know (and yes that has more than one accurate implication in this case - but it was certainly not the result of a lot of cerebral processing), I got the wild idea it was time to renew my running vows and utilize the lunch hour on Friday for some remedial respiratory work.

In the cold light of day (or, frankly, later, when I remembered my vow), it didn't seem like nearly as brilliant an idea, somehow. I waffled and dodged, groped for excuses, but eventually decided my lizard brain must be indulged.

It actually wasn't as bad as I had expected, aside from the difficulty after months of settling for walking of being certain I had all the requisite gear and none of the excess (i.e., elevator card critical, wallet to be sequestered, towel, jockstrap, handkerchief, and socks in no way optional). There were some stretches where I ambled, and some where I walked, but I made good use of all the uphill stretches and more than held my own against a couple of folks doing Hard Time on the Serious Stairs that climb a couple hundred feet up the west side of Capitol Hill - and this was at the far end of my (okay, modest) circuit. Not to say I ran all the way up those stairs, but I kept to my stair-skipping routine and took no prisoners. Of course I had to suppress urge to vomit at the top! Ah bliss.

I'd purposely chosen route to baby myself towards the end, with a general downward grade back to the office. So I was still able to fake a bit of a trot as I traversed the late lunch hour shopping throng (where DO these people come from?) in downtown. That's when I spotted an unmistakeable red-head coming towards me, absorbed in checking out which store was which. It was unquestionably my daughter's college roomie, by now a dear friend of the family. This was a coincidence of the highest order, one that would not have been possible, I'd argue, had I not given into my inner Jim Morrison. Kelly was in town from Southern Cal for a Veterinarian convention, and on a break, late enough that had I not been running I would have been hunkered down in the office. It was terrific to encounter her, she was more than gracious in hugging a slimy, sweaty Neanderthal from way back, and a kick I think for both of us.

Yet another prod to be alert for those strange and wild urges, submit to instinct or random provocation, and (perhaps most importantly) keep your head up, your mind on your driving and your hands on the wheel, and be aware of your surroundings.

Otherwise I might stumble into you when we least expect it.