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Archive - August 2003
[2003.08.31 - 07:25 P.M.] Bush & Bin Laden - All in the Family?
Under no circumstances skip BuzzFlash's
interview with Greg Palast. Carlyle and Harken and Riyadh, oh my...
[2003.08.31 - 01:42 P.M.] Pop Quiz For Ralph
Leafing through the Hartford Courant this morning, I saw that Ralph Nader was in town for a Green
Party fund-raiser. Seems like Ralph is still grinding away at the same old axe he has with our
corrupt,
two-party, tweedle-dum/tweedle-dee system. But he's got something else on his mind now as well:
"Nader had especially sharp words for President Bush and his policy in Iraq, saying it
is now clear that the al Qaeda terrorist network was not in league with Saddam Hussein and that there were
no weapons of mass destruction ready to be used on short notice. "...The war was premised on a whole sheaf
of lies," Nader said. He also criticized Bush for his continuing aggressive posture in international
affairs. "The president of the United States has to control his tongue a little more and not behave
like an out-of-control west Texas sheriff," he said."
Wow. Strong words. Tough stance! Bold criticism!!! This guy's got it on the ball.
Hey Ralph, One Question: If Al Gore were in the White House, do you think our guys would be dying over
in Iraq right now? Because, if I recall correctly, you said that both major parties were exactly the
same. That it wouldn't make any difference who we put in the Oval Office in 2000. Isn't that right?
So I guess, by your logic, given the same circumstances, President Gore would have declared pre-emptive
war on a country with no ties to our terrorist enemies and no links to 9-11, right? You fucking arrogant
pinhead. You helped make this happen. If not by the small number of votes you took away by deliberately
targeting states with close races, then certainly by spreading the ignorant, vicious, contrary-to-the-facts
lie that all we have are "Republicrats and Demicans" to vote for.
I am not a Green-Basher by trade. I voted for Nader in 1996 when it was absolutely clear that Clinton
would win in a landslide. I agree with a great many of the Green's criticisms of the Democratic party,
which has often not only failed to stand up to the Republicans blatant corporate ass-kissing but all too
frequently has mimicked it. But no sane person can deny that there are substantial, concrete
differences between the two parties -- differences that, as we see in Iraq, have enormous,
life-and-death consequences. Until the Greens - and Saint Nader in particular - acknowledge that,
they have no credibility in my eyes.
[2003.08.31 - 12:06 P.M.] Quote of The Day (from BuzzFlash)
"It’s like having a blind, brain-damaged parakeet as president. All the Chickenhawk
Neo-Con "endless war" advisors sit around the parakeet and recommend war, deregulation, rollback of
environmental protections, government contracts for campaign contributors, making America into an
official Christian state, and so forth. Because the parakeet is mentally deficient, he keeps nodding
his head all the time. The advisers interpret his nodding head as approval for their destructive plans.
The Bush corporate media shills prop up the parakeet by insisting that his head nods are proof of his
decisiveness and wisdom. This is what passes for good government with the Republicans and their media
enablers!"
"A blind, brain-damaged parakeet." Oh my. Great visual. I needed that.
[2003.08.29 - 04:40 P.M.] First Entry (Or: My "Hello World" to the Blogosphere)
Jack Shafer's article "Liar, Liar"
still has my ass burning two days after I first ran across it. The basic
premise is this: After years of the conservative press cranking out
best-sellers claiming that liberals are scoundrels out to deceive decent
Americans, the left is fighting back by calling conservatives on their own lies
and dissembling. OK, true enough. Joe Conason's
Big Lies and Al Franken's
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them aim to do exactly that. So too
does Eric Alterman's
What Liberal Media? -- albeit more indirectly. But Shafer goes astray
in the same way that so many other journalists and pundits have recently gone
astray when he draws an equivalency between the earlier conservative
screeds and the emerging counter-attack by the long-dormant left. Here's
Shafer:
"... in excavating conservative bullshit, these writers begin to
resemble their colleagues on the right: Their primary mission isn't to uncover
lies and reveal the truth. If it were, they'd chart the deceptions and
propaganda emanating from both political wings."
Stop. First, implicit in that statement is the belief that what conservatives
like Hannity, Coulter, and Limbaugh are trying to do with their books is "chart
the deceptions and propaganda" emanating from Democrats and liberals. In
reality, what they are doing is spreading deceptions and
propaganda about Democrats and liberals. Second, who the hell is
Jack Shafer to pick Joe Conason's subject matter for him? Why does he get to
tell Al Franken -- who is a comedian and polemicist, not a journalist -- that
he has to give equal shit to his own team? But let's let Jack continue:
"The unspoken premise of the liar-liar books -- no matter who
writes them -- is that the other side lies and mine doesn't. Of course, neither
wing has ever told it straight, a fact all liar-liar books neglect."
Ah, actually, that's not the premise of these books at all. I don't know these
guys personally (I had the pleasure of meeting Conason once), but I know their
work, and not one of them would claim that the Democratic party or "The Left" is
without sin in the lying department. One would have to be either a True
Believer or a mental defective to make that claim. The premise of these books,
to the extent that they all echo the same themes, is that the lies told by the
right -- specifically those told in the service of the Hard-Right Conservative
"Movement" over the last decade or so -- are not just examples of
"politicians being politicians", nor are they sporadic, nor are they rare. They
are part of a consistent pattern of misinformation and distortion designed to
get/keep Republicans in power and keep Americans in the dark. (A dominant
sub-theme for Conason and Franken, and the main subject matter of Alterman's
book, is that our beloved liberal media lets the right get away with
this while Dems get hammered mercilessly.)
Somehow, Shafer seems to miss all this. Worse yet, he spends so much time making
facile comparisons between what he perceives as the similar style of the two
camps that he almost neglects to discuss the substance of their arguments at
all. Sure, he gives the quick "Oh, by the way, they're not wrong" to the good
guys:
"Franken, Conason, and Corn aren't just ginning it up. They
accurately document the right's most egregious lies and acts of hypocrisy. They
uncover Coulter's loony untruths, dissect President Bush's tax cut claims, and
rebuke him for his insincere promise to lead a more decorous political debate.
If you ever doubted the GOP's fondness for "crony capitalism" or its
pork-barrel duplicity, you'll find the complete story here."
But that happens near the top of the article, before he goes on to pursue his
precious "equivalency" theory. By the time we reach the conclusion, we're
deep in he-said/he-said territory:
"I suppose that when consuming liar-liar books in pairs, say
Sean Hannity's versus Joe Conason's, the average reader might come within
spitting distance of political reality.
Oh, so the two books balance each other, is that it? Funny how he
doesn't mention, then, all the things Hannity gets right in his book.
Puh-fucking-lease! Conason is an accomplished investigative journalist, Jack.
Hannity is a hack talking-head for the Republican Party's own Pravda network.
As the editor of Slate, you damn well know that.
Bob Somerby's response
to the above gets it just about right:
"What an amazing statement! Not being hugely tribal ourselves,
we don’t believe that conservatives lie and liberals don’t. But can Shafer
possibly think that Hannity and Conason are roughly equal when it comes to
truthfulness — within “spitting distance” on this measure? Pundits ignored the
obvious during Campaign 2000. But how much denial must one perform to put this
comparison into print?"
Anyhow, enough picking on poor, deluded Mr. Shafer. The fact is that this is
just the latest example of a particularly virulent meme which is sweeping the
nation: BSATSS. It's short for "Both-Sides-Are-The-Same Syndrome", and
it's something I'll post a separate piece on at some point. Basically, rather
than use their critical faculties to evaluate the claims of the two sides in an
argument, the BSATSS-afflicted listener focuses on the form of the argument --
the apparent symmetry of the claims each side is making about the other -- and
prematurely concludes that "both sides" are equally self-serving. Or
despicable. Or predictably partisan. Or whatever. It's a particularly
disheartening form of intellectual laziness, and while anyone can be infected
by it, this meme seems to have it in for American journalists.
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