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Fringe Leftist Losers: Wrong Even When They're Right
"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty" -- John Adams, Journal, 1772.
"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree" -- James Madison, speech at the Constitutional Convention, July 11, 1787.
"All governments lie" -- journalist I.F. Stone, addressing journalism students on the one truth they'd be well-advised always to recall.
"Information asymmetry is always going to exist, and, living as we do in a Democratic [sic] system, most journalists are going to give the government the benefit of some doubt, even having learned lessons about giving the government that benefit" -- The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder, today, reacting to Tom Ridge's confession that the Bush administration heightened terror alerts for political gain, and justifying why journalists such as himself "were very skeptical when anti-Bush liberals insisted that what Ridge now says is true, was true."
________________________________
That little progression of thought explains much about our political and media culture. Marcy Wheeler dissects and eviscerates Ambinder's remarkable reaction to the Ridge revelation (Ambinder has now retracted some (though not all) of his more irresponsible assertions). But Ambinder's comments reveal a couple of other points worth highlighting.
Just as is still commonly said about opponents of the Iraq War (even though they were right, they were still wrong and unSerious because their motives were bad), Ambinder acknowledges that Bush critics were right that the terror alerts were being manipulated for political ends (he has no choice but to acknowledge that now that Ridge admits it), but still says journalists like himself were right to scorn such critics "because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence." As always: even when the dirty leftist hippies are proven right, they're still Shrill, unSerious Losers who every decent person and "journalist" scorns.
Ambinder's belief that there is nothing other than blind "Bush hatred" that could have justified such a belief -- and his accompanying self-defense that journalists like him had no way of knowing any of this -- is patently false. Here is a 2006 Time column by Josh Marshall that details the ample empirical evidence suggesting that "that the Bush Administration orchestrates its terror alerts and arrests to goose the GOP's poll numbers." And here is an exhaustive and lengthy (17 minutes) segment from Keith Olbermann early last year that "weaves from each revelation of an intelligence failure or a Democratic political victory to an almost immediate orange alert or 'new threat' from al Qaeda." Olbermann's conclusion after examining all the evidence: "what we were told about terror, and not told, for security reasons, has overlapped considerably with what we were told about terror, and not told, for political reasons" (Olbermann had been raising the same suspicion for many years).
The reason journalists such as Ambinder saw no such evidence wasn't because it didn't exist. It existed in abundance; you had to suffer from some form of moral, intellectual or emotional blindness not to see it. It's because they didn't want to see it, because -- as Ambinder said -- they trusted the Bush administration as good and decent people who might err but would never do anything truly dishonest. It's because only loser Leftist ideologues distrusted Bush officials and the overriding goal of establishment journalists is to prove that they are not like them, that they're much more Serious and responsible and thus would never attribute bad motives to government leaders such as those who ran the Bush administration.
That's the same reason most establishment journalists instinctively oppose investigations of Bush officials: the people who rule over their Washington court may make mistakes, but they never do anything dishonest or criminal. They certainly don't blatantly lie. These journalists are the anti-I.F. Stones. And that's why political leaders know they can get away with blatant lying and lawbreaking. Why is that, Marc Ambinder? Because "most journalists are going to give the government the benefit of some doubt, even having learned lessons about giving the government that benefit."
About Ridge's revelations, Atrios today observes:
Sometimes it's a bit hard to remember just how nutty the world was in those post-9/11 days. Suggesting that Bush was using the terror alert for political purposes would have made you a crazy person, the mere suggestion of it would've put you outside the bounds of acceptable discourse.
Indeed, so strong was the stigma against those who said such things that Josh Marhsall felt compelled to insert this qualifier into the first paragraph of his column: "Now, I'm a respectable columnist. I don't want to draw rolled eyes. But think about it." And in 2004, after Howard Dean argued that the Bush administration was raising the terrorist alerts for political purposes, John Kerry proved his Seriousness by attacking Dean for making such an irresponsible claim:
Kerry was campaigning Monday in Grand Rapids, Mich., where he dismissed suggestions that a decision to raise the terror alert level was politically motivated. . . .
Kerry dismissed former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's comment that raising the terror level might be politically motivated.
"I don't care what he said. I haven't suggested that and I won't suggest that," Kerry said. "I do not hold that opinion. I don't believe that.''
That was because, as Atrios suggested, anyone like Dean who uttered such a suggestion was demonized as being among "the less stable among us," as right-wing war reporter Michael Totten put it in 2004, who proudly noted that "Kerry dismissed Dean's ravings the way a picnicker treats a fly buzzing around his barbecued chicken." An incredulous Chris Matthews interviewed Dean in 2004 about his accusations and could barely refrain from mocking Dean in every question:
MATTHEWS: But what you're saying here, Governor, is that there's a political brain somewhere in the administration which directs people like Tom Ridge and people like Ashcroft to exploit whatever info they have got to try to make it easier on the president for reelection, that someone is directing this timing? . . .
MATTHEWS: Are you saying that there's a political mind behind that, that is stirring these things up in a time the Democrats are trying to get some lift?
DEAN: We don't know that, Chris, but what we do know is there's a very disturbing pattern of...
MATTHEWS: Right, well, you sound like you're... You do sound, Governor, like you do know. You're not -- you're acting like you are just speculating here out loud, when in fact you're -- it's almost like push-polling. You're saying, "Could it be?" rather than just, "I'm thinking about these things" . . .
MATTHEWS: But is there any evidence that the administration is timing these releases of information to benefit themselves politically? Is there any evidence of that?
And an August, 2004 USA Today Editorial decried those, such as Dean, who were irresponsible enough to suggest such a thing:
Former presidential candidate Howard Dean said Sunday, without offering evidence, that terror warnings crop up whenever President Bush needs a boost. That statement follows the premise of Michael Moore's incendiary film Fahrenheit 9/11: that the alerts are used to keep the public in fear for political benefit.
It is the most serious of allegations -- that the nation's leaders would selfishly manipulate the gravest threat we face.
While no one should be naive enough to think that the White House -- or John Kerry's campaign -- doesn't discuss the politics of terrorism, any evidence of terror alerts called for political advantage is lacking.
And just to demonstrate how deceitful were the people who were running our government, here's what The New York Times reported in the wake of Dean's accusation:
Speaking to factory workers and invited supporters at a lawn and garden equipment manufacturer in Lee's Summit, Mo., Mr. Cheney lashed out at those who have implied that the terror alerts were at all politically motivated, specifically citing former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont, an unsuccessful candidate this year for the Democratic presidential nomination.
"There has been some commentary from some of our critics - Howard Dean comes to mind - saying somehow this is being hyped for political reasons, that the data we collected here, the casing reports that provided the information on the prospective attacks is old data, i.e., four, five years old," he said. "That just tells me Howard Dean doesn't know anything about how things operate."
Even the very same Tom Ridge, in 2004, lambasted those who made such a suggestion:
The AP also reports that Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge "spent a second day Wednesday defending the warnings, which came on the heels of the Democratic National Convention and drew attention from the presidential campaign of nominee John Kerry. 'I categorically state that the none of the terror threats are politically motivated,' Mr. Ridge said." Ridge also granted an extensive interview to CNN's Newsnight With Aaron Brown, in which he addressed the charges that the Administration was playing politics, saying, "I regret that there's an inference that this kind of public revelation of information is. . .political. It clearly was not and it never will be."
But that is how our political culture works. Throughout the Bush years, those who said demonstrably true things were continuously dismissed as fringe, conspiracy-driven leftist-losers: those who questioned whether Saddam really had WMDs; those who argued that the invasion of Iraq would lead to long-term military bases in that country; those who worried that warrantless eavesdropping and Patriot Act powers would lead to abuses; those who opposed the war in Afghanistan on the ground that it would be drag on for years with no resolution, etc. etc.
Having been proven right about all of those things hasn't changed perceptions any at all. As Ambinder's comments today reflect, the paramount unchangeable Beltway Truth is that those who distrust government claims are unSerious Fringe Leftist Losers. Even when they turn out to be right, they're still that. And no matter how many times journalists like Ambinder are proven wrong in "giv[ing] the government the benefit of some doubt, even having learned lessons about giving the government that benefit," they still continue to do it and believe it is the right and responsible thing to do.
Powerful political leaders are, as Jay Rosen often puts it, the ruling priests in the journalists' church of Savviness. Trusting the politically powerful is the establishment religion and carrying forth their message is the prime function of establishment journalists (note how Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, just two months ago, argued that the "public option" was crucial but then, like so many liberal pundits eager to maintain and build close relations with the White House, got dutifully on board with the White House message, by completely and shamelessly changing course the minute the White House did). Distrusting the statements and actions of government leaders was once the central value of our political system and of basic journalism. But now, especially in the eyes of establishment journalists, it is the hallmark of the unSerious, fringe, leftist loser, no matter how many times it is proven right.
UPDATE: In comments, Gator90 sums it all up:
The Maturation Cycle of Bush Administration Scandals
1. Crazy, hysterical, paranoid accusation by wild-eyed, partisan, left-wing loonies.
2. Old news
What's most amazing is that even when we reach Step 2, Step 1 still applies in full force.
UPDATE II: As he so often does, Tom Tomorrow, all the way back in 2005, perfectly captured the syndrome illustrated here (and which Gator90 described) -- click on image to enlarge:
UPDATE III: As Hume's Ghost noted on his blog back when it happened, Tom Ridge -- in early, 2005, shortly after he resigned -- strongly suggested that the terror alerts were raised for political reasons having nothing to do with legitimate security needs:
The Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though then-Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge argued there was only flimsy evidence to justify raising the threat level, Ridge now says. . . .
Ridge, who resigned Feb. 1, said Tuesday that he often disagreed with administration officials who wanted to elevate the threat level to orange, or "high" risk of terrorist attack, but was overruled. . . .
"More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it," Ridge told reporters. "Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don't necessarily put the country on (alert). ... There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, 'For that?' "
That apparently wasn't enough to make Ambinder and other journalists wonder why the official responsible for the alerts would have been "aggressively pressured" to raise it even in the face of "flimsy evidence" that there was a threat to justify that (we had no idea until today that this happened!). Real Journalists knew that the officials exerting that pressure had Good Reasons for wanting the alerts raised even if those journalists -- or, for that matter, even Homeland Security Secretary Ridge -- didn't know what those reasons were. Real Journalists just assume those officials had good reasons because they're trustworthy and entitled to the benefit of the doubt. Only irresponsible Far Leftists hysteric conspiracy-theorists with gut hatred for George Bush would entertain suspicions that something nefarious might motivate those decisions.
UPDATE IV: Ambinder now has a separate post apologizing for his use of the phrase "gut hatred." Whenever someone clearly apologizes for something that way, they deserve credit, but that offending phrase was only a small part of what I (and, I believe, Marcy Wheeler) were criticizing. Far more significant is Ambinder's belief that journalists can and should vest the pronouncements of political leaders with faith and trust rather than the skepticism that should be at the heart of all political journalism (notably, Ambinder lauded the "skepticism" which journalists harbored for "activists' conclusions" critical of the Bush administration while defending the trust journalists place in the claims of Bush officials themselves -- a truly bizarre way for a journalist to look at things, if you think about it). That mentality is far more consequential than Ambinder's careless public unleashing of standard Beltway journalist slurs against Bush critics.
UPDATE V: There's one other point made by Atrios about the Ridge confession (he was a veritable font of wisdom today) that I want to highlight:
And just so it's clear: using the threat of terrorism to try to achieve political goals is, you know, what terrorists do.
No observation will cause one to be ejected from acceptable mainstream company more immediately than pointing out that what the U.S. Government is doing is "terrorism" by definition. Ask Noam Chomsky about that, if you can find him. That's because using Terrorist threats (or civilian-destroying violence) for political gain, or to keep a population in fear, is something that only other people do -- but never the United States -- even when it's as plain as day (as it is here) that the U.S. Government is doing exactly that.
UPDATE VI: Tucker Carlson -- at the height of the August, 2004, controversy triggered by Howard Dean's accusation that the Bush administration manipulated terror alerts for political gain -- labeled those who believed the alerts were being exploited for political purposes as "insane conspiracy nuts" and said: "what they really need is psychological help, obviously." Separately, Carlson said that Dean had gone "berserk" and demanded that the Kerry campaign repudiate Howard Dean for suggesting that this was the case. I've emailed Carlson and asked him:
In light of Tom Ridge's belief that this is exactly what happened -- that, as the official responsible for assessing terrorist threats, he was pressured to raise the terrorist threat alert in order to benefit Bush's re-election campaign (something he also strongly suggested in 2005 after he resigned) -- do you still believe that? Or do you merely now believe Ridge to be one of the berserk, insane conspiracy nuts in need of psychological help?
I'll post any reply I receive.
68 Comments so far
Show AllIt's a truism that people go where they're welcome. That's why this fringe leftist loser hasn't been able to stomach voting for a mainstream presidential candidate since 1992.
Unfortunately, so strong is the tacit pressure to remain in the mainstream, that journalists (sic) like Mr. Ambinder are rewarded for their credulity and abdication of their responsibility.
"That's why this fringe leftist loser hasn't been able to stomach voting for a mainstream presidential candidate since 1992."
You're not a loser. The real losers are people who fall for the stupid duopoly and they go out of their way to justify doing so.
By the way, I like your earlier posts against the two party duopoly that I saw from last year's archives. Welcome aboard serious. :)
Thank you for the kind word. It was my intent to use the phrase "fringe leftist loser" as the author did, ironically and with a whiff of sarcasm. Sometimes these nuances get lost on the page.
You are cool Jennifer. Your supportive positive spirit is the kind of coalescing glue that would bind leftists; those who do want change. By the way, it will sure be my honor to vote for Ralph Nader if he runs again. This old dog can learn new tricks. Peace in Missouri and wherever stars shine.
AZJOE,
Although it's a laudable goal to place an "NF" idealist like Nader as a possible choice for our highest office, the reality is that America has always voted pragmatics and once in a while for flash ( see http://www.keirsey.com/guardian_presidents.aspx ):
** Guardian Presidents ( 20 )
** Rational Presidents _( 14 )
** Artisan Presidents __ ( 8 )
** Idealist Presidents ___( 0 )
_||_
Ambinder . . . still says journalists like himself were right to scorn such critics "because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence."
"Raw intelligence" - the subject today of The Chef Wanker Show. Season it with a dash of toadstools and rat turds (which The Chef says are capers), cook it in the MSM oven and serve it up as the truth. Ambinder, you're not a "journalist"; you're the reincarnation of Billy Mays.
Thank you, Glenn, for your no-nonsense reporting!
I wasn't surprised to find out that the "orange threats" were manipulated in the name of politics, but I am surprised that Tom Ridge fessed up.
And, thanks for including the incident involving Jonathan Alter and the "public option." One night, Alter was on Keith Olbermann's show, and I had to turn off the TV.
I am completely disgusted with the lot of them.
911 was a political watershed for the Bushies. That was abundantly clear on 912. of course the alert system was politicized. that was also abundantly clear.
Any "journalist" who gives especially the US government the benefit of the doubt is either an idiot or on the take.
How many years do you think it will take before 911 is sufficiently old and irrelevant that the msm will feel safe acknowledging government complicity?
Dreamer55 August 20th, 2009 6:01 pm.....TOO damn long! AND, they are all complicit. 911 was an horrendous false flag, the truth of which will send many "officials" to prison or execution. Support NYC CAN to help the truth surface. Tell all you know to help demand a new investigation. See the 911dvdproject for FREE dvds and more info. A great site is ae911truth.org which will lead you to many more.
Could be a while. Have they acknowledged the truth about the Lusitania yet?
Coming in the Fall of 2001:
"9/11 the Musical"
Orchestrated by Dick Cheney and his PNAC Band
Starring GW and his Pet Goat
With Master Illusionist Rudi Guiliani and his disappearing steel
And introducing Osama Bin Laden as Emmanuel Goldstein
Production assistance from CIA Associates, Inc.
All US Rights Reserved (i.e. Confiscated).
It is an honor to be thought a lunatic when most everyone is cowering in front of authority. I have often felt a chilling suspicion of the role of the cadavarous Yalie John Kerry. The less guarded Howard Dean, a man with a useful trade, had a moment, a moment of lucidity and courage before he was beaten back into line. Had he stuck to the truth, he might have been able to sweep up the public as reality dawned on them.
In the words of Billy Joel:
You may be right
I may be crazy
But it just may be a lunatic you're looking for
Joe
Nice post, jclientelle.
The third rail that Howard Dean stepped on was the "scream moment" at his primary campaign rally, when he appeared to be more than a bit of a loose cannon. Sort of like the mainstream press will never forget Kuchnich and the UFO sighting.
A whiff of possible instability is still the surest way to get marginalized fast.
Those shapers of middle of the road public opinion can be very unforgiving.
Bill from Saginaw
The "scream" was another issue manufactured by the media that was afraid of Dr. Dean.
He was just mirroring the enthusiasm of the crowd.
Unfortunately for him, his accompaning yell was captured and isolated by an MSM microphone so it was made to sound like he was out of control all by his lonesome.
And like any good Leftie, he apologized and sounded weak rather than standing his ground which would have made him stronger.
Then how did Bush get away with a wafting miasma of constant instability from the moment he decided to run for the presidency the first time? Is it that the margins on the right side of the binder paper are much more forgiving?
Bill always like your comments and I'm sure you agree with bystander that the "scream" was manufactured. I watched dean's loss speech live and saw/heard nothing out of the ordinary. He was trying to rally his faithful after the loss. They were yelling, he was yelling to be heard over their yells. It was only later when it was re-heard on the audio tape from the unidirectional mic (that only picks up near sound - his, not the crowds sound) did he sound like a screamer. But even if he was a screamer it would be a small price to pay instead of having a sociopathic killer back for another 4 years of democracy distruction.
But lets face it the bullies can pick on anything, harp on it and magnify it. If I talked with you for 2-3 minutes I would just pick out some little mannerism, some statement, some pattern of speech and start grinding it in. So childish, so immature, but many onlookers and listeners will buy into this tripe and the bully will completely marginalize said target.
Quite true, Bill from Saginaw August 20th, 2009 7:51 pm, but let's recall that CNN 'apologized' for running the 'Scream' 700-some times -- basically whenever Dean's name was mentioned -- and they only 'apologized' long after Kerry's nomination was no longer in doubt. Prior to the 2004 election, the imminently fair CNN didn't think repeatedly running clips of Junior's manifold flubs, mispronunciations and gaffes was something their viewers might want to see, and the New York Times even helpfully 'cleaned up' Bush's language in their news reports so that he didn't sound like a babbling moron. The NY Times even took the extraordinary step of sitting on a story about the Bush Administration's illegal surveillance program, fearing it might detrimentally affect Bush's chances in the presidential election. Here's how CBS News depicted NY Times Editor Bill Keller's unique sensitivity to the situation:
"Holding a fresh draft of the story just days before the election also was an issue of fairness, Mr. Keller said."
-- "The Times Says Its Eavesdropping Story Was Held Prior To 2004 Election," Aug. 14, 2006.
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2006/08/14/publiceye/entry1892150.shtml
Yes, the Liberal Media bent over backwards to protect Bush from voter backlash in 2004, sacrificing the public interest at the altar of 'fairness'; of course, Howard Dean was afforded no such hand-wringing circumspection. Since he was against the war, greedy private contractors and torture, and for such things as a fair health care system, clean energy and transparent government, he was obviously nuts and should not be taken seriously. As the late Kurt Vonnegut might say: Welcome to the Monkey House.
This article is very well written and exposes some of the reasons we are at the mercy of the established and completely embedded mainstream press--if you want the truth about anything,look away from these bullshit con artists. This is the reason that today's poll about the Afghanistan debacle even seems close--if the people weren't so brain-washed by this press--it would be only the regular 10% that didn't get it.
Gotta Support the Team!
Corporate media infotainwhores are, quite simply, homers.
I'm not much of a Bill Maher fan, but I expect most people remember how he was flamed by Respectable Patriotic Amerikans of every stripe when he dared to credit the alleged 9/11 terrorists with courage.
The settled Amerikan piety is, of course, that all terrorists are by definition cowardly. ESPECIALLY (alleged) terrorists reported to have killed thousands of Americans right in our "house"!
Similarly, regardless of what journalists did or didn't "see" regarding the bleeding obvious correlation between those bogus Terror Alerts and political events, the template or filter of reactionary patriotic orthodoxy was both spontaneously activated from within and imposed from without.
I mean, think of poor Dan Rather-- on Letterman, IIRC-- uttering fervent jingoisms about being Ready to Serve the President in this Desperate Hour. Just tell me where to go, and I'll salute!
That mentality is the rule, not the exception. Navy SEALS rock!
Or consider the NY Times' history of suppressing stories unfavorable to the government, including the now inconsequential issue of whether Bush was wearing concealed communications equipment during a televised "debate".
Obsequious deference to government authority was, and is, the norm in the corporate media subculture; I expect this deference increases in direct proportion to the extent a government becomes authoritarian.
Put another way, the function of a corporate media in a corporate state is to Protect and Serve said state-corporate consortium, primarily by manufacturing consent and concomitant mindless apathy.
Once they're forced to acknowledge ugly truths that reflect badly on their work, they spray stock rationalizations like skunks spray musk and squids spray ink, e.g. if we had only known then what we know now; mistakes were made, etc.
Because the media, individually and collectively, must always insist that their integrity is spotless and unimpeachable. Oh, they may occasionally get things wrong, or not get the whole story, but it remains the case that they always act in good faith and with consummate, scrupulous professionalism.
There are no untoward biases or influence in the Sacred Pursuit of News, endemic or structural blind spots or biases to explain persistently dropping the ball. It's always a regrettable Merry Mixup, a Bad Apple, and unfortunate judgement call.
And as I've written before, they have Public Editors and Ombudspersons and such to ponder over inexplicable and unaccountable lapses, and ceremonially lay troublesome and controversial stories to rest.
Such incredible and preposterous face-saving retrospectives are mere fruits of the Tree of Mendacity in which they nest.
· Yr Obd't Servant
So true. And don't you just love those erudite bullshit expressions like "assymetric information" ?
Maybe we should start throwing back some weird sayings at these faux patriots. We can accuse them of singing anathemic anthems, prurient prosperity, flatulent phraseology, situational humility, informed ignorance, compensated mendacity, moral midgetry, etc.
These reporter and journalist types hate to be mocked. Sophists always confuse sophistry with sophistication.
Not for nothing but I very much agree with this post's message. The pomposity of such phrases as well as the pseudo-militarist slant they bring to analysis is not particularly welcome in my reading.
It seems to me that words like this are invented to avoid stigma. If any administration has information which it does not wish to release and therefore preserves an 'asymmetric public relationship to the truth', then yes, they are lying. This is what I.F. Stone meant. Why geometry needs to be brought into a binary relationship I cannot comprehend...
This system of alerts only had/has(?) validity if you believe(d) the propaganda underlying it. The concept of terrorism as it is elucidated in the United States government specifically precludes the idea of prediction--all the more so since much objective terrorism never licenses this attribution. This is a technocratic arrogance of our society, and a phenomenon which is considered by many interesting intellectuals, in particular Mr. Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
With some basic understand of the futility of any attempt to predict random events, one will clearly see what is already so obvious: this was/is(?) a marketing/propaganda campaign aimed at making terrorized citizens feel included in the alleged defense of their country. It's chief virtue was the ready supply of talking points it produced.
Chris Mathews and Cheney should be sued by Howard Dean for every penny they've got. It can be argued that a similar campaign involving defamation, libel and slander that they accused Dean of was actually being run by Cheney through press whores. That's called a conspiracy in law. It ain't "just politics" as Mr. Bush used to say.
So why hasn't Dean sued? He watched what the Supreme Court did to Wilson and Plame. The Supreme Court is part of the corporatocracy dictatorship. So is President Obama. Dean isn't quixotic.
Reading this reminded me of a time in -- I think -- 2004 when Michael Moore was booked as a guest on the Oprah Winfrey show. I don't watch Oprah, but thought I'd tune in to see what Moore had to say. The show had just started and Moore had barely said anything when the show was interrupted by a security alert and Tom Ridge appeared with some other Bushites, warning direly of an elevated threat level. I smelled a very large rat and, indeed, the 'terrorist threat' turned out to be nothing. I told a friend in the news business at the time this was suspicious, and the friend scoffed, "Do you really think even the Bush Adminstration would do that just to get Michael Moore off the air?" Well, yes they would.
Other increases in the threat level coincided with possibly embarrassing televised events as well, such as FBI agent Coleen Rowley's testimony before Congress, which was also pre-empted by worthless Homeland Security hysteria, as I recall.
The over-paid solons of our Big Media long ago traded in any claim to 'journalism' for a pair of kneepads and a tube of Chapstick, if not KY-Jelly; fear of offending a 'major player,' or losing access or an invitation to the next A-list dinner or cocktail party trumps any conscientious effort to report the truth. Of course, some were simply intimidated by the idea of Rove complaining to their programming head or publisher. Others, as we've learned, we're just paid for their services, such as Armstrong Williams. And they all got the message of the Dan Rather Bush Air Guard papers fiasco. The Washington Press Corps should collectively get a Bob Novak award for excellence in dumping the contents of the king's chamberpot all over the news-hungry peons.
I think most journalists and editors in the MSM knew that Bush et al were lying about the Iraq war, terror alerts, economic prediction bullshitting and all the rest of lies etc etc. .
But those so called journalists and editors have careers to protect and advance, mortgages to pay and kids to put through college. Besides there is fear of power or desire to be accepted by the power-that-be and mingle with them in interviews or may be "correspondents' white house dinners".
Any true reporting have to come from the fringe media, but unfortunately most people are subjected to the bullshitting and lies of the MSM only.
This article deals a strong indictment of the integrity of what has passed for "journalism" in recent times.
My only quibble with Greenwald's analysis is the implication that only "leftists" who criticize government actions are subjected to condemnation for those criticisms. The Ridge/Ambinder case fits that description, but there are others who get labelled as fringist and unSerious even if their orientation is rightist or even politically neutral. I learned this in my years of study of the JFK assassination, when "conspiracy nut" labels were trotted out against you if you pointed at the EVIDENCE of conspiracy. (Among the "critical" researchers with whom I dealt in my edited journals, professional historians were almost totally absent from this crowd, as a conspiracist thinker was apparently treated as academically unSerious) People who have dared to suggest a U.S. government conspiracy in 9/11 are similarly marginalized as "nuts," as noted in comments above. Recently, people who have cared to raise the question of the authenticity of Obama's birth certficate and therefore his citizenship qualification are called "birthers" and put down as those crazy right wing wackos who can't even accept a birth certificate they can see with their own eyes (as if birth certificates can't be fabricated, as I found Lee Harvey Oswald's certificate as probably fabricated along with a mountain of his other identity documents.) During the last presidential campaign, real journalists like Evelyn Pringle and Pam Martens who presented reams of evidence that Obama was involved in corrupt Illinois politics (as did Pringle) or that the Obama campaign covered up the real nature of his campaign contributions (as did Martens) were marginalized as H. Clinton-loving partisan (Pringle) or disgruntled and vindictive former Wall Street employee (Martens.)
So, all I'm saying Mr. Greenwald is that, if we are going to isolate a syndrome of journalistic suppression in order to play along with what government powers want to be known by the public, let's not artifically limit it to the marginalization of "leftists." As leftists ourselves, we might relish a bit of unique victim consciousness, but that might not be totally honest.
I agree. Paul Craig Roberts also comes to mind.
AGG: more names: William Blum, John Pilger, Bruce Dixon, Glen Ford etc.
Those people are called "birthers" in derision not because a birth certificate cannot be fabricated.
Or put it another way, since a birth certificate can be fabricated, it can be fabricated for people other than Obama. So, why the obsession over Obama's supposedly fabricated citizenship? Why only Obama?
And why the complete and utter lack of any kind of evidence that Obama's citizenship is fabricated?
Also, what the heck does Obama being involved in corruption have to do with his allegedly fabricated citizenship?
It is pretty simple. You want to see Obama's birth cert? Fine. Pass a law requiring all presidents, or all presidential candidates, to disclose their birth certs publicly.
rfloh: "why the complete and utter lack of any kind of evidence that Obama's citizenship is fabricated?" Being that I am unable to explain why I continue to beat my wife, I rest my case.
newspapers are a dying breed - i say good riddance to bad rubbish - and is it any wonder why. the same is true of most of the fawning corporate media. the re-worked bowl of bullshit gumbo just isn't that tasty anymore.
mark twain once observed: show me a man who doesn't read the papers and i will show you an uninformed man, show me a man who reads the papers and i will show you a mis-informed man.
chomsky says you don't have to tell these folks what to write and what not to write - by the time they are in positions of note they already know the party lines, and they faithfully observe them.
no one can doubt the complicity of the media in the build up to the war in iraq, or the bullshit war on terror, the dot com bubble, housing bubble, the bank scam and the death of the health insurance reform movement.
wall street, the military and the media - this is the real seat of power in the corporate united states. our elected officials are a bunch of clowns, with obama leading the parade, who line up to sell their votes to the highest bidders regardless of the public good. they have no shame and they have no conscience and they lie lie lie.
hey, their role is not unlike the role of the media...
Greenwald's last paragraph:
"Trusting the politically powerful is the establishment religion and carrying forth their message is the prime function of establishment journalists (note how Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, just two months ago, argued that the "public option" was crucial but then, like so many liberal pundits eager to maintain and build close relations with the White House, got dutifully on board with the White House message, by completely and shamelessly changing course the minute the White House did)."
Too bad Greenwald neglects to give the reasons (other than monkey see, monkey do) why Alter should not have backed the "public option" in the first place. I suppose it's a safe bet that Alter's reasons to support the "public option" had less to do with healthcare as a basic human right and more to do with political machinations.
Likewise, just because Alter et al. now SEEM to be against the bullshit "public option"--that really doesn't provide a great reason to be for it either.
Glenn's neat mantra - about the "unSerious, fringe, leftist losers", motivated by "gut hatred" or "blind hatred" of George W. Bush - has a familiar ring to it.
Where have I encountered this rhetorical device before? Oh yes, on right wing talk radio and Faux News. That's where.
Is it just coincidence that a supposedly responsible, ostensibly centrist mainstream journalist like The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder uses an upscale version of the same talking point script as Rush, Sean, Anne Coulter, Michelle Malkin, and the gang?
Those who opposed Bush/Cheney war policies were unSerious about the threat of Islamofascist terrorism, naively believing our oceans would still protect us in the post 9/11 brave new world.
Those who opposed Bush/Cheney war policies were on the fringe - way outside the red-white-and-blue bipartisan main stream of patriotic American majoritarian beliefs - quirky folks whose protests were just protests, to be confined and contained and tolerated within free speech zones while real world government decisionmaking took place elsewhere.
Those who opposed Bush/Cheney war policies were leftists, still caught up in 1960's radicalism, fixated upon the lessons of Vietnam, although the world had dramatically changed all around them.
Those who opposed Bush/Cheney war policies were losers, unwilling to let go of their fantasies that Bush stole Florida from Gore, and stole Ohio from Kerry four years later.
Those who opposed Bush/Cheney war policies were only doing so because they hated George W. Bush the person so intensely they had become mentally unhinged, beyond the reach of reasoned, rational discourse, impervious to evidence, and therefore properly to be ignored.
Cindy Sheehan, Dennis Kuchinich, Russ Feingold, Cynthia McKinney, John Conyers, CodePink, ACORN, MoveOn - unSerious, fringe leftist losers all - forever poisoning the partisan atmosphere, willing to stoop to anything in their single minded, jealous, nearly maniacal hatred of all things Bush.
Isn't it amazing how variations on those same themes keep cropping up, over and over again, in contexts both high brow and low?
Bill from Saginaw
Just so. The themes iterate like fractals, with the same property of recurring self-similarity.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Yes, the more fractiled fear and hate that can be associated with anything visible and/or perceived, especially those opposed to this gov't / corporate sponsored terrorism, the better their message is falsely ( temporarily ) galvanized into the thoughts and intentions of middle Americans.
Well, it ultimately cannot work -- and all that we can do is just love the pathetic shrub_in_thief and his associated mini-me goonies separatists ( from their true selves ).
As Christ advised us, we can learn to turn the other cheek, and learn to unconditionally forgive both ourselves and those doing violence upon us.
¿ Does anyone think that we can offer forth a bigger counter "gun" or more sinister and terrifying level of violence ?
LOVE is the ANTIDOTE to FEAR and HATE, what else do we have left to really give ?
_||_
Yes, obedient servant. Fractals give us many cues for understanding the world. If you keep your eyes open you can see the pattern of the large in the smallest event or the cumulation of the small in the whole. But good writers and artists have always known that instinctually.
When you see a little thing like someone's eyes glazing over at a question, or Obama failing to answer Helen Thomas and yet giving her a birthday cake, those small actions reveal the pattern of the whole.
Joe
It is perhapos a natural reaction to the virulence capped by the Bush team - vulcanization, vomiting up the repressed poisons of lies. Question being what is the effective emetic. We need a 'posse vomitatus' act.
Excellent column, Glenn.
So we're now at the point where they not only admit the lies they were caught in, but they explain openly that this is the way the system works, and all who oppose them will be consciously marginalized.
Something's got to give soon one way or another. I pray for the best, but it could go either way at this point.
What is truly insane about this whole dynamic is that these same voices will marginalize you for noting that they openly explained that they marginalize you. And so it goes.
The first whiff of the Bush administration had the unmistakable odor of Homocidal Looting Liars.
We shall be paying the piper for the remainder of the New American Century for their crimes.
"Distrusting the statements and actions of government leaders was once the central value of our political system and of basic journalism. But now, especially in the eyes of establishment journalists, it is the hallmark of the unSerious, fringe, leftist loser, no matter how many times it is proven right."
___________________________________
It occurs to me that "leftist" is but an egregious example of a general impulse of establishment journalists to repudiate those distrustful of government claims, and discredit sources of any political stripe who explicitly challenge dubious or incredible government claims.
Consider Scott Ritter, or heroic apparatchik whistleblowers like Sibel Edmonds and Bunnatine Greenhouse. Ritter was smeared and discredited, and the latter two simply "disappeared" with scant coverage.
To express this in terms of Jay Rosen's analytic scheme for public discourse, the establishment journalists are programmed to maintain a nice pasteurized, homogenized Sphere of Consensus that optimally conforms to the state's Sphere of Authority.
Like antibodies, they attack intrusion by Inconvenient Truth-tellers by declaring them to be visitors from the Sphere of Deviance, with the intent of casting them back into oblivion.
We "leftists" are original inhabitants of the Sphere of Deviance, rather like Santa's Elves at the North Pole. And it works both ways-- the frame defines anybody who challenges Official Stories as "leftist" by default, even when the person's actual history and politics indicates otherwise.
Oh, and FWIW I would revise the sentence to: "Skeptical scrutiny of the statements and actions of government leaders was once the central value of our political system and of basic journalism."
I find "distrust" needlessly pejorative in this instance, even though I'm as distrustful as they come.
· Yr Obd't Servant
RichM; A 250 year bullshit road that you showed in less than a 1000 words.They ought to build a retaining wall for it around DC.Thanks,Tony
Dear GLENN,
Thank you, especially for UPDATE V, which is the icing and Roman candle ( while Nero fiddled ) with a cherry on top !
To actually publish such damning words regarding the "War OF Terror", brings a broad smile to many whom have long waited for reality to seep back into American perceptual reality.
Glenn says:
_ "No observation will cause one to be ejected
_ from acceptable mainstream company more
_ immediately than pointing out that
_ what the U.S. Government is doing
_ is "terrorism" by definition. "
_||_
All of this is just:
The First law of the Right.
Always have everything both ways...
Yeah I remember all those 8 years it used to drive me up the wall when I heard those guys talk about the "Bush haters" like as if he was doing a great job and the only possible reason anyone could possibly object to his lunatic wars was because they really did not like him.
the other thing i don't think i saw mentioned here is that a lot of people, or maybe it was only europeans and Arabs- thought it was really stupd, in a hilarious sort of way, that the u.s. was signaling terrorists when would be good days to attack- like you know when the threat level was "low" duh.
Mostly great comments above, and yet another great article by the inestimable Mr. Greenwald. Obviously, though, Tom Ridge and his publisher want to sell the boook, so they released a tidy little tidbit about politically motivated terror alerts by the Bush Administration, which those of us who were suspicious of the timing patterns back then saw as political timing patterns. The color-coded terror alerts were just too goddam convenient.
What I want to know, is, What Tom Ridge and others like him, some seemingly contrite these days, have to say about the arrest in the United States (and England and Europe) of members of alleged Islamic Terrorist Cells and the political timing of those arrests.
I suspect that everything everybody above says about the color-coded terror alerts applies equally to the timed arrests of so-called "terrorists." I want to know what former heads of the Department of Justice John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales have to say about the political timing of the announcements of the arrests of "domestic terrorists." (Whatever happened to the firings investigation of federal attorneys?)
My reading of these incidents is that a very high percentage of these cases which have been adjudicated, have resulted in acquittals.
The color-coded alerts inconvenienced some, while being used as a tactic by Dubya et al to instill fear in the U.S. population.
The arrests of "Islamofascists" as designated by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, some of whom were "entrapped" by government agents, such arrests being used, and timed, again, for political purposes having no intrinsic benefit to the Common Weal, destroyed the lives of countless essentially innocent people. And in the process, while we may not recognize it, we are ALL repressed by such actions. (And such policies are counterproductive, as they are a recruitment tool for those who consider the United States a threat. We are a threat!)
While I remain essentially a poor person, I am about to write another $100 check to the ACLU. The Dubya Administration was ruthless and utterly destructive of the lives of millions, while it had no problem accusing the innocent.
What say you, Tom Ridge, about your imprisonment of so many innocents? Would you have done the same had they been Christian? I don't think so...
-30-
OLE.MAN.RIVER,
You're very close, but I sense that you're reluctant to pursue this line to the logical conclusion.
You ask of Ridge, "Would you have done the same had they been Christian?", and the answer is of course no, as no loss of innocents would have ever been tolerated that could be identified with the aspirations, prejudices, and core beliefs of middle America.
Ultimately, the whole charade is about spoofing those hundreds of millions of middle Americans, by terrorizing them into ( predictable ) reactive, and infantile fear and loathing of "the other" -- all as a ploy to appeal to authoritarian figures and to thereby allow massive infringements of our Constitutional guarantees.
This is all about attempts to centralize control and power, as equally the financial crisis is for centralizing wealth -- both into the hands of the same psychopathetic elitist card board cutouts of real humanity.
There is no "War ON Terror", it's all about the "War OF Terror" being perpetrated on the too drowsy American People, as a pretext for other devious plans -- that I completely believe to be impossible to accomplish.
The indomitable human spirit can be whipped sawed only so far, and that point is coming soon -- but we first must reach that p[oint where the sleeping beast of attention finally awakes -- and gets _r^e^a^l^l^y_ mad.
None of us can force to arise that societal level of awareness directly, but we each can only work on our own consciousness, and hope to set a better example for those that follow us … to enable them to see for themselves.
Hold that torch high, and smile in the confidence of final victory of our life spring of spirit.
The remedy and antidote for FEAR -- is LOVE -- unconditional for one and ALL, as ONE.
_||_
When will journalists such as GG and sites such as CD begin to seriously examine the controlled demolitions which brought down WTC buildings 1, 2, and 7?
Finding out what really happened on 9/11/01, and who was involved, will be the linchpin of the future of the failed U.S. democracy.
That's why 9/11 is the real third rail of so-called mainstream U.S. journalism.
Yeah, we were right. The whole time. But no one likes that guy who says "I told you so" one too many times either. Why don't we just have the war crimes trials and be over with it?
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