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Since the central focus of the convention is apparently "Bush's Leadership," doesn't that mean that a 500,000 ad buy by the "Pet Goats for Truth," should provide for 3 weeks of free media coverage to just how great Bush's leadership was on 9/11?
Still not one word in the press about the fact that the person the RNC decided was the very best person to give the convention's opening invocation thinks that those who support gay marriage are just like those who supported the man who implemented the systematic slaughter of 6 million Jews, gypsies, gays, etc...
But, I do hear that Candy Crowley will report that Dew likes her cheesesteaks "Wiz Wit."
One thing we should be on the lookout for during the convention is for any of the speakers to make any kind of nudge nudge wink wink disparaging remark about Kerry's military service. Presumably a chickenhawk might do this. I'm thinking we all step up to the plate and make a donation pledge in case this happens. It'd be nice if one nasty comment raked in 50 grand or so.
Put your pledges in the comments. I'm in for $100.
Well, like last time I'm mostly going to hang out and meet people and see what's up. No plans to revolutionize journalism, but one never knows. I'll be hanging out at the Tank at times starting tomorrow, where other bloggers are hanging out. Their RNCblogger aggregator is here.
The General informs us that apparently Jerry Falwell didn't quite hate gay people enough to be chosen to perform the opening invocation at the RNC hatefest. That honor has been bestowed upon one Sheri Dew. A recent speech by the childless, single Ms. Dew:
Also, while I was peddling away, I found myself reading the latest edition of one of the nation’s most popular news magazines. One of the major articles was about gay “marriage.” There were several statements that stood out for me in a dramatic and terrifying way, but one of the most sobering features of the entire article was a picture of two handsome, young men, getting “married.” What distressed me most was the fact that they were both holding an infant “daughter”–twin girls they had adopted. I was, frankly, heartsick. What kind of chance do those girls have being raised in that kind of setting? What will their understanding of men and women, marriage and families be? Is there any chance that, as adults, they could expect to marry and enjoy a healthy relationship with a man, including rearing children together? In addition, there were alarming concepts about “family” presented throughout the article–concepts that even questioned the validity of heterosexual families.
To say I found the entire article sobering would be a grand understatement. And I found myself thinking, “Talk about influence. Imagine the influence of that one magazine in presenting ideas about the family that are totally in opposition to God’s plan and will for His children.”
Lining Up With Hitler or Against Him
This escalating situation reminds me of a statement of a World War II journalist by the name of Dorothy Thompson who wrote for the Saturday Evening Post in Europe during the pre-World War II years when Hitler was building up his armies and starting to take ground. In an address she delivered in Toronto in 1941 she said this: “Before this epic is over, every living human being will have chosen. Every living human being will have lined up with Hitler or against him. Every living human being either will have opposed this onslaught or supported it, for if he tries to make no choice that in itself will be a choice. If he takes no side, he is on Hitler’s side. If he does not act, that is an act—for Hitler.”
May I take the liberty of reading this statement again and changing just a few words, applying it to what I fear we face today? “Before this era is over, every living human being will have chosen. Every living human being will have lined up in support of the family or against it. Every living human being will have either opposed the onslaught against the family or supported it, for if he tries to make no choice that in itself will be a choice. If we do not act in behalf of the family, that is itself an act of opposition to the family.”
At first it may seem a bit extreme to imply a comparison between the atrocities of Hitler and what is happening in terms of contemporary threats against the family—but maybe not. I just turned 50 years old, and I have never married. That was not my intention, and it has not been my choice. When someone asks me why I have never married, the simple and truthful answer is that nobody has ever asked me. Nonetheless, when I speak about the family, I have a deep, profound and abiding belief that the family is absolutely ordained of God, that it is part of His plan for His children, that marriage is supposed to be between a male and a female, and that children deserve to be born to and raised by two parents, father and mother. That is the ideal.
I would have thought that the President of Deseret Book would at least be educated enough to know that homosexuals were also targeted by the Nazis. Homosexuals were arrested and sent to Dachau, Mauthausen and other concentration camps. Homosexuals were enslaved, beaten, raped, tortured and murdered alongside the Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, common criminals and other “undesireables” considered to be a threat to Hitler, morality and the Nazi Party. Unlike the others, however, upon liberation by the Allied Forces, homosexuals were sent to prison to complete their sentences. Murderers, thieves and other common criminals were released from the camps while homosexuals were re-imprisoned for their sexual orientation. To suggest that those who support gay marriage would have also supported the Nazis is illogical, dishonest and just plain stupid.
If Dew still wishes to ignore documented world history perhaps a refresher course in LDS church history is in order. Concerned members of the LDS Church in Germany asked then-president Heber J. Grant what they should do about Hitler’s rise in power. He told them not to make waves but rather to obey the 12th Article of Faith, which required them to honor and sustain their elected leaders. I could more accurately rephrase her statement to say those who oppose gay marriage are like the members of the LDS church who, at the counsel of their prophet, did not oppose Hitler and the Nazi Party.
Certainly she must aware of the story of Helmuth Hubener. Deseret Book has sold at least three books about him and one of its recent ad campaigns featured his story. He was an LDS youth who, with a few friends, secretly fought against Hitler and the Nazis. He was eventually arrested and executed for those actions but not before the LDS church excommunicated him for “conduct unbecoming a member of the church” or, as she so succinctly put it, opposing Hitler’s rise to power. By her comparison, the LDS leaders of the time, including President Heber J. Grant, were the type of people who would have supported gay marriage.
Maybe she should learn a little bit about Hitler and the Holocaust before calling anyone else a Nazi.
If we had a decent press, every Bush surrogate would be asked "do you agree with Sheri Dew that support for gay marriage is like support for Hitler?"
If we had an even better press they'd get asked "Do you think Dick Cheney who thinks that people should be free to enter into whatever relationships they want to is, as Ms. Dew thinks, equivalent to someone who supported Hitler?"
We have a responsibility to separate legitimate political opinion -- and the latitude is great -- from deliberate smear. That responsibility is especially important in this campaign. Sometimes it's difficult to tell whether a piece crosses that line; to me, this is not one of those times. A legitimate piece might have raised hard questions about Kerry in Cambodia; theirs wasn't that piece.
Colleagues wanted to print today's Hinderaker and Johnson piece to be "fair" to them. But these are folks who take unfair advantage of that concern.
And what about fairness for John Kerry? These authors take great umbrage at my use of the word "fraudulent" to describe their writing. That word choice was quite deliberate: They hurled it at Kerry; I merely hurled it back.
Here is some of what I've seen during this presidential campaign: About six weeks ago, former Sen. Rudy Boschwitz submitted a piece that took on former counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke. The piece contained demonstrably false statements. I required that they be stripped from the piece, and they were. The piece ran.
Days later, Sen. Norm Coleman submitted a piece on Joe Wilson, who made the famous trip to Niger to investigate the yellowcake episode. The Coleman piece contained demonstrably false statements against Wilson. I asked that they be stripped out. One was not. It claimed that Wilson had "repeatedly" accused President Bush of deliberately lying to the American people about Iraq. Wilson is on the record, including in the Star Tribune, denying he ever said such a thing. I insisted that Coleman provide at least one quote in which Wilson accused the president of deliberately lying to the American people. His office either could not or would not do that. The piece did not run.
Then along came the Hinderaker-Johnson piece on Kerry. It should have set off all kinds of alarms. As one of the editors responsible for these pages, I regret that it did not -- and that I was not here to weigh in on the decision.
So, the media is beating the drum that all of the latest polls spell trouble for Kerry and his candidacy must be doomed, blahblahblah.
Remember when, you know, Kerry had been consistently up in the polls for months? Remember how Bush's campaign people were badgered about how much in trouble their candidate was?
My bashing of the Post below, though a joke, was actually a serious comment in the context of their editorial. What our media has failed to understand throughout the Bush administration, and especially since 2003, was that they have a slightly different role to play than when divided government exists. With Republican control of everything, the Democrats have no ability to set the agenda. They have no investigative power. They are unable to get out in front in a way which allows the media to happily continue its "one side/the other side" reporting. They actually have to get out in front of things - not just investigate them but make some noise about them.
Right now the 4th Estate shouldn't be lecturing anyone on accountability - the lack of accountability can be placed squarely at their feet. I missed the daily editorials calling on top DOD officials to resign - instead, we're just given a bit of whining.
...and, Juan Cole feels in some more details on this nexus of right wing thuggery.
The Neoconservatives have some sort of shadowy relationship with the Mojahedin-e Khalq Organization or MEK. Presumably its leaders have secretly promised to recognize Israel if they ever succeed in overthrowing the ayatollahs in Iran. When the US recently categorized the MEK as a terrorist organization, there were howls of outrage from scholars associated with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (a wing of AIPAC), such as Patrick Clawson and Daniel Pipes. MEK is a terrorist organization by any definition of the term, having blown up innocent people in the course of its struggle against the Khomeini government. (MEK is a cult-like mixture of Marx and Islam). The MEK had allied with Saddam, who gave them bases in Iraq from which to hit Iran. When the US overthrew Saddam, it raised the question of what to do with the MEK. The pro-Likud faction in the Pentagon wanted to go on developing their relationship with the MEK and using it against Tehran.
So it transpires that the Iranians were willing to give up 5 key al-Qaeda operatives, whom they had captured, in return for MEK members.
Franklin, Rhode and Ledeen conspired with Ghorbanifar and SISMI to stop that trade. It would have led to better US-Iran relations, which they wanted to forestall, and it would have damaged their proteges, the MEK.
Since high al-Qaeda operatives like Saif al-Adil and possibly even Saad Bin Laden might know about future operations, or the whereabouts of Bin Laden, for Franklin and Rhode to stop the trade grossly endangered the United States.
...
Franklin's movements reveal the contours of a rightwing conspiracy of warmongering and aggression, an orgy of destruction, for the benefit of the Likud Party, of Silvio Berlusconi's business in the Middle East, and of the Neoconservative Right in the United States. It isn't about spying. It is about conspiring to conscript the US government on behalf of a foreign power or powers.
I'm starting to think that every dozen years ago the same bunch of corrupt idiots, or their intellectual progeny, get into power and proceed to screw things up until they get caught, at which point the "establishment," with which they're intimately intertwined, demands leniency, letting them go lurk underground until they're ready to pop up and screw things up all over again.
WASHINGTON - An FBI probe into the handling of highly classified material by Pentagon civilians is broader than previously reported, and goes well beyond allegations that a single mid-level analyst gave a top-secret Iran policy document to Israel, three sources familiar with the investigation said Saturday.
The probe, which has been going on for more than two years, also has focused on other civilians in the Secretary of Defense's office, said the sources, who spoke on condition they not be identified, but who have first-hand knowledge of the subject.
In addition, one said, FBI investigators in recent weeks have conducted interviews to determine whether Pentagon officials gave highly classified U.S. intelligence to a leading Iraqi exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, which may in turn have passed it on to Iran. INC leader Ahmed Chalabi has denied his group was involved in any wrongdoing.
The linkage, if any, between the two leak investigations, remains unclear.
But they both center on the office of Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, the Pentagon's No. 3 official.
...
But other sources said the FBI investigation is more wide-ranging than initial news reports suggested.
They said it has involved interviews of current and former officials at the White House, Pentagon and State Department.
Investigators have asked about the security practices of several other Defense Department civilians, they said.
...
A former Feith employee, Karen Kwiatkowski, has described how senior Israeli military officers were sometimes escorted to his Pentagon office without signing in as security regulations required.
God, so I make the mistake of flipping open the NYT book review of a few books written by Jacob effing Weisberg, and I'm treated to these comments.
There was, as I remember it, a fairly vigorous debate about the wisdom of invading Iraq in the months leading up to the war, even if one did not find the most sophisticated expressions of it on cable news. Almost all of this argument was premised, however, on the erroneous assumption that Saddam retained an active W.M.D. program, a belief not questioned at the time by Wolcott or most others who today accuse Bush of intentional deception.
Well, I don't know if Wolcott questioned it, but I questioned it and so did lots of other people. But, you see, these people were nutters who weren't allowed to participate in the incredibly sophisticated debate that went on in the pages of such intellectual treasure troves as Slate effing magazine.
The liberal caricature Phil Donahue was axed after a few months by MSNBC not because it prefers Republicans but because his ratings were too weak to make the show profitable.
Amazing that MSNBC cancelled what was at the time its highest rated show because it wasn't profitable, unlike all those other lower rated shows which managed to be miraculously more profitable, despite their low ratings. Or, hey, maybe there's another explanation. Wow, holy shit, I think there is another explanation! Lookie here!
While "Donahue" does badly trail both O'Reilly and CNN's Connie Chung in the ratings, those numbers have improved in recent weeks. So much so that the program is the top-rated show on MSNBC, beating even the highly promoted "Hardball With Chris Matthews."
Although Donahue didn't know it at the time, his fate was sealed a number of weeks ago after NBC News executives received the results of a study commissioned to provide guidance on the future of the news channel.
That report--shared with me by an NBC news insider--gives an excruciatingly painful assessment of the channel and its programming. Some of recommendations, such as dropping the "America's News Channel," have already been implemented. But the harshest criticism was leveled at Donahue, whom the authors of the study described as "a tired, left-wing liberal out of touch with the current marketplace."
The study went on to claim that Donahue presented a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war......He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration's motives." The report went on to outline a possible nightmare scenario where the show becomes "a home for the liberal antiwar agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity."
A source close to Donahue claims that while he wasn't aware of the specific study, the tone and outcome aren't surprising.
"It's not a coincidence that this decision comes the same week that MSNBC announces its hired Dick Armey as a commentator and has both Jesse Ventura and Michael Savage joining the network as hosts. They're scared, and they decided to take the coward's road and slant towards the conservative crowd that watch Fox News."
In other words, MSNBC was scared to death that another side was being presented in that incredibly sophisticated debate that Weisberg was just telling us about, which somehow managed to exclude an entire segment of the population who, like me, DIDN'T THINK SADDAM WAS A THREAT TO US.
I didn't even like Phil Donahue's show, in part because I don't think his schtick has aged particularly well, in part because if we're going to have one unashamed lefty with his own cable news show he wouldn't really be my first choice, and most of all because his producers insisted on stacking his show with more frothing right wingers than even I knew existed. But, Donahue's show wasn't cancelled because of low ratings.
arrrgh
Oh lord, someone stop me before I go insane. I just made the mistake of reading more:
The free pass given the author's allies of the moment -- Michael Moore, Joe Conason, Eric Alterman, Sidney Blumenthal -- calls into question his choice of targets like Thomas Friedman, Andrew Sullivan and my colleague Mickey Kaus, shrewder commentators with whom he simply disagrees.
Yes, Friedman, Sullivan, and Kaus - shrewd commentators. And, yes, I remember in the runup to the war Michael Moore, Joe Conason, Eric Alterman, and Sidney Blumenthal -- man, those guys were everywhere! I mean, you couldn't turn on your television without seeing them on TV news somewhere. It was like Alterman-a-palooza on CNN!
Starting Monday, WHAT-AM (1340) will add Al Franken (noon to 3 p.m.) and Randi Rhodes (3 to 7 p.m.).
The move trims the final hour from Mary Mason’s morning show; she will air from 6 to 9 a.m. Thera Martin-Connelly moves from afternoons to late mornings (9 a.m. to noon). Syndicated host Bev Smith remains at 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Reggie Bryant moves from middays to the 10 p.m.-to-1 a.m. shift.
Earlier this month, nighttime sports-talk personality Johnny Sample was let go. At the time, station manager Kernie Anderson said the move was to accommodate a time change in Smith’s show.
The 1,000-watt WHAT bills itself as the voice of the African American community. Anderson said the notion that Franken and Rhodes’ focuses are "non-black is not significant to me. ... We’re committed to the African American community ... and there’s no abandonment of our mission. My challenge is to lead the station in a direction to make it a more successful station and offer more compelling programming."
The FBI is investigating a mid-level Pentagon official who specializes in Iranian affairs for allegedly passing classified information to Israel, and arrests in the case could come as early as next week, officials at the Pentagon and other government agencies said last night.
The name of the person under investigation was not officially released, but two sources identified him as Larry Franklin. He was described as a desk officer in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia Bureau, one of six regional policy sections. Franklin worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency before moving to the Pentagon's policy branch three years ago and is nearing retirement, the officials said. Franklin could not be located for comment last night.
The FBI is investigating a senior Pentagon official who is suspected of passing classified information to the Israeli government through a pro-Israel lobbying group, U.S. officials said yesterday. The probe is focusing on whether the senior official, who has not been identified by name, disclosed classified information related to White House policy toward Iran. The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the suspected mole works in the office of Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy who is considered one of the top three officials in the Pentagon. One U.S. official said the FBI had unconfirmed information that Mr. Feith supplied information to Israel in the 1980s. However, the officials declined to provide further information citing the ongoing investigation. It could not be learned whether arrests are expected in the case. But a third official, also speaking anonymously, said an arrest could come as early as next week.
It's hard to imagine that this is about some draft policy on Iran.
It really was a sad moment in journalism when we had the Kerry communion watch. Amy Sullivan reminds us:
The dirty little secret about these groups is that they don't demand that Catholic politicians -- who, according to church teaching, should be held to a higher standard because of their visible status -- conform to all church positions on issues like the death penalty or war or immigration reform or combatting poverty. And they don't really care if PCRCs stray from church teaching on abortion (sounds like you need to read Evangelium Vitae a bit more carefully, guys...)
What they do care about is defeating Democrats. Some of them don't even try to gloss over that fact. Deal Hudson (the now-disgraced and resigned former head of Catholic outreach for the Bush/Cheney campaign) told the Washington Post last spring that "he believes the denial of Communion should begin, and end, with Kerry." . . .
The silence coming out of the Catholic League regarding the prominence of a bunch of heretical babykillers at the GOP Convention is simply deafening . . .
Next time reporters are tempted to let these guys drive the story, they should think twice. And while they're at it, they might want to turn the tables and write about the partisan involvement of supposedly neutral religious figures.
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