The media is not conservative/liberal - it's sheep
All dang day long I've been forced to hear/read every major media establishment fall over themselves over Dubya's "unveiling" of his Iraq strategy. Granted a strategy is exactly what we probably should have had before we starting dropping Outkast songs, but we are far past that at this point.
Are you ready for it? You say you're ready, but don't come whining to me when the sheer heft of this strategy blows your mind sideways.
"This will take time and patience."
Huzzah! Everything's going to be fine! Here we thought we needed to know something about our enemy, have realistic expectations, establish the rule of law, give the people of Iraq some idea of why this whole democracy thing might actually be a decent alternative to living under the rule of a militaristc despot. All we needed to do was read Chicken Soup for the *@&#!*! Soul.
The point I'm not being at all dramatic in trying to make is that there was absolutely nothing remotely like news about this address. This just in - Bush invokes 9/11. Bush has spent the last several years telling us that it would be a mistake to veer off-course from our mistakes on the chance that we might start making different mistakes. Have we not fine-tuned our bs-detectors enough to know that when Karl "No-Neck" Rove calls and says there's going to be a big address that he just wants to show-off his latest talking point? You can just tune into FoxNews the next day to hear it? Missed it the first time? Wait for it - it's coming again.
Early in the long run of The Simpsons (stay with me, this is going somewhere), there was a running gag wherein Bart and Lisa became adamant about ____. Homer did not want to provide ____. So Bart and Lisa would ask Homer for ____ over and over and over. The scene would change from the car to the couch to the bedroom and so on, until Homer finally caved.
Guess which one Bush is.
Where was all of this, say, March 19, 2003? That's right - Shock and Awe was all the strategy we needed, as if the media thought that the outcome of a conflict between our military and Iraq was in question somehow. The idea of Iraqis throwing roses at our feet as we pummelled their infrastructure, their children, the nation they love despite of its leaders, just because we were waving democracy didn't at all seem like spin? Hooray for war! Someone get the night-vision goggles; our ratings are going to soar!
The media knows it completely dismissed its responsibility and now they're lamely trying to make amends. It's that fact that makes me despair much more than whatever might be happening in Iraq right now. Losing the window into our government should terrify us. When our most recent journalistic hero, Bob Woodward, isn't willing to give up all his connections to the current administration in order to shed some more-than-likely startling light on what's happening in our government, we should be very worried.
Posted by Joel at 11/30/2005 10:43:00 PM
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