The Top Story

I don't find it strange that the rants of a retired man of the cloth is the top story on all the cable news shows. After all, we're enjoying five years of peace and prosperity, a robust stock market, a strong dollar, and a popular president. It reminds me of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. As hundreds of people were drowning, Fox and other stations continued to prattle on about the mystery of the disappearance of Natalee Holloway. It's especially delicious to hear Karl Rove weigh in on another man's Christianity. Would it be rude to inquire how Rove's agnosticism shaped Bush's public policies or whether or not McCain is anything more than a country-club Episcopalian where, as the joke goes, where there are three or four gathered together, there is always a fifth?

Selling the War

(CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller) To hear Bill Moyers tell it last evening on his PBS program “Buying The War," the White House press corps was a willing participant in its own deception about the President’s case for war in Iraq. He portrays us as easily-manipulated stooges on bended-knee to the President and his top aides. Moyers charges in his opening sentences that the press “largely surrendered its independence and skepticism” and joined with the Bush Administration in marching to war. To portray reporters as mindless conduits of White House policies is unfounded. To charge that the White House press was “compliant” and cheered the President’s arguments for war plainly misrepresents the facts.

Noller is wrong. The White House press specifically and the press in general were compliant, credulous stooges. The orchestration of the mass media was both impressive and duplicitious. There are news reports that the former CIA Directory George Tenet said that his phrase "slam dunk" that many people took as a green light to invade Iraq was actually a reference to effectively propaganderizing the war. Frankly, I don't know which interpretation is worse.

As Moyers showed in his documentary, the process the administration used to sell the Iraq war and arouse public support was as follows:

1. Pass to reporters false "evidence" in leading liberal publications, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post.
2. Cite that evidence in the Sunday talk shows.
3. Weave that evidence into a dog and pony show for Congressional leaders and the United Nations.
4. Use simple powerful images such as a mushroom cloud in all speeches.
5. Rhetorically associate at every opportunity in every speech Iraq with 9/11.
6. Co-opt the most influential reporters and columnists with private briefings, parties, and requests for advice.
7. Ruthlessly crush dissent in the intelligence services and the military.
8. Demonize or trivialize the skeptical.
9. Make it mainstream by enlisting actors and other famous people to spread the word.
10. Keep the message simple ("Iraq has WMDS") and repeat it continually, making the decision for war a foregone and popular conclusion. (The administration spin today is just as simplistic, but I don't think the public are now buying what the administration is selling: "If we don't stay, there will be genocide." )

In some hellish pit, Joseph Goebbels is smiling.

What is the antidote for simpletons like Noller?

1. Get away from the New York - Washinton, D.C. fishbowl, if not physically, at least mentally. David Halberstam, who died last week, wrote an influential book in 1972 The Best and the Brightest, an ironic reference to the intellectuals that led us into the Viet Nam quagmire. In it he refers to the incestuous relationship between press and power. I think the only way to look at the big questions clearly is to separate yourself from those people. The invitation to Georgetown parties, Lincoln Center concert, and White House briefings erodes the tough-mindedness needed to separate lies from truth.

2. Do your homework. The newsprint as well as the cable and web media are basically trascriptionists and there is nothing that flagship media outlets like more than to transcribe the words of the powerful. But it isn't from the Commander in Chief or the Secretary of Defense where you will get the truth. It's from the mid-level bureaucrats and majors. Propaganda is a bottom down process. The agonizing search for truth is a ground up process.

3. Grow a backbone. This is true for everyone-- the media, the legislature, and voters. In photographs of people the start of war-- it doesn't matter if it's WWI or WWII and it doesn't matter if it's Germany or America-- there is a commonality in expression in the crowds. It's the faces of ignorant glee. But war has a way of teaching us reality-- slowly and painfully. And it is for this reason that courageous questioning is the highest patriotism.

Bill O'Reilly Freaks Out

Here is a partial transcript from Faux News wherein Bill Moyer's got O'Reilly's Irish up for stating in his PBS special Selling the War the obvious-- that O'Reilly is the Joseph Goebbels of the Bush administration.

And that's a memo.

JANE HALL, AMERICAN UNIVERSITY: First of all, Bill, you know, I think you could say he should have said where you said I don't want to demonize anybody. But then you proceeded to demonize people. This technique is used by a lot of people on this network and a lot of other places. I think the documentary was excellent. I've reported and written about this. I've interviewed the reporters from Knight-Ridder newspapers who were among the few people who got this right, which is one of the things he says.
He goes after the "New York Times." The "New York Times" didn't even review this.
O'REILLY: Jane, all right, look, so you're telling me as a professor.
HALL: It is a solid piece of journalism.
O'REILLY: Jane, you're telling me as a professor of journalism.
HALL: Let me finish.
O'REILLY: No. I'm not going to let you finish. Are you telling me as professor of journalism that the cut Moyers put on national television of my remarks was fair? Are you telling me that?
HALL: Let me just say.
O'REILLY: Are you telling me that Jane? Yes or no?
HALL: Can I answer the question?
O'REILLY: Because you can bloviate all night and it does us no good. Yes or no, Jane?
HALL: I would have put more of the quote in there. But you are not a huge piece of this. This is more about the print press.
O'REILLY: It doesn't matter what I am. I don't have access to what else he did, as Bernie pointed out.
HALL: Wait. The reporting that I've done, that I know about, that I've independently reported.
O'REILLY: You are justifying the unjustifiable again.
HALL: I don't agree with you about that. He is right about...
O'REILLY: You don't agree before your own eyes, before your own eyes you see how dishonest that cut was and you don't agree. Come on.
HALL: How many times has Fox News taken half of...
O'REILLY: You don't justify bad behavior by pointing to other bad behavior. That's not what you do.
HALL: I think you are taking one small thing which obviously affects you. That's different...
O'REILLY: Small to you madam because you weren't made to be a war monger dishonest guy. I was. So it's small to you but isn't small to me.
HALL: I didn't say — I said I wouldn't have made that cut.
O'REILLY: I disagree with you. I have never disagreed with you more than tonight.
HALL: Well OK. You can disagree with me.
O'REILLY: This is a shameful analysis.
HALL: No, I disagree with you.

Why I Don't Watch Katie Couric

Perhaps in trying to atone for Dan Rather's unfactual broadcast on Bush's military service, the CBS Evening News is now broadcasting fabrications about the democrats.

On April 12, Katie Couric in her notebook again resurrected the canard that Barack Obama studied in a madrassa, a charge that was debunked by the Chicago Tribune, CNN, ABC, AP, and other media outlets.

Anyway, here is Journalist Couric's scribblings and my commentary in italics.

COURIC: Hi, everyone.

Isn't this Dr. Nick's line on the Simpsons cartoon show?

Is America ready to elect a president who grew up praying in a mosque?

An authoritative introduction. Alas, it is a lie. Couric could have pushed the envelop a bit by stating something just as nonsensical. How about: Is America ready to elect a president who was Elvis' love child?

Barack Obama has arguably the most diverse religious background of any candidate ever. He was raised in Indonesia by a Christian mother and Muslim stepfather and attended a Catholic school -- but while growing up, also studied Islam.

So? I studied Islam in tenth grade. Does that make me a Taliban wannerbe?

That background sparked rumors

So CBS is now in the rumor dissemination business? A more honest and interesting story would highlight who sparked these rumors.

that he had studied in a radical madrassa, or Quranic school -- rumors his campaign denied, declaring that Obama is now a practicing Christian.

Couric is practicing the National Enquirer method of journalism. Fabricate a rumor, get the target to deny the rumor, and then in the name of "balance" continue to fan the rumor.

Last month, the Los Angeles Times interviewed people who grew up with Obama. "We prayed in the mosque," one of them said, "but not seriously," noting that Obama also prayed with his Catholic schoolmates.

Last month, I interviewed people who grew up with Katie. "Miss Couric is most certainly the love child of Elvis." one of them said.

It's too soon to know what America will decide about Barack Obama or his background, but it's not too soon to wonder if America will see that as an asset or a liability.

What a weaselly conclusion. A bit like: While Miss Couric is Elvis' love child, time will tell if that is a good thing or a bad thing.

That's a page from my notebook. I'm Katie Couric, CBS News.

At least she didn't call the man Barack Osama.

Perhaps chastened by posts such as mine in the blogosphere, Managing Editor Couric has blue-penciled her ruminations. It's still incoherent and adds nothing to our knowledge of Mr. Obama. The additions are in bold, as follows:

Is America ready to elect a President whose connections with Islam were the subject of rumor and innuendo?

Barack Obama has arguably the most diverse religious background of any candidate, ever. He was raised in Indonesia by a Christian mother and Muslim stepfather, and attended a Catholic school, but while growing up, also studied Islam. That background sparked rumors that he had studied in a radical madrasa, or Koranic school – rumors later disproved . Obama is now a practicing Christian.

Last month, the Los Angeles Times interviewed a person who grew up with Obama. In the LA Times article he said, "We prayed in the mosque, but not seriously," noting that Obama also prayed with his Catholic schoolmates. In a later Chicago Tribune article, however, the source said he was not certain whether they prayed together.

It's too soon to know what America will decide about Barack Obama or his background.

But it's not too soon to wonder if America will see that background as an asset...or a liability.

(sigh)