The Clown Show must go on

Infotainment can be in good taste or not. But I'm coming to really agree with economist Jamie Galbraith that it's foolish to judge our TV "news" reports by the standards of what most of the world calls "journalism". The PBS Newshour's Political Wrap infotainment segment of 05/15/09 is a prime example of why that is so.

"Liberal" Mark Shields, who managed to get through this whole segment without expressing his unbounded admiration for the Bold Maverick McCain, and neoconservative David Brooks were in full-blown clown-show mode. Moderator Jim Lehrer was, too. Clown Brooks and Clown Shields both agreed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was thoroughly horrible for giving a news conference to defend herself against Republican accusations that she is to blame for the Cheney-Bush torture program.

Clown Brooks expounded a current Beltway Village script - remember, facts don't need to impede on their scripts - about how Pelosi has been changing her story on the CIA briefings about their criminal torture program. Neither Clown Shields nor Clown Lehrer bothered to point out that the Village tale is bogus.

Try going to the text at the link above and press Ctrl-F and search for words like "law", "legal", "crime", "criminal". I did get one hit. The word "law" appears as part of the word "flawed". Yes, our PBS "quality" news program devoted a whole Political Wrap segment of 12 minutes or so focusing on the torture issue and Dick Cheney's torture tour without bothering to bring up the fact that it's seriously, big-time illegal. Because the Villagers think it's fine and perfectly normal for (Republican) Presidents to break the law. Torture itself is major-league illegal. But we know from government admissions that nearly 100 people died in custody in the Bush Gulag, over two dozen of them officially considered homicides.

Be sure to watch the video to get the full effect of the good ole boys setting around snickering about how dumbass it is for anyone to get upset about a little torture. Toss in a few dozen murders, that doesn't diminish the merriment. Not that the homicides came up on the Clown Show.

Honestly, this is far more sickening to me than the photos Obama refused to release on their scheduled May 28 date. (More snaps from Abu Ghraib Sydney Morning Herald Update 05/30/09: 14 of the 15 photos in the Sydney Morning Herald set had been previously published by Salon on 03/26/2006, including the one shown below) Those photos depict crimes that can be prosecuted. The Political Wrap segment shows in vivid detail the extent of the corruption our public discourse in general and the collapse of the infotainment reports formerly known as news.

Tags: david brooks, mark shields, pbs newshour, torture

Credit where due

Having bashed the PBS Newshour for its Beltway Village Idiot segment on torture during its Friday Political Wrap segment, I want to give them credit for their lead segment on 04/20/09, Obama Faced Tough Choices in Release of CIA Interrogation Memos.

This segment provided one of the best airings of the legal issues involved that I've seen on TV so far. (Admittedly, that could be construed as faint praise.)

The segment focused on the critical issue of prosecuting those at all levels who perpetrated the torture crimes. The anti-prosecution position was represented by former CIA official Jeffrey Smith, the pro-law-enforcement position by Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has been doing excellent work on this issue.

True, Jeffrey Smith was straightforwardly advocating that people who violated the torture laws should not be prosecuted for their crimes. Despite initial disclaimers, it was clear that he also opposed prosecuting senior officials involved in the torture program, as well as opposing prosecuting the hands-on torturers. But, sadly, that has become a "respectable" position, at least in the Beltway. So far, a majority of the public are saying that torturers should be investigated for their crimes.

Here's an excerpt:

MICHAEL RATNER: I have no doubt that the people who wrote the memos, as well as the principal committee people, like Rumsfeld, Tenet, who was head of the CIA, Porter Goss, when all of the torture program occurred, should be criminally investigated.

I think the evidence is clear. It's actually screaming at us from the page. When Dick Cheney says, "I was one of the people who approved waterboarding and I would do it again," you realize why you need prosecution for deterrence. There's no issue.

And I do want to say that Obama has -- while he has not completely precluded prosecution of the architects, he has made statements that make you very, very worried, statements like, "We shouldn't seek retribution," that we shouldn't look backward, that we should look forward, that "I'm stopping torture." Those kinds of statements don't just apply to the agents who did it, but who apply to the upper-level people who were the architects.

JIM LEHRER: Mr. Ratner, your use of the word -- you said it may not be a deterrence issue -- do you think it's a punishment issue? In other words, should these people be punished whether or not it's a deterrence for future conduct or not?

MICHAEL RATNER: Look, I'm less concerned about punishment, vengeance, whatever word you want to use, deterrence.

JIM LEHRER: OK.

MICHAEL RATNER: I'm concerned -- punishment. I'm really concerned about deterrence. I just worry very deeply that another president can simply say, "Let's do this again."

And one of the interesting things when we talk about this, you know, two of the people -- and that was one of the disturbing things about Obama's speech -- two of the people who he began the speech with...

JIM LEHRER: You mean today, the speech today at the CIA?

MICHAEL RATNER: Yes, the speech today, Steve Kappes and John Brennan are two people who were at the agency in important roles when the torture program was being carried out by the CIA, and these are people who Obama said he is currently getting advice from. I don't find that reassuring when I think about how is this country going to be torture-free going forward. [my emphasis]

John Brennan, you may recall, was the one Obama appointment that the much-dreaded dirty hippie bloggers had very sharply opposed. And opposed because of his pro-torture record.

Tags: pbs newshour, torture

PBS Newshour bungles the torture memos story

Michael Gerson and Ruth Marcus illustrate how badly broken even our "quality" press is

Friday's PBS Newshour's weekly Political Wrap segment has been cringe-inducing for some time now, even when the regular pundits, neoconservative David Brooks and the tired liberal and John McCain fanboy Mark Shields, are on hand. Yesterday, both were off. And their substitutes produced one of the worst segments I've ever seen on the Newshour.

Here is the text of a letter I wrote them just after seeing it. In the letter, I use the concept of "torturers" to include everyone involved in this miserable process, certainly including the senior officials and attorneys who cooked up the torture policy.

Dear PBS Newshour,

Your "Political Wrap" segment of April 17 with Ruth Marcus, Michael Gerson and Margaret Warner was a genuine disgrace.

In the wake of the release of the memos going into explicit detail about the kinds of genuinely sadistic tortures that the Bush White House authorized to be used against prisoners at its own discretion, you bring on Gerson, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, and Marcus, an outspoken opponent of prosecuting criminals who broke the law by committing torture.

So the "liberal" Marcus spent her time defending the position that torturers should not be prosecuted for breaking the law. And grinning over the fact that taking that position previously had earned her the criticism of being a "torture enabler". She seemed to think this was a sign of virtue that she was being criticized by the dreadful "left" who may not think that giving torturers a free pass on breaking the law is such a good idea. How can anyone smile with pleasure at being (accurately) called a torture enabler? Gerson also had a good chuckle at that. Are you even aware how truly weird that is? Of how little seriousness either of these shallow pundits were showing there?

Gerson just ranted about terrible it was that Obama should have revealed this memos that, not incidentally, showed what a nasty group with whom he had faithfully worked for years as a speechwriter. Though an outspoken Christian, he seemed less interested in seeing any repentance for any sin involved with those sadistic tortures than in defending the torturers against any criticism. On the contrary, he seemed to think the only sin committed was in revealing these memos.

And Warner as the host was useless. When Gerson said that some "many of these methods", i.e., techniques of torment, in those memos did not constitute torture, could she not have at least asked him which ones he did consider torture and which not? In fact the only two appearances of the word "torture" in this pitiful segment were Marcus bragging about being called a "torture enabler" and Gerson making his unchallenged assertion that "many of these methods that are talked about ... are not torture".

Our national media, and in particular TV "journalism" like that on display in the Gerson-Marcus-Warner segment against prosecuting torturers, played a key role in enabling the torture policy to go on for nearly five years after it became public with the Abu Ghuraib scandal in 2004. Could at least one person among the pristine Christian Michael Gerson, the "liberal" pundit Ruth Marcus and the alleged journalist Margaret Warner have pointed out that the drowning torture ("waterboarding") as well as others of these techniques were clearly established in American and international law as torture? Apparently, no, they couldn't. But they certainly found time to air the arguments about why torturers should not be prosecuted for their crimes.

Everyone connected with your program should be genuinely embarrassed by that segment. It was a real disgrace.

Tags: establishment press, pbs newshour, torture

PBS adopts Republican/FOX grammatical eccentricity

The PBS Newshour story on Tuesday's Democratic Presidential debate carries the headline on its Web site, as of this writing, Democrat Contenders for President Attack Front-runner Clinton in Debate.

"Democrat" as the adjective form in this context is some Republican Party quirk that they apparently think is cutesy, "Democratic Party" being the normal grammatical usage.

Some Democrats have objected more openly to this practice in recent years, which Republican TV news network FOX News has made its standard usage.

It doesn't bother me much if the Republicans want to use it, though. If they want to advertise their lack of command of normal grammar, that's fine with me. "Those Democrat politicians don't always wear an America flag pin on their lapels the way Republic politicians do." Yeah, let them reinvent English grammar. Pretty soon they'll become totally incomprehensible to anyone but themselves.

I am kind of dismayed to see the PBS Newshour adopt this weird grammatical quirk, though.

----------------
Actually, after writing the above, I went to the Newshour Web site and sent them the following comment:

I see your online headline on your story about the Democratic Presidential debate on Tuesday carries the headline "Democrat Contenders for President Attack Front-runner Clinton in Debate".

"Democrat" contenders? Has the Newshour decided to adopt FOX News eccentric partisan grammar.

What's next, the "America flag"? The "Britain" Navy? A "frenzy request"?

I kind of like it when Republicans use that dorky grammar. I know they think it's some cutesy insult. But for most people it just sounds like poor command of the language.

I am kind of sorry to see the PBS Newshour using it, though. Aren't you supposed to be part of the "quality press"? I mean, if there is such a thing on TV any more.

Tags: democratic party, pbs newshour, republican party