the Press

The press has done a particularly sad job of late, asking neither hard questions, nor particularly pertinent ones. Questions such as, "Why were you, Mr President, sitting on your a** for so long after being informed of the planes crashing into the WTC?". Or, "Why did you run for cover all day?" Or, "If you are so conservative, why has the Federal budget deficit ballooned to nearly $500 billion, when you have a majority in Congress and cannot blame it on the Democrats?" Or, "Why is this administration so disastrously incompetent in creating jobs AND so blithely undisturbed by that shortcoming?" Or, perhaps, "What happened to the goal of bringing Osama bin Laden to justice?", just to start the ball rolling.

Sixty-five years after the fact, FDR's address to Congress, "Yesterday, December 7th, a date which will live in infamy..." still resonates, yet nothing this President has said rises above "you don't change horses in the middle of a stream", or "what kind of message are you sending to our troops, when you say 'wrong war, wrong time, wrong place'". To say that the current infestation in the White House is the least articulate bunch of all time is to put too polite a face on it. No message, no plan other than to further enrich those already too rich, no vision....no questions from the complaisant press who are too consumed with fear of ostracizement to ask hard questions, EVERY OPPORTUNITY they get! They can run, but inevitably, THEY CANNOT HIDE from a determined press. Nixon tried, using all the considerable power and influence of his position, but to no avail. Where are the Woodward (talk-show wanna-be) and Bernsteins (retired?) of the current crop of so-called journalists? Plagiarizing or inventing-out-of-whole-cloth stories of little or no consequence or import?

What do the esteemed members of the Press do while this travesty devolves? Fiddle while Rome burns...write their memoirs....issue declaratives on the failures of the challenger...knuckle under to the corporations who write their paychecks, in order to protect their retirement?

When the Raucous Right landed on Rather for the so-called forgeries and tarred and feathered him for supposed failure to verify their authenticity, WHY DIDN'T ANY MEMBER OF THE PRESS ASK," OK, so where are the originals and WHY haven't they been produced after all this time?" When the SwiftBoat Veterans put on their dog-and-pony show for the PRESS, why didn't anyone ask "Were you there?" and follow up on it to see had they actually been there? When Bob Dole (Famous Disabled Vet) impugned Kerry's award of his Purple Hearts, why wasn't their ANY discussion of how this impugned ALL vets. Not only was this shameful episode blared on the news media, but the disputation of this by the Navy Department was buried in the back pages. It isn't that the truth is a victim of the current administration, but that it is merely a commodity to be traded, with its intrinsic value determined by expediency and/or potential damage. Why didn't anyone in the Press LOUDLY ask what was different in this attack from previous attacks directed at Max Cleland and John McCain?

This election campaign has been marked by such a serious deficiency on the part of the press as to be criminal. Why is there no investigation of Halliburton, for overcharges, not ONCE but TWICE (that we know of). Why was Tennant allowed to fall on his sword so successfully as to preclude further questions as to the elusive WMD? Why has the search for Osama been all but abandoned? Why was Halliburton, with blatant ties to the White House and Cheney, given a NO-BID contract in Iran? Why aren't there questions about the price of GAS, when the President was so famously in the "oil-bidness"? And, WHY isn't there any effort to move in the direction of a new way to propel American vehicles and Industry that is not oil-based? Could the answer to that be the fact the president (and his cronies and backers) are so famously "oil bidness"?

No discussion in the Press of conflicts of interest, whether in the overcharges or the direction of research, lead one to believe the days of Murrow, Conkrite, and even Rather, are long gone, probably never to return, to be replaced by Fox News ("Fair and Balanced", even if they are neither) and Bill O'Reilly, who this week launched a leave-no-ground-unscorched counter-attack against his accuser, accusing her of unbelievable demands, while NEVER ONCE denying he had done what she said he had! The reporting on that issue was remarkably quiet about that last factoid...perhaps because of fear of FOX, or fear of O'Reilly saying, "Shut up!" and then vilifying the impertinent questioner for unverifiable transgressions in his/her past, via the inanswerable "Have you quit beating your wife" gambit, perhaps. This is what journalism in the 21st Century has devolved to, ambush your opponent with charges that should be laughable (if not disgusting), then when the media feeding frenzy encircles your victim, stake out the high ground, safe in the knowledge that no one in the Press will poke their head out to question "where, what, why, who, how?" and point a finger at you!

The real-politik of Communism (history is what WE say it is) have come to full flower, its birth in the Muskie Letter, its adolescence in the Iran-Contra scandal, its journey to maturity the Starr Investigation (spending $40 million tax dollars to prove the President got a BJ is NOT what we taxpayers sent ANYONE to Congress to do...not to mention the hypocracy of the Republican hierarchy, of whom the Press asked NOT ONE hard question). Now, here in the opening days of the 21st Century, we are held hostage by those who have neither our best interests at heart nor any concern for the future that does not benefit them personally. Those vaunted guardians of Free Speech, the Press, have been criminally silent, allowing themselves to be isolated and controlled, by the exclusion of a few, the control of information dispersal under the rubric of "national security" or the pursuit of fame and fortune by those immoral or amoral enough to DO ANYTHING!

The dumbing-down of America is part of the problem, the villains in the process both those in power and those charged with overseeing the activities of those in powerful positions. Writers spew out chapter and verse of canned opinions given them by corporate and/or campaign headquarters, all the better to get their faces in public focus, while dirty deeds are swept under the carpet with a wink and smile. The current state of affairs cannot, indeed HAS NOT, last for long....can you spell Palace Revolution?