G
Gandalf Grey
Guest
Washington Post still propagandizing about Bush's 'loyalty'
By Margie Burns
Created Aug 28 2007 - 10:48am
The big local-national news item du jour is Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales' resignation, and nobody is a mind reader. It is impossible to say
with certainty whether Gonzales resigned or was forced out, although I lean
toward the former view.
I cannot help sympathizing with Gonzales personally, even though I opposed
most of the policies he supported from early on. Partly, I was influenced by
a book: while waiting in a DC library one day last spring, for one of those
wonderful tax-aide volunteers to help me with my only-too-qualified-income
IRS return, I picked up Bill Minutaglio's THE PRESIDENT'S COUNSELOR and
skimmed most of it. (Incidentally, this weighty biography came out in July
2006; the hardscrabble beginnings and strenuous work it revealed -- which I
admired -- probably presented as symptoms to the brittle DC power structure
of GOP bought-overs and the pseudo-liberals who go along with them. It would
be just like them.)
Gonzales got to announce his resignation at a time when Sens. Specter
(R-Penn.) and Schumer (D-NY) were out of town, like other Republican and
Democratic members of Congress who could have resisted each White House/DOJ
torture memorandum -- if they really wanted something to get on Gonzales'
case about, and like many members of the national press corps, not that that
improves their reporting.
Today's Washington Post -- picking a random example, here -- ran an
"Analysis" of Gonzales' resignation titled "In the end, realities trumped
loyalty." Typically, once again the WP distorts the character of the current
White House by euphemizing the president's defining characteristic as
"loyalty," if that is the message in these somewhat inchoate grafs:
"Few attributes are more highly prized in President Bush's White House than
loyalty -- and few have exacted a higher toll on the president and his
political standing. Yesterday's resignation announcement by Attorney General
Alberto R. Gonzales underscored once again the damage that can be done when
loyalty becomes paramount in presidential decision-making.
Rarely has a Cabinet-level resignation been so anticipated, coming long
after Gonzales's credibility had been irreparably undermined by controversy.
After he seemingly could do no more harm to the administration, Bush's
friend and longtime confidant finally called it quits."
"Loyalty." Where do we start? The WP starts by ignoring any evidence that
does not fit its thesis, such as the contradictory evidence of White House
treatment of Colin Powell, Paul O'Neill, Lawrence Lindsey. Breathtaking that
national prominent 'political analysts' could omit what Bush-Cheney have
meted out to every truth-teller in the administration thus far. Colleen
Rowley.
Has the White House demonstrated 'loyalty' to, for example, federal judges
appointed by this president and his father? Reggie B. Walton.
Has this White House demonstrated 'loyalty' to the U.S. Army? Gen. Shinseki.
Maj. Gen. Taguba. (One of the great unreported stories of the Bush years, in
my opinion, has been a Bush-Cheney strategy of weakening the Army and
keeping it generally off-balance, from late 2000 to the present. More on
that some other time.)
When will national media outlets acknowledge that the hypothesis of
'loyalty' does not fit the known facts?
Obviously commentators and reporters do not have to meet the same standards
as federal judges, and we are all fallible. But I am still a reader as well
as a writer, and the Washington Post holds an effective monopoly in the
nation's capital -- partly by dint of crushing or buying out any smaller
papers in the vicinity. It is galling to see a major daily maintain the same
distortions and omissions month after month, year after year. (To this day,
the WP still has not adequately reported the Post Co.'s enormous financial
haul from "No Child Left Behind," but I'll return to that topic later.)
There is no sign, no hint, none whatever, in the writing of some political
sages that presidential 'loyalty' might have another aspect than the purely
personal -- that occasionally a chief executive might keep his friends close
and his enemies closer. With the level of mis- and malfeasance in this
administration, blackmail by your own personnel remains a very real
possibility. Yet this practical possibility gets overlooked like a four-leaf
clover, by the very same would-be kremlinologists, tea-leaf readers and
insider-baseball machiavellis who laughed at Al Gore for wearing a brown
suit.
Then the same sages get on national television, and the networks codify
their omissions into collective wisdom.
Some of us started out, re this topic of 'loyalty', by pointing out that the
loyalty of a chief executive in America, by oath, is supposed to go to his
people -- that is, to the people of the nation at large, not to the few
handpicked individuals in a limited circle. Generally it is too much to hope
that that fundamental idea will seep into front-page reporting.
But if the national political journalists are going to confine their
political reporting to the diurnal and/or the squalid -- in defiance of the
public interest -- they could at least follow their own rules and actually
report.
_______
Reprinted with permission of MargieBurns.com [1]
Margie Burns is a freelance journalist in the D.C. area with a blog at
MargieBurns.com [2].
margie.burns@verizon.net
About author Margie Burns is a freelance journalist in the D.C. area with a
blog at MargieBurns.com [3]. She can be reached at margie.burns@verizon.net.
Reprinted with permission of MargieBurns.com [4]
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson
By Margie Burns
Created Aug 28 2007 - 10:48am
The big local-national news item du jour is Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales' resignation, and nobody is a mind reader. It is impossible to say
with certainty whether Gonzales resigned or was forced out, although I lean
toward the former view.
I cannot help sympathizing with Gonzales personally, even though I opposed
most of the policies he supported from early on. Partly, I was influenced by
a book: while waiting in a DC library one day last spring, for one of those
wonderful tax-aide volunteers to help me with my only-too-qualified-income
IRS return, I picked up Bill Minutaglio's THE PRESIDENT'S COUNSELOR and
skimmed most of it. (Incidentally, this weighty biography came out in July
2006; the hardscrabble beginnings and strenuous work it revealed -- which I
admired -- probably presented as symptoms to the brittle DC power structure
of GOP bought-overs and the pseudo-liberals who go along with them. It would
be just like them.)
Gonzales got to announce his resignation at a time when Sens. Specter
(R-Penn.) and Schumer (D-NY) were out of town, like other Republican and
Democratic members of Congress who could have resisted each White House/DOJ
torture memorandum -- if they really wanted something to get on Gonzales'
case about, and like many members of the national press corps, not that that
improves their reporting.
Today's Washington Post -- picking a random example, here -- ran an
"Analysis" of Gonzales' resignation titled "In the end, realities trumped
loyalty." Typically, once again the WP distorts the character of the current
White House by euphemizing the president's defining characteristic as
"loyalty," if that is the message in these somewhat inchoate grafs:
"Few attributes are more highly prized in President Bush's White House than
loyalty -- and few have exacted a higher toll on the president and his
political standing. Yesterday's resignation announcement by Attorney General
Alberto R. Gonzales underscored once again the damage that can be done when
loyalty becomes paramount in presidential decision-making.
Rarely has a Cabinet-level resignation been so anticipated, coming long
after Gonzales's credibility had been irreparably undermined by controversy.
After he seemingly could do no more harm to the administration, Bush's
friend and longtime confidant finally called it quits."
"Loyalty." Where do we start? The WP starts by ignoring any evidence that
does not fit its thesis, such as the contradictory evidence of White House
treatment of Colin Powell, Paul O'Neill, Lawrence Lindsey. Breathtaking that
national prominent 'political analysts' could omit what Bush-Cheney have
meted out to every truth-teller in the administration thus far. Colleen
Rowley.
Has the White House demonstrated 'loyalty' to, for example, federal judges
appointed by this president and his father? Reggie B. Walton.
Has this White House demonstrated 'loyalty' to the U.S. Army? Gen. Shinseki.
Maj. Gen. Taguba. (One of the great unreported stories of the Bush years, in
my opinion, has been a Bush-Cheney strategy of weakening the Army and
keeping it generally off-balance, from late 2000 to the present. More on
that some other time.)
When will national media outlets acknowledge that the hypothesis of
'loyalty' does not fit the known facts?
Obviously commentators and reporters do not have to meet the same standards
as federal judges, and we are all fallible. But I am still a reader as well
as a writer, and the Washington Post holds an effective monopoly in the
nation's capital -- partly by dint of crushing or buying out any smaller
papers in the vicinity. It is galling to see a major daily maintain the same
distortions and omissions month after month, year after year. (To this day,
the WP still has not adequately reported the Post Co.'s enormous financial
haul from "No Child Left Behind," but I'll return to that topic later.)
There is no sign, no hint, none whatever, in the writing of some political
sages that presidential 'loyalty' might have another aspect than the purely
personal -- that occasionally a chief executive might keep his friends close
and his enemies closer. With the level of mis- and malfeasance in this
administration, blackmail by your own personnel remains a very real
possibility. Yet this practical possibility gets overlooked like a four-leaf
clover, by the very same would-be kremlinologists, tea-leaf readers and
insider-baseball machiavellis who laughed at Al Gore for wearing a brown
suit.
Then the same sages get on national television, and the networks codify
their omissions into collective wisdom.
Some of us started out, re this topic of 'loyalty', by pointing out that the
loyalty of a chief executive in America, by oath, is supposed to go to his
people -- that is, to the people of the nation at large, not to the few
handpicked individuals in a limited circle. Generally it is too much to hope
that that fundamental idea will seep into front-page reporting.
But if the national political journalists are going to confine their
political reporting to the diurnal and/or the squalid -- in defiance of the
public interest -- they could at least follow their own rules and actually
report.
_______
Reprinted with permission of MargieBurns.com [1]
Margie Burns is a freelance journalist in the D.C. area with a blog at
MargieBurns.com [2].
margie.burns@verizon.net
About author Margie Burns is a freelance journalist in the D.C. area with a
blog at MargieBurns.com [3]. She can be reached at margie.burns@verizon.net.
Reprinted with permission of MargieBurns.com [4]
--
NOTICE: This post contains copyrighted material the use of which has not
always been authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material
available to advance understanding of
political, human rights, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. I
believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material as
provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107
"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson