Attorney General Michael Mukasey recently collapsed while giving a speech and was rushed to the hospital. In a news report on the subject the reporter included this paragraph:
As Mukasey began to collapse, two people grabbed him and laid him on the stage. On a tape of the speech, a voice be heard saying “Oh, no oh! Oh my God!”
I’ve just got to ask: What’s the point?
Human imagination tells me there were probably a lot of “Oh my God’s” that day. Why did this reporter feel the need to tell us about an anonymous “Oh my God” on a tape recording of the incident. Wasn’t there anything substantive on that tape? Anything relevant?
This is what news reporters do when they can’t think of anything substantive or relevant and they want to appear as if they are doing their job. They include information that doesn’t advance the story in any way. And then they call it news.
The American Pundit embedded a YouTube video of Obama saying the Consititution is flawed. OK, even the Founders believed that, but they ratified it anyway. Benjamin Franklin is on the record as having said the document isn’t perfect but it’ll do. I guess it would have had to, wouldn’t it?
Blog pundits are notorious for making much ado about nothing. We’ve heard that Obama is a Muslim, that he “pals around” with terrorists, and that he is a socialist - none of which are true. They are only inferences derived at from half-truths, fear, and irrational thought processes. In the spirit of bi-partisanship, we’ve heard similar urban legends about Sarah Palin.
I’ve got no problem with people choosing the candidate they feel best represents their values. Everyone must support someone and if an individual does the research then makes a decision based on solid, provable evidence, they’ve done what is required of a dutiful citizen. But most of what we hear coming from talk radio and the blog pundits is ludicrous and damaging. There is no critical thought that goes into most of it and my fear is that the majority of Americans will cast a vote on election day based on one of the urban myths they read in an e-mail without investigating whether or not there is any truth to it. That certainly is not what the Founders had in mind.
Watch the video yourself and then ask yourself, “What’s the big deal?”
Here’s my analysis:
Barack Obama seems to be saying that the Constitution is a great document, but it reveals a flaw of the Founders that still exists in America today. I’m sure they would agree. But Obama doesn’t say what that flaw is. We can only speculate what he believes it might be. The American Pundit writes this:
Even more audio damaging to Barack Obama has surfaced from 2001 Chicago Public Radio interviews. Via Drudge, here we find Barack Obama saying that the U.S. Constitution “reflected the fundamental flaw of this country that continues to this day”.
Now, how is that damaging? It’s a very general statement that is obviously a clip from an interview, but the interview question isn’t shown. Why not? It might actually reveal something about the nature of Obama’s response.
The fact of the matter is, the Constitution is a flawed document because it was written by flawed human beings with good intentions. That doesn’t mean they were bad people nor does it mean they were saints and that the Constitution is a divine document. It is what it is: A human document designed to create a society in which a broad swath of people from diverse backgrounds can live peacefully on the same geographical ground in a system that is fair to each regardless of race, creed, color of skin, economic status, gender, religion, or other identifier. To the degree that it does that it has been successful; conversely, to the degree that it doesn’t it is flawed. I don’t know if that is what Barack Obama meant by his comment, but it is what I mean when I say the Constitution is flawed. History proves it.
From Ambiguity To Idiocy
The responses of The American Pundit’s readership are even worse than the blogger’s own ambiguity. Read this:
so if its such a flaw then how come it has worked for the past hundred years or so? and how are you gonna come in and change something that has been what america was founded by, i think that if we havent had any problems up to do then leave it alone.. “why fix what isn’t broke?”
Gee, I’d like to meet this illiterate jackass. The Constitution has only been around for 100 years? Or is he saying it has only worked for 100 years? And we haven’t had any “problems” till now? Where has this moron been? Did he forget about the Civil War and the discussion over state’s rights? Civil Rights? Suffrage? How about the 17 amendments - changes - that have occurred to the Constitution since its ratification? I guess this reader thinks the Constitution was written with 27 amendments right from the start.
One reader thinks the news media is hiding the truth by not reporting that Obama believes there is a flaw in the Constitution:
Now there’s a story no one would ever read or hear about on C.N.N.>,M.S.N.B,>A.B.C.>,FOX,>C.B.S.,or especially the New York Times..Makes a person wonder just how much of the truth is really hidden..
“Mike” says
Unbelievable
Oh, yeah. Because no one’s ever advocated change before. This is so new.
Big Brother accuses Obama of wanting to represent blacks and no one else:
News flash Sen. Obama….You are likely days away from being elected President. You are supposed to represent ALL americans not just Black Americans. Such an attitude will not only prevent the healing process from continuing but will unravel it.
Where did he get that from? Has he even listened to the man’s speeches? Of course, he’d probably say it’s OK for President Bush to represent just rich, white people because that’s in the Constitution. Oh my God! Now I’m speculating. You see, it rubs off.
People, listen. Pull your heads out of your asses and listen. It’s OK to disagree with Senator Obama’s policies and ideas, but at least take the time to understand them before you start making idiots of yourselves. For those of you interested - truly interested - in exploring the facts and understanding who the candidates are, start by debunking the myths and legends. Click the below links then go and find the truth:
Before the wackos start saying things like, “Oh, they’re biased” and “Well, they’re just not reporting the facts,” yada yada yada, let me just tell you what Snopes is. Their job is not to report the truth about all things under the sun. It’s not a newspaper or an encyclopedia. Snopes exists to dispel myths and urban legends about a lot of things, not just political figures.
David and Barbara Mikkelson do a fabulous job of ferreting through facts to get to the heart of the matter on many things. They separate truth from fiction, fact from fantasy, myth from actuality on a great deal of subjects that have been known to receive wide circulation and create a sense of “legend.” Their only bias is toward separating the misinformation from actual fact and they do a pretty doggone good job of it. If you don’t like what you read, maybe you should do some soul searching.
I encourage you to read the Snopes entries of the candidates then conduct your own fact-finding mission to learn about each of the candidates and what their real views are - apart from the legends about them.
Washington Post columnist George Will has made some great contributions to American letters. I’ve enjoyed reading many of his columns. But it seems he is still lost in an old-fashioned conservatism which is no longer alive. A recent column of his proves my point.
There’s no doubt he makes a great point when he says that Americans do not understand their common history. When visitors to the Gettysburg battlefield remark that it couldn’t have possibly been that brutal because there are no bullet holes in the monuments, it is clear that ignorance of history is just a small symptom of the real disease: There has been a decline in rational thinking.
But Will’s own sentiments are just as discouraging:
Ten years ago, this column asserted that disrespect for the national patrimony of Civil War battlefields should be a hanging offense, and said: “Given that the vast majority of Americans have never heard a shot fired in anger, the imaginative presentation of military history in a new facility here is vital, lest rising generations have no sense of the sacrifices of which they are beneficiaries.”
In other words, ten years ago George Will would execute capital punishment on people just for not respecting an idea. But the meat of his own ideological sin is in the quotation marks that follow that Nazi-like assertion, namely, that Americans owe a debt to the sacrifices of which we “are beneficiaries.” In other words, we should honor the dead for giving us what they gave us. But what was that?
The benefits of the Civil War can be summed up in these points:
Freedom for thousands of men, women, and children who had been considered property to someone else prior to the war
A unified country that would endure for more than 150 years afterward
A collection of national monuments to preserve the memory of the massacres
An increase in government intervention, regulation, and oversight of citizen lives
The birth of a military-industrial culture that has grown so large and powerful that it might never be brought under control
A glorification of war in the national consciousness
The near deification of the man who instigated the war
An irrational fear of war on our own soil that leads us to insist that all conflicts be fought somewhere else
As you can see, this is a mixed bag of “benefits” and curses. The preservation of the union at all costs has led us to a place where culturally, politically, and socially we no longer respect the rights of other nations. Our irrational fear of war on our own soil causes us to attack other nations when there is no clear need to and without provocation. The fact that most Americans have never “heard a shot fired in anger” simply means that we have no idea of the consequences of war. We somehow believe that we have a right to dominate other cultures for fear that they might pick us with their dangerous and primitive needles. Worse, our fear of a nuclear holocaust and preoccupation with apocalyptic literature makes us see the world in a very cynical dark light. The Iraq War is the latest development in the natural decline of moral judgments that come from a belief in divine right. Somehow, I don’t think George Will is so concerned with that decline, nor are many other media personalities. We are, after all, “the greatest nation on earth” and we must prove it.
I do not deny that we are beneficiaries of good things. Many of those good things were delivered to us by men who sacrificed their lives for a greater cause. But if we are truly to understand history then we must not be so focused on the good benefits that we ignore the downside. We might be better off today in many ways, but if we don’t get control over those who control our military and national policies then the patrimony of our own time will look a lot like that of Ottomans today.
I’ve had it. The media this, the media that. And all of it coming from - gasp! - the media themselves.
Here’s what I mean:
Joe the plumber has become a right wingnut hero and a liberal socialist pincushion, all within one 15-minute interview. But his fame has far extended the allotted 15 minute time frame.
And if you listen to either camp, the problem is “the media” of those other guys. The right wing media - the left wing media - the chicken wing media. Puhhlease.
The part that just bites my rectum is the us vs. them mentality, only a part of the ‘us’ is also a member of ‘them’ and we are pretending that it ain’t so. Come on, guys. You talk as if Fox News and MSNBC are in cahoots. Get a grip!
Am I the only one that can see through the smoke? Sen. John Edwards has come under a lot of media scrutiny lately for having an affair with one of his staffers. Of course, he isn’t the first politician to succumb to such temptation. But he is claiming to have notified his church and his wife and to have asked both for forgiveness. Maybe he did, maybe didn’t. Either way, they are both covering for him. Is that ruse?
I frankly don’t care. I think the more important ruse going on is the supposed “objectivity” of the media. The Republican-controlled media is making an appeal to the Puritan public in order to justify shutting Edwards out of the running for vice president. As if having an affair with a staffer is enough to disqualify someone for being the second in command, but somehow shooting someone (even if by accident) and being in on the scandalous ruse of going to war on false grounds is, strangely, honorable. Of course, one could say that Dick Cheney never cheated on his wife, but that’s like saying that criminal isn’t guilty of theft when in fact he’s a murderer. Big Dick may not have cheated on his wife, but he doggone sure cheated on the truth.
Meanwhile, media conglomerates play up to the public’s fear of infidelity even as the war rages on.
It seems to me that “the Maverick” isn’t so maverick any more. He hardly ever says what he really thinks. He just delivers the GOPs talking points and he sounds more like George W. Bush now than G.W. does, except for perhaps the stupid verbal gaffes. I know beneath all of that tough exterior is a melon of a man just dying to say what’s really on his mind. He could explode any day now and it’s my hope that he’ll eventually tell the Republican Party to just go ‘F’ itself. Then I might vote for him. Media love or not.
Why hasn’t this been reported in the mainstream press? It could be that there is so much news going on right now that newspapers and magazines just don’t have the space for it. But I doubt it. Online, space considerations are nil. News websites should have it all over the place, but they don’t. Why not?
When the vice president of the United States is told by a disabled veterans group that he can’t speak at their meetings because his policies are draconian, that’s news. Particularly when that vice president is one of the chief architects of the war that caused many of the disabilities those veterans have. He wants them sequestered while he speaks? Why?
It’s just more of the reasons this administration has got to go. The sooner the better.
I caught this paragraph at the bottom of a news article that is chiefly about racism in the news:
(Source) “I sincerely regret it and apologize to anybody I’ve offended,” she said. “It’s a very colorful political season and many of us are making mistakes and saying things that we wish we hadn’t said.”
Why is this funny? If I were a black man would I still think it’s funny?
The woman making this statement was fired from Fox News for making a statement in her news segment that some people found offensive and racist. It was likely not intended as a racial slur, but it was taken that way. Many black people feel that there is a covert type of racism that exists when white people are simply ignorant of black culture. Because of this ignorance, white people are prone to saying stupid things that sound racist even when unintended as racism simply because we are being ourselves. I have no doubt that it’s probably true. Intelligent people (and nice people too) say stupid things all the time.
Many of the things that are being called offensive and getting news personalities in trouble this year are not necessarily gaffes that reveal a prejudice. Some of it could just be confusion. For instance, the article quoted above discusses a moment when Chris Matthews of MSNBC was talking about Barack Obama and a picture of Osama bin Laden came up on the screen. Was that planned or simply an “honest mistake?”
I can’t imagine that anyone, even an overt racist, would be stupid enough to make that kind of mistake on purpose. It was obviously not Chris Matthews’ fault. He had no control over the image that appeared behind him. News technology being what it is today, a producer or someone else connected with Matthews’ program would be the one responsible for the photos that appear behind Matthews when he is speaking. Did that person have a script or storyboard of some sort? Did he (or she) have a bevy of political images and just chose the wrong one? Were they in alphabetical order? Did he accidentally click on the wrong image while moving his mouse over the Osama bin Laden photo?
Anything (almost anything, conceivably) could have happened. Is it racism no matter what?
Not to downplay racism at all, there is obviously a lot of it floating around. Sometimes it floats in the opposite direction. But do we have to hear the choir sing every time something happens that appears to have a racial tinge to it? Certain things, like the “terrorist fist jab” comment and the “Obama’s baby mama” reference, are just tasteless. They aren’t necessarily racist (terrorists aren’t all black; in fact, most of them aren’t). So what is it?
Liz Trotta’s observation that this is a political season makes news commentators say things that they regret saying isn’t exactly a clarifying comment for me. People don’t need to be neck deep in presidential election year to come up with stupid stuff to say. Some news commentators have made a career of it. But I can’t help but noticing that this particular presidential election has the first black man to have secured a major political party nomination in U.S. history in the running. That fact alone makes us sensitive to the race issue and actually makes race an issue even if Obama is adamant and sincere about his desire to get past those things. He may want to, but the rest of us can’t.
Race matters. It’s important for a number of reasons, not the least of which because everyone of us is a byproduct of it in some way and the differences between the races are sometimes so striking that there is a natural conflict to the order of things. Political season or not. So why is Trotta’s statement so funny? It was her choice of words. It may be a “colorful” political season, but do we really have to spell it out?
This is an important issue and hasn’t gotten enough attention in my opinion. Here is what another blogger had to say about the new FCC cross-ownership rules.
The Recorder’s Opinion
Right now you are able to read your local newspapers, particularly the small-town papers, because of a newspaper-broadcast rule adopted in 1975 that bans ownership of a daily newspaper and a television or radio station in the same market. There are a few exceptions to this rule that were “grandfathered” in because they were in place when the rule was adopted.
On Tuesday, Dec. 18, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) effectively changed this rule that has served to protect local news markets for over three decades. In effect, the FCC will now allow the national and international conglomerates to buy or absorb many of the smaller news businesses that cannot afford to compete. In spite of warnings by a bipartisan group of 25 senators on both sides of the aisle that they would fight such a ruling, the FCC voted in a 3-to-2 party-line vote to eliminate the ban on what is known as the “newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership” rules.
Does that mean anything to the general public? We think it does. How would you like to receive only the information or news that just a few multi-million-dollar corporations felt like sharing with the public? Or, to take it only one small step further, would we like to join the countries that are “fed” just exactly what the government and the wealthy few want you to have?
Ironically, the FCC justified their decision by claiming that the Internet has made it easier to get information so the old ruling just wasn’t up-to-date enough.
This is one issue where your voice should be heard. it goes to the basic principless that this country was founded on. Freedom of the Press relies on rules that make sure you have many different sources for your news. As these corporations take over more and more of your news sources, then those corporations merge and buy each other out, it is not far-fetched to see a time where all of your news comes from corporations who have their own agenda.
I was reading a story today on Mashable.com that really shows how the mainstream media is scared of the new media. Their hypocracy knows no bounds.
Citizen Journalism: Dangerous and Irresponsible
Just a commnet on that headline first. That is the sentiment of the mainstream media toward bloggers of the new media. Picture Germany under Hitler for a moment. Doesn’t that look like a headline you would find in a german newspaper of that era?
I first noticed the sentiment growing last week, when Aunt B Helen Thomas gave an interview to the Huffington Post:
Q: Do you think technology is changing [journalism]? That a good reporter will always find a venue because there are so many media outlets now?
Thomas: No, but I do think it is kind of sad when everybody who owns a laptop thinks they’re a journalist and doesn’t understand the ethics. We do have to have some sense of what’s right and wrong in this job. Of how far we can go. We don’t make accusations without absolute proof. We’re not prosecutors. We don’t assume.
Q: So if there’s this amateur league of journalists out there, trying to do what you do…
Thomas: It’s dangerous.
Dangerous? Freedom of Speech is dangerous? People who read blogs know that much of the time the blogger is writing their own opinion about the news such as I am doing here.
However, most news blogers check and attribute the sources of their information so people have the chance to research and form their own opinions. This is the new media and it is here to stay and I think mainstream media just doesn’t know what to do about it.
But look at fox news, or Faux news as many like to call it. The slant put on the topics discussed on fox news is apparent to all but the few who still believe it is fair and balances.
Fox news is nothing more than a right wing podcast you can pick up on your television. They have the hannity and Coombs blog, the bill o’reilly blog, etc. etc. Most news bloggers are at least as qualified as hannity or o’reilly to spout their opinions.
The most compelling points the Old Media seems to be making these days is that no one in the blogging community has the scruples to adhere to the “unwritten ethical principals” of the mainstream media.
I’ll give you a minute to compose yourself while you laugh out loud.
