Tuesday, April 27, 2004
Annals of the Courtier Press
I think this may be just about the saddest thing I've read recently. According to Elizabeth "Asking Questions is Scary" Bumiller:
And this during a talk that was purportedly about the war on terror. Remember when the press' motto was "Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted"? Apparently the new motto is "I got mine, Jack."
Elsewhere in today's Howler, Somerby gives deserved props to E.J. Dionne for, well, doing his job, which is also pretty sad when you think about it. (Somerby suggests we add props of our own here: postchat@aol.com.) Dionne, invoking Joseph Welch, asks Bush and his goons, "Have you no sense of decency?" The question pretty much answers itself.
But there may be a subtext. Before Welch asked his famous question, few had dared take on McCarthy; that is, the press was behaving then pretty much as it has been for the last 20 years. In asking this question, therefore, Welch was implicitly shaming the Fourth Estate. One wonders if Dionne is similarly addressing his cowardly colleagues? Sad yet again, if so, that journalists have to resort to indirection to shame their seemingly unshamable peers.
Welch's question is widely credited with puncturing McCarthy's aura of invulnerability and fear. The question is whether, and when, it will finally work on a press corps so corrupt and venal that it shamelessly applauds the demolition of a long-recognized bulwark against aristocratic rule.
Mr. Bush spoke for 44 minutes to the editors in off-the-cuff remarks that drew on familiar phrases from his speeches of the last two and a half years…Mr. Bush’s substantive remarks were interrupted only once with applause, when he called for the end of the "death tax," or the estate tax.
(via The Daily Howler)
And this during a talk that was purportedly about the war on terror. Remember when the press' motto was "Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted"? Apparently the new motto is "I got mine, Jack."
Elsewhere in today's Howler, Somerby gives deserved props to E.J. Dionne for, well, doing his job, which is also pretty sad when you think about it. (Somerby suggests we add props of our own here: postchat@aol.com.) Dionne, invoking Joseph Welch, asks Bush and his goons, "Have you no sense of decency?" The question pretty much answers itself.
But there may be a subtext. Before Welch asked his famous question, few had dared take on McCarthy; that is, the press was behaving then pretty much as it has been for the last 20 years. In asking this question, therefore, Welch was implicitly shaming the Fourth Estate. One wonders if Dionne is similarly addressing his cowardly colleagues? Sad yet again, if so, that journalists have to resort to indirection to shame their seemingly unshamable peers.
Welch's question is widely credited with puncturing McCarthy's aura of invulnerability and fear. The question is whether, and when, it will finally work on a press corps so corrupt and venal that it shamelessly applauds the demolition of a long-recognized bulwark against aristocratic rule.
