Doubly betrayed: By Hasan & PC elites

Less than two hours after the worst act of terrorism on U.S. soil since 9/11, FBI Director Robert Mueller announced that his investigators were “definitely not discussing terrorism”. Soon after President Obama urged Americans “not to jump to conclusions”. When reporters asked what the President meant by that White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had no coherent answer. The initial stories by both the New York Times and the Associated Press gave great prominence to reports that the killer had been “harassed because he was a Muslim”, that he was “dismayed” by U.S. Policies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that he was “upset” about the “terrible things” he heard from soldiers returning from the war zone.

On the afternoon of the tragedy Americans channel surfing for updates on the massacre found an odd mix of reportage. Chris Matthews of MSNBC offered an impassioned monologue on the “horrible costs of war”. Other commentators amplified this theme of “the soldier as victim”.

Shepherd Smith of the much reviled Fox News obtained a live interview with Army Colonial Terry Lee who knew the killer from his time at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington. Colonel Lee related how the killer “seemed pleased” when a Muslim had shot and killed a U.S. Soldier in front of an Army recruiting office in Arkansas, and had also likened Muslim suicide bombers to those soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save their buddies. Colonel Lee also stated that any harassment the killer experienced was not because of his Muslim faith but due to expressing these kind of view in the presence of men who had seen friends and fellow soldiers killed in combat.

Apparently no other news outlet had been able to find Colonel Lee or any similar purveyors of “an inconvenient truth”.

On Friday when it was confirmed that before commencing his slaughter, the killer jumped on a table and shouted “Allahu Akbar” (God is Great) the media story line began to shift, but not too much.

As soon as they learned that the killer was still alive various commentators began to pose the following weighty questions: “Why was the killer moved from a civilian to a military hospital?” or “Would wide spread prejudice make it difficult for the killer to obtain a fair trial or adequate legal counsel”? or “In light of Guantanamo, should the killer be tried in a civilian or military court? “ or“could a possible death sentence create a martyr and inflame the Muslim world” or “ does the fact that the killer purchased his handguns legally mean we need tougher gun control?” or “Was the Army culpable in failing to prevent this”

Perhaps the most bizarre line of inquiry was the assertion that if the killer acted alone and not as part of a conspiracy then the massacre cannot be viewed as an act of terrorism (See, Director Mueller was right!) but rather a case of a “stressed” or “demented” individaul who just “snapped”.

This rampant political correctness and willful blindness too facts is not just coming from the loony left like the Huffington Post which initially denied the killer was a Muslim or The Nation which denounced any mention of his religion or ethnicity as “Homophobia”, but from mainstream media and public officials who are responsible for the nation's safety.

Days after the massacre the N.Y. Times and the Washington Post still insisted the killers “ motives were unclear”. Even when it was known that the killer had praised suicide bombers, declared himself a Palestinian, sought to proselytize his patients, and carefully prepared for his atrocity- even giving away his possession- a Denver Post heading read “Clues Elusive in Killing”, and not a single public official from President Obama on down uttered the word “terrorist” or traitor or made the obvious connection to jihadist fanaticism- the preferred terms offered being “shooter” and “act of violence”.

In keeping with the summons and prediction of Obama bin Laden a Muslim fanatic perpetrated the worst act of domestic terrorism since 9/11 but our political leaders abetted by a craven media don't want you to know it, say it or even think it, and if you do “jump to conclusions”-however obvious- you will be called ignorant and bigoted.

If the next home grown jihadist gets hold of a chemical, biological, or nuclear weapon, and kills thousands, will the reaction or story line be any different? How many Americans must die before our people in their righteous anger decide its time for a new story line and new leaders to honestly pursue it.

William Moloney is a Centennial Institute Fellow and former Colorado Education Commissioner. His columns have appeared in the Wall St. Journal, U.S.A. Today, Washington Post, Washington Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun , Rocky Mountain News and the Denver Post.

Who in the media have ‘perspective’?

Among the remarks by spokesmen for the Obama administration in its war against Fox News was David Axelrod's observation that Fox was not a news organization because it had a "perspective" on the news.T hat deserves analysis on more than one level. First, there is the political angle. Obviously, Obama’s quarrel with Fox has everything to do with its "perspective." Unlike CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC and NPR, Fox is not in the tank for the current occupant of the White House. Nothing like Chris Matthew’s "tingling sensation" up his leg excites Fox journalists.

Second, there is a distinction to be made, of sorts, between straight news people and commentators at Fox, as White House press secretary Robert Gibbs acknowledged, when he subsequently singled out a couple of Fox time slots for the latter. Fox, like other media, distinguishes news from opinion.

Third, Fox’s slogans are not just marketing ploys. Compared to other media, Fox is "fair and balanced," as there are more presentations of opposing viewpoints there than in the "mainstream media." The other networks give little time to the conservative point of view.

At least one intrepid journalist at a Gibbs press conference did question the wisdom of the President singling out one television network for criticism. One is reminded of the famous quotation from Martin Niemoller, a victim of Nazi oppression, about how "they came for the Jews, but I wasn’t a Jew, so I didn’t speak up." One hopes that lesson has been learned.

So, although it is thuggish from my "perspective" for a President to condemn one news organization and practically demand that others not follow its example of exposing, for example, ACORN’s corruption or the extremist views of a number of Obama’s "Czars," it looks like he made other journalists uncomfortable.

Although presidents have frequently been critical of media coverage for both good reasons and bad, nothing compares to the current situation so much as Vice President Spiro Agnew’s criticism of the major media in 1969. But then the obvious difference is that Agnew took on the entire New York-Washington media axis, rather than picking on only one network..

Yet there is a great similarity between the media’s hostility to the Nixon Administration 40 years ago and their opposition to George W. Bush up until less than a year ago, and that was both administrations’ prosecution of a war that most leading journalists were opposed to.

All this is interesting stuff, but let’s get back to "perspective." What’s wrong with it? More to the point, how does any journalistic organization succeed without it? Determining what is news is not merely record keeping. Each day someone must decide that some event or development is news, mindful of the fact that if it is determined to be news, it will be on the public agenda.

Years ago U.S. News did a lengthy piece on the New York Times. In their daily conferences, it was pointed out, Times editors, conscious that it was the nation’s leading newspaper which influences the television networks in their own selection of news, were very careful about what they printed, especially on the front page. They understood that more people read the front page more than the editorial page, and they were reluctant to give more publicity to an issue or cause than it deserved.

As shocking as this may sound, this is what all news organizations do, although the smaller the staff the less likely that long deliberations precede their news decisions. If politics, war, commerce, law and entertainment loom large in our media, it is not because of arbitrary editors but because these things matter to most people in a democratic republic.

No less shocking perhaps to many may be the fact that, because journalists are American citizens with opinions, some things are more important to them than others. Without that "perspective," there is no reason for anyone to be in journalism; it is part of politics even if journalists do not hold public office.

Thus, Fox was singled out not because it had a "perspective," but because its "perspective" differs from Obama’s and his friends’ in other media. We need a free media to enable us to know what our leaders are doing and to discuss the wisdom of their policies. Lacking such "perspective," self government is impossible.

No ruler of a free people should condemn any media because they have a "perspective." That is but the prelude to a controlled media and despotic government

Waak owes us an apology

Now that the vandalism at Colorado Dem headquarters is known to come from one of her own, albeit not "a good Democrat" as she lamely puts it, party chairman Pat Waak owes an apology to Republicans, independents, and everyone else opposed to the government medical takeover -- whom she slurred yesterday in reflexively blaming the attack on "an effort on the other side to stir up hate." No awards for bulldog-tough journalism will go to Jessica Fender of the Denver Post for writing today that Waak "tempered her statement" from Tuesday after the perp's political ties came to light. Waak 2.0, claiming that "what I've been saying is there is a lot of rhetoric out there from both sides of the spectrum," isn't a tempering, it's a brazen reversal. Too bad the Post news pages let Chairman Pat get away with it, abetted by Mike Littwin's jokey dismissal of the whole thing in the opinion columns.

It reminds me of the pass given President Obama by most of the media when he claimed his appraisal of Cambridge cop James Crowley was never less than stellar, a couple of days after telling the nation Crowley had "acted stupidly." Being a Democrat means never having to say you're sorry -- unless you are Obama on a world tour, apologizing for 200 years of American greatness.

The media have their story line, which in the case of this faux attack on Dem HQ was dangerous militia tendencies among all those unready to socialize one-sixth of the US economy in a few summer weeks, and even when facts get in the way, they don't readily respond.

The preset story line was illustrated by Solomon Banda's AP story on Tuesday, eagerly connecting the dots from smashed windows in Denver to Obama opponents "carrying guns" in Arizona and New Hampshire, hecklers of a congressman making "veiled threats" in Ohio, and health care protesters across the country creating "angry outbursts."

But now that bike bandit Maurice Schwenkler is in custody and unmasked (literally) for the non-good Democrat that he is, maybe Banda, Littwin, and Fender will help me corner Pat Waak and shame her into the apology rightfully owed.

MSM caught 'watering the plants'

There has been heavy media coverage of the picture of Obama-with-Hitler-mustache that a guy was displaying outside one of the townhall meetings the other day. The picture is at one of the links below. Several talking heads on TV blamed Republicans and conservative talk radio for motivating this ugly display (see third link below). One might be forgiven for thinking that they knew what they were talking about. One might have assumed, naively, that the network news people did some investigative reporting to determine the facts.

In fact, it would have been quite easy. All they had to do was to read the message on the bottom of the picture and go to the web site, which is a Lyndon LaRouche web site (first link below). But no, they simply parroted what their world view told them must be the case. This sloppiness and utter disregard for the facts have become more and more typical of liberal TV news programs.

As it happens, Lyndon LaRouche is closer to a communist than he is to a conservative. On the issue at hand, his web site actually advocates a "single payer" health care plan, just not Obama's.

The activist who was displaying the picture was later seen handing out literature for Democratic Representative John Dingell (see second link below). Thus either he was a Democrat plant or else he was a LaRouche supporter who also supported Dingell.

They call this particular kind of deception "watering the plants". The liberal media bought it willingly, and then spread it far and wide. We can expect to see much more of this now that Nancy Pelosi falsely accused conservative town hall participants of carrying swastikas.

Regarding TV news, it's been tempting to say "trust but verify". But now one can't trust it at all.

http://www.larouchepac.com/

http://theblogprof.blogspot.com/2009/08/busted-obama-as-hitler-poster-was.html

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/seton-motley/2009/08/12/nbc-cnn-msnbc-all-assign-communist-larouches-obama-hitler-poster-conse

Cronkite better before he was anchorman

The recent passing of CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite was the occasion for considerable media navel gazing, most of which either waxed nostalgic or sought to channel his luster. The best commentary was by Dorothy Rabinowitz at the Wall Street Journal. Rabinowitz agrees that Cronkite was a major force in broadcast journalism, but her more nuanced analysis recalls the days before Cronkite became famous and signed off every night with the portentous judgment that "that’s the way it is, [fill in day and date]." Millions of people hung on every word "Uncle Walter" uttered with such authority, which he ultimately abused. (More below.)

As much as Rabinowitz is willing give Cronkite kudos for his dedication to getting facts straight, she admires more, as do I, the journalist who, in World War II, not only rode in a B-17 Flying Fortress above Germany but was also in uniform "wielding a machine gun at the enemy." Less hazardous, but surely patriotic, was Cronkite’s willingness, along with other TV network commentators such as NBC’s Chet Huntley, to narrate documentaries showing the evil of communist regimes.

My favorite was "Revolt in Hungary," in which Cronkite chronicled the desperate attempt of Hungarian patriots to drive the Russians out of their country in 1956, along the way indicting the United Nations and the United States for inaction.

By the time Cronkite assumed his lofty network perch, journalism had succumbed to the conceit of "neutrality," which forbade its practitioners from taking sides between the country which secured their freedom (and everyone else’s) and regimes which crushed it.

Hence, it was only a mild surprise when, after three years of America fighting the Vietnam War with a combination of World War II tactics and presidential micro management, the enemy in 1968 launched its Tet Offensive, Cronkite concluded that the war was unwinnable.

President Lyndon Johnson was reported to have said that "If we’ve lost Walter," then we’ve lost the American people. But Cronkite was wrong. Tet temporarily overran our positions but culminated in a massive defeat–and the virtual extinction–of the Viet Cong.

Naturally, liberals applauded Cronkite for his negative judgment, for it was theirs too. Conservatives, of course, were critical not only because he was wrong but because he had departed from the canons of "objectivity."

But I don't credit the "objectivity" that Cronkite himself said he was stepping away from in 1968. There is no obligation to avoid drawing conclusions from facts available, although one may be in error. Cronkite was in error, but he had not, merely by stating his opinion, stepped away from objectivity. There is no point in gathering facts just for their own sake.

The "obligation" is self imposed by journalism, not out of any lofty regard for the truth but in order to obtain advantages by appearing to be above the fray. First, the objective pose gets more readers, listeners and viewers than any partisan truth. Second, it provides some protection against political or legal challenges. Third, neutral objectivity is an imitation of the natural and social sciences, which also claim to be unbiased.

The journalistic version, which also involves a method known as who, what, where, when, etc., is always questionable. Concealing partisanship by careful selection of facts is a tried and true tactic.

Cronkite and many others jumped to conclusions about the Tet offensive because it fit in with their anti-war sentiment. Had he paused until the effects of the offensive were clear, he might not have been so mistaken. His rush to judgment was never recanted, of course. Once liberals gave up on the war, they turned with a vengeance on President Nixon for having the audacity of trying to clean up the mess they left behind.

As to Cronkite's alleged professionalism, I think it's more appearance than reality. Support for the freest nation in the world and commitment to freedom for all peoples is real objectivity, not that pious, phony, above-it-all neutralism that disgraces modern journalism. Facts are the basis for drawing reasonable conclusions, but they do not exhaust objectivity. Good citizenship requires repairing to the true principles of republican government, the "laws of nature and of nature's God."

We won't care to win wars or preserve our nation unless we ground ourselves in the objectivity of the principle that all men are created equal and free. There is no neutrality between good and evil, or right and wrong, however much people may disagree about them.