RATS AND REPORTERS

One of our favorite themes is the paucity of journalism integrity in the US today. Perhaps it is our age which allows us to remember Murrow, Brinkley, and Cronkite. Perhaps it is an archaic college class in journalism ethics. Perhaps it is just an old fashioned sense of decency. Whatever the antecedents, we are horrified and saddened by the media’s reporting of the sleazy stories coming out of the McCain campaign corpse.

Chief among these reports was Carl Cameron’s piece on Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor yesterday evening. Citing anonymous sources, Cameron reported that the McCain organization was doomed by Sarah Palin’s inadequacy as a running mate. Without the hygiene of rubber gloves or disinfectant, he offered up stories of a Palin who did not know Africa was a continent, that the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was an agreement between the North American countries of the US, Canada, and Mexico, or the most rudimentary facts about US government. He even threw in the salacious tidbit of Palin greeting McCain staffers fresh out of the shower, wearing only a bathrobe.



Now we have a problem with this report on a couple of levels.

• The only defense for slander is the truth. Absent named sources, this report cannot rise above the primordial slime of vicious rumor.
• It is incredulous that a sitting US governor could not name the countries in North America, identify the three branches of the federal government, or know the diffefrence between a continent and a country.
• The bathrobe item makes us cringe at the inappropriate intimacy.

The real story here is the rodent-like behavior of the McCain staffers. In a frenzy to save careers from drowning in a boiling sea of ineptitude, they are clammering over the body of the one person that gave the McCain campaign a shot at the Presidency. Palin’s nomination was the only point in the campaign that the media lights were turned away from Barack Obama and focused on McCain. Had McCain selected any other running mate, he would have lost by three times the margin. Post election finger pointing is inevitable, but the press’ role is analysis, not gossip. Now, we need a shower.

CLOTHES DO NOT A MAN MAKE, BUT A WOMAN?

We admit it. We cling to tradition. We prefer a Jesuit education, classic movies, opera, and paintings by the old masters. We also love a well dressed woman. As much as we admire Hillary Clinton and wish she were the Democrats' nominee for President, we hate her pants suits. We are, therefore, not surprised the McCain campaign has spent some $150,000 on clothes, hair, and makeup for their Vice Presidential nominee, Sarah Palin. We appreciate the fact that Palin, a former beauty queen, is the country’s most visible hope a woman can have it all…career, family, youth, and looks. While we would prefer $150,000 had been spent on sending Palin on a worldwide visit with the world’s most influential leaders, we understand the Republicans putting their money where they think the American public interest lies. However, the media has romped all over the story, feigning shock and outrage. In the meantime, we hear no mention of Barack Obama’s $1,500 suits or the Obama’s room service lunch of lobster, caviar, and champagne at the Waldorf Astoria last week, all at his campaign donors’ expense. We recognize the attacks for what they are, misogynistic and self serving. Perhaps the Obama campaign wishes they had the foresight and forked out some cash to get Joe Biden a decent hair weave?

A FREE PRESS?

One of our reasons for starting this blog was we wanted an outlet to vent out frustration over what passes for journalism today. At one point in our life we wanted to be a journalist, like many other concerned, involved citizens who worked on high school and university papers in their youth or on church and club newsletters in their leisure time, or even on professional journals in the pursuit of careers. We even had the opportunity to take a course in journalistic ethics during our college years, where we learned the principles that Murrow and Cronkite employed in their daily reports.

It wasn’t too long ago that we could trust a Brokaw, a Rather, or a Turner to tell us something akin to the truth. Are we befuddled by age, isolation, or social class, or has there been a distinct abandonment of journalistic objectivity since the beginning of this Presidential season some 18 months ago? We began to suspect something afoot when Bill and Hillary Clinton came under attack during the primary season, two people who have done as much for the rights of African Americans and women as anyone during the last 25 years. The press, to whom we look to champion the rights of the disenfranchised, enthusiastically engaged in sexist and racist behavior, joining people who owe their political careers to the Clintons in a chilling demonstration of political cannibalism.

In the last week the press has totally abandonment any attempt to appear objective or unbiased. Unashamedly embracing a Hearst-like yellow journalism, CNN gave us these four audition tapes for position of official Obama propganda network:

• A piece on the “Black McCains” a shameless attempt to paint John McCain as a descendant of racist plantation owners who sexually abused their slaves.
• A new math lesson by Jack Cafferty converting a poll showing 30% of non-US citizens favoring Obama to a poll showing Obama preferred by the rest of the world 4 to 1.
• Another Cafferty rant against Sarah Palin, calling her “sleazy” and “opportunistic” for using official funds to pay for her children to accompany her own her travels, a legitimate expenditure practiced by John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton before her, all the time ignoring the obvious question of who was funding the travel of the Obama children.
• The misrepresentation by Drew Griffin of a Byron York column in the National Review criticizing the press’ reporting on Governor Palin, falsely claiming that York had called Palin, “…incompetent, stupid, unqualified, corrupt or all of the above.”, a deliberate lie.

In the end, we believe that the American people will see through this blatant attempt to push a modern day snake oil salesman into the oval office.

STRANGE BEDFELOWS, POWELL AND OBAMA

Having worked with the military for over 20 years, we have a great respect for our service members. Whatever one may think about the morality of war, it is a fact that a US four star general or admiral is the peer of any major CEO. A former Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest military position in the US, is in the company of the heads of General Motors, Exxon, and US Steel, the crème de la crème. Colin Powell is not only a former Head of the Joint Chiefs, he is a former Secretary of State and probably the most distinguished African American ever to serve in public office, rivaled only by Thurgood Marshall. We are, therefore, gravely disturbed and more than a little confused by Gen. Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama today.

Gen. Powell gave three major reasons for eschewing his fellow military officer, John McCain, in favor of the much less experienced junior Senator Obama:

• Obama’s ability to inspire not only the US citizenry, but the world at large,
• McCain’s perceived lapse of judgment in choosing Governor Sarah Palin, and
• The extreme conservative focus of the Republican Party.

We don’t see it quite that way.

• We don’t find Obama inspiring, but frightening in the same way we were frightened by Jim Jones, David Koresh, and Reverend Sun Jung Moon.
• We don’t consider Governor Palin’s choice as running mate to be poor judgment, but evidence of political genius and amazing perception. Her critics fail to recognize that she is a Governor, one of 50 chief executives, one of eight female Governors, and the most popular Governor in the US. The pundits and late night stand ups would have us believe that their judgment trumps that of the Alaskan people who know Governor Palin’s ability better than any of us. While we wish Palin was more moderate, we do not question her experience or potential.
  
• We believe the Republican Party to be far more centrist than the Democratic Party. Senator’s McCain’s nomination is evidence of the GOP’s retreat from the dark days of the Moral Majority and Newt Gingrich. Obama’s purge of Clintonians and the hijacking of the party’s credentials committee heralds the leftist extremism to come.
  

Because we don’t believe General Powell lacks judgment, experience, or intelligence, we are left with some ugly alternative conclusions.

• Gen. Powell is more embittered by his treatment at the hands of the Bush administration that previously believed. Without question, his unwitting involvement in the scam that was the selling of the Irag invasion severely damaged his legacy and his ego. With this endorsement he does a one finger wave good-bye to the Republican Party.
  
• Age and circumstances have robbed Gen. Powell, and all of us, of the preferred first African American President of the United States. Through this endorsement Gen. Powell, hopes to share in making history. We have no doubt that Obama will show him the same gratitude that he has shown Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson, and the other elders of the civil rights movement.
  
• As a retired Army General, Powell, sees retired Navy Captain, McCain, as less than a top level candidate. Had McCain followed in the footsteps of his Admiral father and grandfather, no doubt Powell would hold him in higher regard.
  

Whatever, Gen. Powell’s real reasons for endorsing Barack Obama, we are certain that it relegates Powell to being a footnote in history.