American's Living With Less Liberty
Tim Harper of the Toronto Star wrote and interesting piece about Americans learning to live with less liberty (U.S. Learns to Live With Less Freedom, The Star, June 19, 2006). Mr. Harper got a few things right and a few things wrong. In his piece, Mr. Harper writes “The exploitation of that fear by an administration intent on inflating the powers of the presidency, at the expense of a cowed Congress and with the tacit approval of an anxious nation, may be a cautionary tale for Canadians should some of that U.S.-style fear find its way north of the border in the wake of Toronto's recent terrorism arrests.” This is the understatement of the century. Stephen Harper has already shown time and time again his propensity to play directly out of the Bush (or more accurately, the Rove) Playbook. Canadians should be worried. There is no secret agenda with Harper and his administration intend to go down the same road as Bush.
Harper (Tim, not Stephen) goes on, “With the threat of another attack foremost in their minds, Americans looked the other way as "enemy combatants" were held without due process at Guantanamo Bay, shrugged amid revelations their government was secretly picking up terrorist suspects and flying them to countries with ugly human rights records, yawned when they were told the CIA might be holding prisoners in secret sites in Eastern Europe” This is not quite true. Actually, many Americans were angry about this. Many did protest. It was the U.S. mainstream media who made the decision that the American people would rather hear about Brittany, Brangelina or the latest American Idol cast off than hear about the scandals and war crimes of the Bush Administration..
Harper also states, “But more surprising has been the lack of pushback when they were told the Bush administration had ignored a law requiring court approval and had begun wiretapping international calls of Americans and assembling a massive databank of phone records of Americans. Again, not true. The anger over this has been palpable. The American people are overwhelmingly against this. It is our Congressional leaders (with the aid of the media) that have tried to ignore this. My theory is that the Congressional leaders are afraid of what the Bush Administration may already know from this illegal surveillance. (It is interesting to note that, after Jefferson’s congressional offices were recently raided by the FBI, several members of Congress (who are also under investigation for various things) came out immediately against the raid as unconstitutional. Bill Frist, most notable among them, then did a 180 and suddenly came out and said he supported the raid. One can only assume he made a deal with the Bush Administration that his insider stock trading investigation would either not go forward or would move at a more glacial pace.
But back to the claim that Americans didn’t care. Americans did and do care. But the media’s insistence that we care about inconsequential matters has played into the perception that we the people don’t care. It is interesting to note that the media’s mantra has been that they cover this bilge because it’s what “the people” want to see, hear and/or read. Oh, really? Then, how’s come most every major mainstream media outlet in the U.S. has suffered overwhelming losses in viewer, reader and listenership. If they were truly giving us what we want, wouldn’t their ratings be up? How is it that most people between 18 and 35 get their news from the comedy program The Daily Show? These questions go unanswered.
A good example of this is the Howard Dean “scream.” CNN played the scream approximately 633 times in a short period of time. I figured it out and it came out to playing that clip at last once every 9 minutes twenty-four hours a day. By the same token, CNN hasn’t mentioned “Hookergate” – this is the scandal that forced Porter Goss and one of his goons, Dusty Foggo, to resign abruptly from the CIA. In this scandal, the administration of the organization that is supposed to investigation terrorism, keeping our country safe, yadda, yadda, yadda, was profiting by getting giving contracts to companies wanting to do business with the CIA. They did this in exchange for parties with hookers at the infamous Watergate hotel. (Haven’t the Republicans learned that this is not a lucky place for them?) But I digress. Immediately after the NSA phone bank database was made known in the U.S. media, CNN couldn’t wait to broadcast the Administration (and almost exclusively the Administration’s) spin on this story. So much so, that I started calling them the Cheney News Network. But how can you get a sense of outrage if no one will talk about it? And by “no one,” I mean specifically the media.
But it was clear early on that the media wasn’t going to buck Bush. After all, the Bush administration was paying many of them. My feeling is that the couple of “journalists” that we know about that received monetary compensation from the Bush Administration to tout Bush policies was just the tip of the iceberg. Judith Miller was given the red-carpet treatment (and probably money) in order to push the Administration’s view of the Iraq war.
Mr. Harper says that the Republicans (yes, the Republicans) are finally getting backbone against the jack-booted policies of the Bush Administratio. Which begs the question: Do the Democrats (or, more accurately, the Dumb-O-Crats) have a spine? Or does America just have one political party?
This should, as Mr. Harper, notes serve as a cautionary tale for Canadians. It was a little disturbing recently when Harper banned photos of returning war dead that the media didn’t challenge him. Yes, there was grousing in editorials, but not one media outlet challenged Harper (this time Stephen, not Tim) by publishing photos of that nature. The media must keep its distance from the administration. King Harper’s protestations that the media is unfair to his government is just and echo of what Bush did. He wants to keep up that mantra until they pull back. Canadians should let the media do this. Otherwise, just look to the south to see what will soon become of Canada.
Harper (Tim, not Stephen) goes on, “With the threat of another attack foremost in their minds, Americans looked the other way as "enemy combatants" were held without due process at Guantanamo Bay, shrugged amid revelations their government was secretly picking up terrorist suspects and flying them to countries with ugly human rights records, yawned when they were told the CIA might be holding prisoners in secret sites in Eastern Europe” This is not quite true. Actually, many Americans were angry about this. Many did protest. It was the U.S. mainstream media who made the decision that the American people would rather hear about Brittany, Brangelina or the latest American Idol cast off than hear about the scandals and war crimes of the Bush Administration..
Harper also states, “But more surprising has been the lack of pushback when they were told the Bush administration had ignored a law requiring court approval and had begun wiretapping international calls of Americans and assembling a massive databank of phone records of Americans. Again, not true. The anger over this has been palpable. The American people are overwhelmingly against this. It is our Congressional leaders (with the aid of the media) that have tried to ignore this. My theory is that the Congressional leaders are afraid of what the Bush Administration may already know from this illegal surveillance. (It is interesting to note that, after Jefferson’s congressional offices were recently raided by the FBI, several members of Congress (who are also under investigation for various things) came out immediately against the raid as unconstitutional. Bill Frist, most notable among them, then did a 180 and suddenly came out and said he supported the raid. One can only assume he made a deal with the Bush Administration that his insider stock trading investigation would either not go forward or would move at a more glacial pace.
But back to the claim that Americans didn’t care. Americans did and do care. But the media’s insistence that we care about inconsequential matters has played into the perception that we the people don’t care. It is interesting to note that the media’s mantra has been that they cover this bilge because it’s what “the people” want to see, hear and/or read. Oh, really? Then, how’s come most every major mainstream media outlet in the U.S. has suffered overwhelming losses in viewer, reader and listenership. If they were truly giving us what we want, wouldn’t their ratings be up? How is it that most people between 18 and 35 get their news from the comedy program The Daily Show? These questions go unanswered.
A good example of this is the Howard Dean “scream.” CNN played the scream approximately 633 times in a short period of time. I figured it out and it came out to playing that clip at last once every 9 minutes twenty-four hours a day. By the same token, CNN hasn’t mentioned “Hookergate” – this is the scandal that forced Porter Goss and one of his goons, Dusty Foggo, to resign abruptly from the CIA. In this scandal, the administration of the organization that is supposed to investigation terrorism, keeping our country safe, yadda, yadda, yadda, was profiting by getting giving contracts to companies wanting to do business with the CIA. They did this in exchange for parties with hookers at the infamous Watergate hotel. (Haven’t the Republicans learned that this is not a lucky place for them?) But I digress. Immediately after the NSA phone bank database was made known in the U.S. media, CNN couldn’t wait to broadcast the Administration (and almost exclusively the Administration’s) spin on this story. So much so, that I started calling them the Cheney News Network. But how can you get a sense of outrage if no one will talk about it? And by “no one,” I mean specifically the media.
But it was clear early on that the media wasn’t going to buck Bush. After all, the Bush administration was paying many of them. My feeling is that the couple of “journalists” that we know about that received monetary compensation from the Bush Administration to tout Bush policies was just the tip of the iceberg. Judith Miller was given the red-carpet treatment (and probably money) in order to push the Administration’s view of the Iraq war.
Mr. Harper says that the Republicans (yes, the Republicans) are finally getting backbone against the jack-booted policies of the Bush Administratio. Which begs the question: Do the Democrats (or, more accurately, the Dumb-O-Crats) have a spine? Or does America just have one political party?
This should, as Mr. Harper, notes serve as a cautionary tale for Canadians. It was a little disturbing recently when Harper banned photos of returning war dead that the media didn’t challenge him. Yes, there was grousing in editorials, but not one media outlet challenged Harper (this time Stephen, not Tim) by publishing photos of that nature. The media must keep its distance from the administration. King Harper’s protestations that the media is unfair to his government is just and echo of what Bush did. He wants to keep up that mantra until they pull back. Canadians should let the media do this. Otherwise, just look to the south to see what will soon become of Canada.
posted by samintoronto @ 9:55 PM
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