Rage, Sex Roles, Elections and the Media

My friend JHM sent me a short, schematic note the other day. He may be on to something, He wrote:

“Liberals are female and conservatives are male.
Males do war and business/the economy.
BHO wants to talk, not fight and his economics are really a redistribution of income. Plus another feminine issue is the environmental stuff [See "Mother Earth]
This speaks to why the liberals go bullshit with Sarah Palin.“

I think JHM is right in that there is something about the traditional sex-roles and gender determined behavior that is driving the absolute frenzy on the part of Obama’s supporters and much of the Mainstream Media.

This is really a mess to think about so let’s take it a piece at a time. My first Google on the idea turned up an interesting article, Hillary is From Mars, Obama is From Venus By Michael Scherer, on salon.com. It compared Obama to Hillary and found her to be more of a man than he.

Scherer sets the tone of his analysis by quoting Clara Oleson who he describes as an Iowa Democrat and former labor lawyer:

"Obama is the female candidate. Obama is the woman," she said, after admitting that she was one of his supporters. "He is the warm candidate, self-deprecating, soft, tender, sad eyes, great smile."

The article continues:

“So what does that make Hillary Clinton? "She is the male candidate -- in your face, authoritative, know-it-all." To be clear, Oleson was not doubting the symbolic power that Clinton retains as a woman. But she was calling it as she saw it, using the language of Iowa City, a university town. "It's what the academes would call the difference between sex and gender," Oleson explained."

This is interesting, nobody but a Democratic functionary could have opened this discussion using these highly charged terms without suffering a fusillade of accusations ranging from sexism to genocide. Since the suite has been opened by one of them, though, I would like to see how it plays out.

Neither Obama nor Clinton can avoid their obvious racial and gender “identities” as either white female or black male but they can and have taken on meta-gender personae in order to embody the required Democratic constellation of compulsory ideologies. Hillary Clinton is what I will call a DemWoman. Since the bygone days of real originals like Bella Abzug and Shirley Chisholm the ideal Democratic woman has evolved into a serious, masculinized icon. They dress in pointedly characterless clothes (not unlike designer Mao suites) and do their best not to show any authentic emotion or spontaneity of any kind. Obama mimics what I will call a DemFemMan- Doe-eyed, talkative, lip biting, smiley, warm and not-too-assertive.

Democrats are usually very conscientious and defensive about identities; they are, after-all, the party of Identity Politics. Still, they don’t usually talk about it as honestly as Oleson did. An even rarer example of a Democrat talking directly to the assumed identities of Democrat politicians was Geraldine Ferraro back in March when she said to The Daily Breeze, a newspaper in Torrance, Calif.: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.”

Ferraro, is somewhat of an authority on this. Her sex, after all, was the very first entry on the “pro” side of the pro/con list when she was vetted for VP all those years ago. I find it fascinating, though, that she says, “If he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position”. I wondered if this is just victim talk- that kind of throw-in that people who make a fetish of blaming every slight and failing (imagined or real) on what they imagine to be the thing (that is not their fault) that is keeping them from the wonderful life and public adoration that they know they deserve (because they are who they are)? Or is it something more complicated?

Well, here’s a video clip that offers some clues:

This, of course, is a clip from last week, after Palin was nominated. It is interesting, not just because here Ferraro does not seem to be participating in the media and liberal elite’s desire to discredit and “un-nominate” Palin, she seems, in fact, almost to be ignoring Palin, she digresses about how Hillary was “treated badly” not just by the press but by the Democratic National Committee and the party apparatus in general. She pointedly adds that Howard Dean did not speak up “when sexism reared its ugly head”.

We should, at least commend her that she does not go after Palin but we need to try to figure out why she responds with that rant.

Victor Davis Hanson could well have included Ferraro’s name in his recent article about “Palin Derangement” where he writes:

“When we consider, in contrast (to Palin), the latticed background of careers of successful contemporary female role-model politicians, such as a Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, Mary Landrieu, or Hillary Clinton — or pundits like Sally Quinn, Eleanor Clift, Andrea Mitchell, Campbell Brown, Gail Collins (the list is depressingly endless, in which marriage or lineage provides either the necessary capital, contacts, or insider influence — or sometimes all three) — then surely, whatever one’s politics, there should be some concession that what outsider Palin has accomplished, given where she began, is nothing short of remarkable.

In short, Sarah Palin is the emblem of what feminism was supposed to be all about: an unafraid, independent, audacious woman, who soared on her own merits without the aid of a patriarchal jumpstart, high-brow matrimonial tutelage and capital, and old-boy liaisons and networking.”

Note that the political women he mentions are all Democrats. So, how does Hanson’s article fit with Ferraro’s point?

I have to say that I believe that the whole thing about gender roles is a very acute observation but goes deeper than the observation that Obama acts like a woman and Hillary acts like a man. It is true that Hillary acts like a white man it’s a simple enough pose for her. But Obama has a harder task. If you read about his high school years, it would appear that he (raised by white people) taught himself how to act like a black man back then. If this is true, then today he would be what we used to call an oreo (black on the outside/white on the inside) a retro-fitted black man who acts like white woman who is trying to act like a white man.

As convolute and fascinating as the sexual personae of the denizens of the Democrat political establishment is, it is a distraction from the most important thing that can be learned here. That is, that journalism in the form of our current elite band of mass media practitioners are the “hand that rocks the cradle” in the way we view our politicians. They are the ones who present the candidates and their ideas to us in ways that subtly highlight these behavioral traits and lead the public perception to points of view. Point of view, in fact, is the journalist’s stock in trade. And journalism’s point of view is essentially aligned with the feminine persona- Story telling, social consciousness, caring for the weak, preventing conflict…,

Just as Hillary covers her female identity and becomes the “male candidate”, through being, in Oleson’s words, “in your face, authoritative, know-it-all” journalists usually layer those behaviors over the female persona of their profession in order to compete with each other for authority and “professionalism” .

Knowing everything and maintaining the initiative to be in everybody’s face all the time makes you brittle, defensive and inflexible it forces you to keep the world at a distance and to be guarded and combative.
It’s the lack of warmth and humor that is the tip-off. There’s no warmth because the layers of insulating role-play isolate the human core of the personality and keep it under pressure and molten with stifled rage, even while the outside facade is iced over with a brittle shell of outward calm that the merest hint of humor would shatter. When the keen edge of humor touches that icy shell, that slick veneer of smugness fractures and the rage bursts forth like volcanic eruptions.

It is counterintuitive in a way. They want to be loved so they put up barriers. They want to be respected so they never give anyone permission to see who they really are. They want to be egalitarian so they seek power. They want to be right about everything so much that they will not engage in debate and reasonable discussion without denial, labeling and hysteria. Most of all they want everyone to agree with them; so they believe in ineffectual, “consensus” policies and useless platitudes that are easy to rationalize and then build fortifications of emotion, identity and empathy so that anyone who dares to try to breach it with reason becomes an identity abuser (racist, sexist, fascist, etc…), an emotion crusher and an inhumane monster without empathy.

Look at all the Democrat women that Hanson mentioned above. They all have some variant of that layered-on masculine stiffness and control. They are all “professional women”. Which, as near as I can tell, requires them to comport themselves as a superannuated, over intellectual college sophomore playing a lesbian in a community theater performance. I’ve know a few real lesbians in my day and they have most are a hell of a lot more interesting and natural than those creepy Madame Tussaudes versions that Pelosi and Clinton Play on television.
And yet, as Hanson pointed out, they have advanced their careers to this stage- by means that are specifically feminine (what Tennessee Williams might have called “depending on the kindness of strangers”).

With all this gender bending and manipulative affectation going on, it should be no surprise that when a vivacious, unaffected, and un-androgynous woman like Sarah Palin comes along, and with a straightforward appeal, cuts through all the posturing and playacting with which Dem Women and Dem Fem Men trick out their lives, they don’t just resent it, they fear and loath. It doesn’t just threaten their ideological house of cards; it exposes the silly, debilitating game they play with their public images.

Palin reminds me of no one so much as a female Ronald Reagan- The Happy Warrior, The Great Communicator never had to pretend to be anything that he wasn’t to attract attention. His emotional security and self-possession made him an almost irresistible charmer. Secure in her identity, Palin is natural, direct and just as charming in he was.

Sarah Palin has not been untrue to herself. That is why she comes across as a real person to us. Absent the tension of the personality layering and façade maintenance she, as Reagan did presents a strikingly open and affable face to the world. This makes her charming and persuasive in a way that Hillary, Pelosi, all the political crones and media furies that Hanson mentions and many more, could only dream of. No wonder they (and their frustrated supporters) are furious.

And if you think the Dem Women and DemFemMen have knotted themselves up, wait till you take a look at those journalists who have made an career out of the same, very intimate sacrifices in order to be accepted by their editors and peers as well as have to access to their news sources.

They write news stories with semi-subliminal emotional and empathic slant that attempt to lead the reader into their interpretation of the events and evidence being covered. Under the banner of “afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted” they blindly support insurgencies that promise change even if it is obvious to most observers that the change they advocate will bring disastrous consequences. They fail to report on pertinent events that might “embarrass” anyone they consider sensitive or an underdog. Worst of all, they allow evil to go unchallenged by resorting to the sickening moral relativism of “evenhanded” reporting in place of accurate and honest reporting.

The pain and rage with which much of the media have reacted to Sarah Palin’s nomination for Vice President is an instructive example. It forces them to admit that their professional ethics are negotiable. They claim that They are journalists to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted; Even as they feverishly search her past for reasons to declare her unworthy and ineligible- to find some flaw or misdeed that might forced John McCain to ask this talented, hard working, successful woman of the people to resign from the ticket. They must be aware at some level that in rushing to the defense of the elite, independently wealthy, powerfully connected (yes, connected to the despised white patriarchy!) DemFem Man Obama, that they are actually comforting the comfortable. He is comfortable, they are comfortable and they expect to get us comfortable with him too. That awareness that their pretense is being exposed inflames their rage even more.

They are all so busy building, elaborating and justifying their careers and their personality composites that they seem to have forgotten why they are there. They are so occupied with keeping the whole creaking, smoking, wobbling Rube Goldberg system working (and paying them) that they often forget to care whether anyone in the real world even wants to read, hear or watch The News as they are constrained to present it. This is one reason why the Internet has sucked away so much of the Mass media’s audience.

This shapes up as a battle between “Professionalism” (shackled by ideological group-think and prejudice) and Authenticity (freedom of thought and expression) and I do believe that the people instinctively know which one they favor. I also believe they are right.

CNN Cannot be Trusted- Here's Why

My last post about CNN correspondent Ben Wedeman’s July 10th report from Nablus warned that we were working on major aspects of this report and had serious concerns about the honesty and accuracy of it. There is now good reason to believe that Wedeman and CNN have seriously compromised their professional and ethical obligations in this matter.

Ben Wedeman

It has been confirmed to Second Draft by reliable Israeli sources that the short clip of the Kindergarten graduation “festivities” that Wedeman used in that report is actually part of a much longer and extremely disturbing video which we at Second Draft have now posted on YouTube. Here is the whole video-


It has further been confirmed by Second Draft's source that the full length video which had been confiscated by the Israeli Defense Force had been given to CNN as an exclusive with the understanding that it represented clear and undeniable evidence that the Palestinian Authority is not complying with one of the basic responsibilities it has undertaken as part of the ongoing negotiations to stop intentionally fomenting hatred and violence.

The sequence in the YouTube video that begins 6 seconds in is particularly horrific. The camera work is bad but you can clearly see that the children dressed as Palestinian “fighters” are acting out an assault on and murder of children dressed as and playing the role of unsuspecting Israeli soldiers. The “dead Israelis” are then dragged across the stage. The clip Wedeman used showed the dragging (without explanation of the uniforms) without the murder sequence.

This, of course goes a long way in explaining why Wedeman's report seemed so disjointed. He was a very busy little suck-up - trying to serve all his diverse interests by appearing professional, bending over backwards to avoid angering the Palestinians and throwing the merest of bones to the Israelis.

His first priorities (as is the case with our other favorite media villain, Charles Enderlin) are his career, his image and his bank account. He is a favored toady of Hamas and as such, gets lots of juicy goodies ike his field trip to a Qassam factory. Which no reporter that ever said anything negative would ever have gotten (or returned from on schedule or alive, anyway). So he gets a lot of benefits from "being nice" to the Palestinians. On the other hand, the Israelis just swallow all the bias and keep rewarding him and CNN with "exclusives" that they, in turn, feel free to use against the Israelis. This is what we call access journalism.

So, Wedeman used the Kindergarten video, which should have represented a promising opportunity to bring clarity and fairness back into the debate, in such a way as to diminish its positive effect severely and, in fact, to turn it against Israel.

This is also yet another example of the Israelis (who value freedom of the press and will not punish such behavior- even by just taking away press accreditation) being betrayed and libeled by reporters who live in fear of the explicit favoritism and violence of the Palestinians (who stage, exaggerate and misrepresent continually while threatening anyone who does not toe their line). See my post on what Israel and America have in common with battered women.

Wedeman is not just a fool and a dupe, he is so much less than that, he is a greedy, duplicitous liar who is trying to serve too many masters. The savagery of the images which he minimizes and the evil to which he caters on a regular basis all the while pretending to "evenhandedness and professional integrity is, simply, hollow and disgusting.

As I mentioned above, his (and CNN's) first priorities are his career, image and bank account. The only way we can correct the situation is for you to help us at Second Draft fulfill our mission of educating the public to be more informed and discriminating consumers of "the news". If we can do that, the public will lose the undeserved trust they hold for CNN. Then news slobs like Wedeman and Enderlin will lose their jobs and we can begin to build a media we can tust.

Spread the word - CNN is NOT to be trusted!

Debunking the Priesthood of Journalism

I often email my posts to a list of fellow bloggers and assorted friends of Breath of the Beast (If you want to be included let me know). Although the number of comments that my latest post has received was pretty average, the message that I sent out about it stirred up more return traffic than any other email I have ever sent out. The debate has been lively and stimulating. It has prompted me to define the scope of the awards more tightly and to rename them.

I had already had second thoughts about the original name but then I got messages from Pamela at Atlas Shrugged, (Voice of) Jackalope, Jewish Odysseus and Jeremayakovka all of whom I admire. The give and take over dozens of emails that flew back and forth forced me to the conclusion that, as satisfying as it is to call these idiots idiots, many of the people whose attention we most want to attract are repelled by that kind of harsh language. It would be much more productive to use language (especially in our headlines) that will help us to sell our position to the unconvinced folks who might be listening to the pernicious high priests of journalism only because they are the only source of information they trust. Trust is really the issue.

A friend of mine had recently recommended FreeRepublic.com to me. He told me to be sure and see the text of the speech that Tony Snow, the former White House Press Secretary delivered as he accepted the Freedom of Speech Award from The Media Institute at their Friends & Benefactors Awards Banquet in Washington, D.C. on October 16, 2007. The speech is long but nearly revolutionary in its impact. Its well worth reading in its entirety (Find it here.) and it deserves a much wider distribution than it has had to this point. I’d like to take some choice bits of it out here because they highlight the importance of having the right name and focus for this award.

Snow began his speech with a startling premise.

“We also hear that the First Amendment is under siege. I think that’s true. I don’t believe anyone here would disagree with the proposition that the quality of public discourse isn’t what it once was or that it presently achieves levels of excellence and depth that it desperately needs to reach.
Yet, while it may be tempting to blame the usual suspects — the government, interest groups, angry factionalists — those forces frequently have always tried to restrict the free flow of ideas, and they always have failed.
They’re not the culprits here. Instead, there’s a new and unexpected menace on the block:
The media.”

Those are fighting words for certain. But this guy is no pugnacious ideologue, he is not a professioal media critic nor does he show any signs of having been embittered by his year and a half long skirmish with the press as White house Press Secretary. In fact, he makes a convincing and passionate case that he loves and respects the press. Snow, in a good natured, understated and understanding way, goes out of his way to explain that the Mainstream Media have already painted themselves into a very tight corner.

“… members of the mainstream press are scratching their heads and asking, “What’s going on here?” Why are the nation’s newspapers hemorrhaging readers? Why are the television networks losing viewers? Why has cable news suddenly hit still water? What is going on? Don’t Americans care about the news?

Well, of course they do: The problem is, they don’t think they’re getting news — and they’re right. Three factors explain the sudden crisis facing once-mighty keepers of the First Amendment flame.”

It is interesting that Snow uses the image of keepers of the flame”. This concept of a priestly trust goes back beyond the beginning of recorded history. I am going to return to priesthood soon so remember it.

“The Roper Organization conducted a poll after the 1992 election and discovered that 93 percent of Washington political reporters voted for Bill Clinton. Only 2 percent identified themselves as “conservative.

Subsequent surveys have indicated a similar spread in party affiliation, which makes the Washington Press Corps the most reliable Democratic voting bloc in the nation.”

It’s no wonder that the media do not express the views and represent the aspirations of the rest of the country. They only talk with each other and there is no one there to tell them they might be missing something. Snow characterizes the resulting spiral of self-sustaining insularity as:
“… sheer smugness. Reporters and editors for three decades have sneered at accusations of bias, as if the claim were novel — it is not — unthinkable — it is not — or false — which it also is not.
The major media organs in this country have become purveyors of conventional wisdom
— generally, conventional liberal wisdom.”

The unreality of this lopsided distribution of political belief is striking. After all, President Bush has prevailed ( if only narrowly) in two hotly contested presidential races and the Senate and Congress are almost evenly split between Republican and Democrat. Even so, the left (only because they have such a dominant representation in the media) enjoys the pleasure of striking a condescending attitude toward those whose ideas and beliefs do not have the constant reinforcement and validation of a media that is constitutionally unable to provide fair reporting of the ideas and aspirations of half of the nation. It is even fair to ask, “How do the conservatives and centrists maintain the level of popular support, the integrity of ideology and the morale to win elections in the face of such a disadvantage in the Public Relations Wars?” If the media were not so skewed, so sure that they are right, if they treated conservative ideas with a modicum of respect how would that affect the political balance of the nation?

Because the only voice heard in the mainstream media is a left-leaning one, it has become acceptable for otherwise intelligent people to speculate on whether the last two elections were stolen. I have heard ostensibly reasonable people discuss the idea that there is a real possibility that the Bush administration is trying to, in some unspecified way, silence anyone who opposes him, render the democratic process inoperative, throttle the press and metamorphose into the far left fantasy of him as BusHitler. Snow continues: point out that the only thing resembling a group with a monolithic ideological and unity or purpose that even remotely resembles a fascist system is the media itself.

I agree with Tony Snow that the Mainstream Media is a sort of priesthood. But where they once held the bright virile flame of freedom of speech as their sacred trust, most of them are far more interested in keeping and nurturing the sickly shimmer of “progressive leftist ideology.

Every priesthood has some “barrier” or qualification by which it attempts to set itself above “ordinary people”. Some are more justifiable than others. Lawyers, Psychologists and Physicians, for example, have their ordeal by education and their professional oaths that make them priests of their professions. The Catholic priesthood, of course have the direction of the infallible Pope and the (for most people) inconceivable sacrifice of celibacy.

The journalistic priesthood’s qualifying barrier has less to do with education or behavior. It is a modern mythology that was created on the bones of a few true heroes, people like (e.g. Ernie Pyle, Robert Capa, Stephen Crane and Dickie Chapelle) who risked everything to bring back real stories from dangerous places and cataclysmic events. In recent times that mantle has been expropriated by undeserving media whores (e.g. Charles Enderlin, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and Christiane Amanpour) who stay in safe compounds and toady up to the terror factions to by their own security and to secure access to tainted information.

Films like The Killing Fields, All the Presidents Men and The Year of Living Dangerously pandered to this myth and have helped turn it into the basis of a false priesthood. Most people today will not question the priestly dedication of truth and fairness to which most journalists pretend. They may, as old-time Catholics did, know in their hearts that the priest is just a human being like them, but the mythos of the priesthood keeps them from questioning them.

The primary control on questioning the media is their use of political correctness. Snow describes it this way:

“But smugness isn’t the only threat to the First Amendment. Political correctness also stands in the way. It routinely imposes the kind of censorship journalists ought to hate most — prior restraint. It forbids the mere contemplation or acknowledgment of views that ruffle the feathers of self-appointed arbiters of the acceptable. These grandees usually find some kindly explanation for their banning of forbidden topics and thoughts — the communications in question hurt people’s feelings, invoke stereotypes, that sort of thing. But let’s be clear: the First Amendment didn’t create allowances for censors.

The Constitution’s authors would have grasped the utter frivolity of political correctness. It isn’t necessary. American society has a wonderful record of rejecting demagogues and verbal exhibitionists, without prodding or intervention from self-appointed scolds. The votaries of hatred and division occasionally have their day, but never for long. Americans have little patience for tub-thumping maniacs, and they reject demagogues with regular and ruthless efficiency.”

The more difficult the barrier, the more unassailable the status of the priesthood but the greater the loss of trust will be if the public perceives a betrayal; this is why, in the case of the Catholic priesthood, it was not so much the sexual abuse and the callous and unsympathetic treatment of the victims by the church hierarchy to damage the Catholic priesthood. It was the transgression (by a relatively few priests) of their most forbidding priestly qualification- and then they did not police themselves convincingly.

Although I am Jewish, I share family ties with many Catholics and I have seen, through the eyes of people I love, how the greatest, most benevolent and most unassailable priesthood in the history of mankind, a priesthood that was once beyond any kind of questioning used that position of power to protect members of their own caste who hurt ordinary people. The Catholic priesthood is now all but totally discredited by its own arrogance of power.

This is exactly why the al Durah affair is so important. My friend and mentor Richard Landes flew to Paris yesterday to confront the egregious journalist Charles Enderlin and his Employer France2. Richard has pursued Enderlin and France2 for seven years because they are guilty of the very same kind of transgression of “priestly vows and responsibility” that brought the Catholic hierarchy so low. The al Durah affair and Enderlin exposes the way in which the mainstream media has betrayed our trust and the sacred flame the are supposed to keep for us. They reported an event that they did not substantiate. When doubts were raised about it they prevaricated and concealed evidence. Even when they saw the terrible damage (the beheading of Daniel Pearl, the Ramallah lynchings, Osama bin Laden’s use of it to rationalize 9/11 and a million other acts of riotous violence, retribution and hatred) that their blood libel had caused, they have refused to cooperate in helping to repair that damage.

The suffering of the sexual abuse victims against the background of the uncaring, self-protection of The Church Hierarchy ultimately turned the tide against The Piesthood in the sex abuse cases and is that same asymmetry that will have to carry the day in our fight for an honest media.

Tony Snow ended his speech with this:

“There’s an old boast in the business — that the job of a journalist is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. The thing is, we never realized that we were becoming The Comfortable — with good pay, job security, and access to movers and shakers all around the world.”

Not only are the mainstream media “the comfortable” they are increasingly afflicting the afflicted as they use their priestly power to:

1. Blacken the reputation of Israel and weaken her position against those who will not be satisfied until she is destroyed.

2. Increase the suffering of all Muslim people by pimping out the news for the professional terrorist groups that have gained ascendancy in the world of Islamic politics since the 1960’s when the Western mainstream media proclaimed and supported Arafat as the Palestinian national leader

3. Continue to deny any distinction (or even difference in value) between the Caliphate fascist death cult of Islamism and Western Civilization.

For that reason, I am going to rename these awards the Charles Enderlin Prize for Pernicious Journalism - “The Chuckies” for short!

Yellow Press is Alive and Well and Living in France

Growing up in Liberal Massachusetts, I had been taught that Yellow Press was a right wing device that was invented for arousal and exploitation of the basest emotions in the populace. As I was helping Richard Landes prepare the France2/Enderlin petition (if you have not signed it and forwarded it to everyone you know, please do so!) I made a very interesting discovery.

As the petition (see the preceding two posts) sails past thirty six hundred signatures this morning, I have been thinking about something Charles Enderlin wrote in a January 27, 2005 letter to the French newspaper Le Figaro. He was writing in response to an editorial, written by Denis Jeambar and Daniel Leconte that had appeared in the paper two days before. Jeambar and Leconte were among the hand-picked group of journalists that had been allowed to seen the imprisoned rushes. In their editorial they had debunked Enderlin’s implication that he was protecting the world from seeing the boy’s “unbearable” death agony when he edited the footage for broadcast. In fact, Jeambar and Leconte wrote that there was no such “unbearable” footage and that there was not even any clear proof that the boy was dead or, even shot.

Enderlin replied by reiterating his claim that the scenes he had cut were unbearable and that they showed that the boy was dead. Then he says something very odd and revealingly irrelevant. He writes, “Furthermore, for me, the image corresponded not only to the reality of the situation in Gaza but also to that in the West Bank. The Israeli army responded to the Palestinian uprising with massive firing of live bullets.”

This remark is a tip-off that even Enderlin himself is aware that his false accusation that the IDF shot the boy in cold blooded murder is indefensible (even though he is trying his best to defend it by hiding the evidence, stonewalling and rationalization). More importantly, though, it revels the prototypical attitude of Yellow Journalism.

I remember studying the Spanish American War when I was in High School and learning about how the Pulitzer and Hearst newspapers used the explosion on the battleship Maine to inflame the passions of the nation. I remember too having it drummed into me that it was the tone of the headlines, the nationalism and the strident calls for revenge that made that episode a shameful exercise in jingoism and propaganda. It is only now, contemplating all of that in the light of the al Durah affair and, specifically, in reading Enderlin’s fatuous justification for his accusations that the real shame of Yellow Journalism has become plain to me. Ringing prose, loyalty to one’s country and defiant headlines are not Yellow Press. Yellow press is the subtle, decadent mixture of self-importance and prejudice that leads a journalist to decide that he knows what facts people need to know and what facts are unimportant- even if it means that he reports incorrect facts and hides actual ones.

Yellow Press was born as an outgrowth of Joseph Pulitzer’s vision as a publisher that, in contrast to the generally accepted ideal of impartial journalistic integrity, journalism should be used to as a vehicle of social change. As Wikipedia has it “Pulitzer believed that newspapers were public institutions with a duty to improve society, and he put (his newspaper) The World in the service of social reform.” Of course social reform is one of the early code words for what we today call progressivism and which is, in reality prototypical socialism. Pulitzer was then, as the newspaper establishment in the U.S. is still (with some exceptions) a left-leaning, self-righteous band of socialistic sympathisers.

The New York Times expressed this "social reform at the cost of truth" doctrine of activist journalism best when, in an editorial about the use of faked documents by Dan Rather, that, "Memos on Bush Are Fake but Accurate". Of course the Times was writing in support of Rather and his fatwah asserting the "accuracy" of the faked memos. Americans proved, once again, that we have the freest and most resilient people and government on earth when the blogosphere exposed this travesty and the outcry resulted in the sacking of Rather. Dan Rather was a far more potent media icon here than Enderlin ever was in France so one is left to conclude that it must be an indication of the endemic anti-Semitism and residual leftist western self-hatred that Enderlin and France2 are allowed to hide within and even take aggressive action (as in the law suit against Philippe Karsenty) under the protection of the French government and legal system.

The problem, then, with Yellow Journalism is not the strength of the prose but the intent of the writer. The yellow tinge comes from its purposeful (mis)use of evidence to make points and to influence opinions. It was not the headlines that were the root of the problem, it was the underlying assumptions that led to their being used to elevate lies and misrepresentations to the status of Assumed Truths.

So, it turns out that the last little “justification” that he “tosses off” betrays the corrosive bigotry and prejudice that underlies the blood libel he still defends. Enderlin still believes that he is the sole judge and jury of what Israel was doing in response to the gathering Intifada, that from the comfort of his hotel room and Bureau Chief’s office in Jerusalem, he was entitled to pronounce that, even if this instance was a fake, the accusation against the IDF was deserved because of other, even more imaginary incidents of which he had even less evidence and information. He has, in this simple rationalization, revealed that he is not a journalist but a propagandist of the most corrupt and insidious kind.

For the damage he has done to the profession of journalism alone he deserves to be exposed and the management of France2 must be asked to account for their dereliction in allowing their reputation and facilities to be used and depleted in this way. The release of the rushes in question will begin that process of exposure and accountability.

If you add to the damage Enderlin and France2 have done to journalistic standards, the spurious law suit against Karsenty, the terrible toll of lives lost, terror inspired and savagery rationalized by those false accusations, it is imperative that they be held responsible for, at the very least, an apology and an attempt to reverse some of the effects of this malfeasance.

Once the rushes are released and evaluated, if they show what Jeambar and Leconte say they show and assuming that France has laws against the incitement to violence and libel, there should be legal steps taken to punish Enderlin and France2. The maximum punishment (The incitement to violence, bigotry and terror that Enderlin and France2 have engaged in bear a very strong resemblance to Hate Crimes as defined by French Law. This is from Wikipedia: “In 2003, France enacted penalty-enhancement hate crime laws for crimes motivated by bias against the victim's actual or perceived ethnicity, nation, race, religion, or sexual orientation.”) should be sought, not just because of the grievous results of the al Durah blood libel but also to serve as an example and a deterrent to warn all other journalists that changing facts and fabricating stories to achieve political ends cannot and will not be tolerated.