Useful Media Idiot of the Week Award

If I didn’t believe that I was doing something important, you could not pay me enough to read and think about treacle like this. No wonder papers like The Globe and The Times are shedding readers faster than Jake, my Labrador, is shedding fur.

The Boston Globe web site has a Reuters article that appeared in the Boston Globe newspaper a few days ago entitled Rice seeks Mideast peace deal while Bush in Office under the byline of one Sue Pleming.

In many ways the article is standard Reuters fare which is to say that Ms Pleming seems to go to great lengths to give the appearance that she is providing real information while she is actually carefully observing the Political Correctness Protocol by not saying anything about one side of the conflict that she would not say against the other. Since the Palestinian side wants to destroy Israel and is in the throes of a violent civil war and the Israelis only want to be allowed to live in peace, it makes for some foggy prose and some even more opaque logic. Just look at this couplet of sentence/paragraphs in which the concerns and positions of the Israelis are compared and presented as equivalent to those of the Palestinians. This is a gem of moral relativity.

“In an indication of difficulties ahead, Israel has also put the Palestinians on notice it would not implement an agreement until its security concerns, spelled out in a U.S.-backed peace "road map" formulated in 2003, were met.

The Palestinians have called on Israel to meet its commitments under that blueprint and halt settlement expansion and uproot outposts established in the occupied West Bank without Israeli government permission.”

Of course, the resolute refusal to face up to the hardest truths in the situation only serves the purposes of the worst element. This comparison almost sounds even-handed unless you happen to recall that Israel had already either fulfilled or made a sincere commitment to a majority of the requirements of the “road map” including ceding military and civil control of large portions of what was to become the Palestinian State, before the Palestinians froze the process with the latest intifada. Israel recognized the PA government, endorsed the “two state” solution and pulled out of Gaza altogether. Israel has made a practice of exhibiting remarkable (some say irresponsible) restraint in the face of a steady toll of death, injury and terror as an unrelenting stream of rockets and suicide bombers continue to be launched on Israel, and Abbas still can’t seem to bring himself to recognize the reality of Israel. It is, after all, a Jewish state.


Then again, the politics of access journalism means that she has to avoid saying anything that might damage her ability to get information from the government controlled and censored Palestinian News service. While Israel maintains a free media and allows any news organization equal access in Israel, Pleming knows that she would not have access to information or photos like this one with the story (note the credits: …picture released by the Palestinian Press Office (PPO). …, (REUTERS/Omar Rashidi/PPO/Handout)) if she didn’t represent the Palestinian view they way they want it.


Condoleezza Rice and "The Palestinian Martin Luther King" Mahmoud Abbas

The Israelis, of course, will not punish her (or even make her or her employer the least bit uncomfortable) for her choice. She knows that and so does her boss at Reuters. It makes it easy to choose who to offend when the Palestinians even kidnap and kill reporters they consider their active supporters.


But let that go. That is Garden variety propaganda that can be seen for what it is and debated. It pales alongside this single sentence.

“Bush, who proposed the gathering, is searching for a better legacy than the invasion of Iraq and its chaotic aftermath.”

It may seem innocuous at first glance but this is important. This is press hubris and fictionalizing in its most naked form. It betrays the total lack of discipline that is endemic to a media that is so smug and self-important that it feels empowered to read thoughts into President Bush’s mind without even the pretense of attribution or qualification. Does the author say “some sources speculate…” or “It is thought…” or even “It is my theory that…”? No, She states this pure fabrication as if it were something that everyone knows and acknowledges.

The implication, of course is that President Bush thinks Iraq is a failure ad a lost cause and is trying to cover for “his mistake”. A fair presentation would at least acknowledge that President Bush has been able to point to remarkable progress in Iraq in the past few months and has never said that he feels his legacy to be sullied by Iraq. The implication is pure propaganda and has no place in an honest media.

Now set it alongside of the resolute refusal to see that the Palestinian refusal to accept Israel’s existence as a Jewish state means that they do not accept its right to exist. How does Sue Pleming penetrate so cynically and deeply into the mind of President Bush while remaining so absolutely blind, so intentionally ignorant about what the Palestinians are happy to tell her right to her face?

Obviously the face is unwilling to hear and understand.

I am at pains to expose this little sentence from a relatively insignificant article not because it is in any way earthshaking but, precisely because is so insignificant as to be both barely noticeable and powerfully subliminal in its effect. The smugness it represents, the Politically Correct instinct to make information that does not conform to the model of reality that must be defended are the most insidious and deadly sins of the media. The bland and inert Trojan Horse of an article in which they are wrapped only make them a more deadly.

Update:
We are accepting your opinions and nominations for a Lifetime Acheivement Awards post - There will be catagories and commentary. Either add a comment below with your thoughts or email [yaacovbenmoshe(at)comcast(dot)net] me.

Bollinger the Useful Idiot Invites Ahmadinejad for Sharp Remarks

This was just forwarded to me by my step-daughter who is a recent graduate of Barnard College. I'll comment below.

President Bollinger's Statement About
President Ahmadinejad's Scheduled
Appearance


On Monday, September 24, the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is scheduled to appear as a speaker on campus. The event is sponsored by the School of International and Public Affairs (see SIPA announcement), which has been in contact with the Iranian Mission to the United Nations. The event will be part of the annual World Leaders Forum, the University-wide initiative intended to further Columbia’s longstanding tradition of serving as a major forum for robust debate, especially on global issues.

In order to have such a University-wide forum, we have insisted that a number of conditions be met, first and foremost that President Ahmadinejad agree to divide his time evenly between delivering remarks and responding to audience questions. I also wanted to be sure the Iranians understood that I would myself introduce the event with a series of sharp challenges to the president on issues including:
the Iranian president’s denial of the Holocaust;
his public call for the destruction of the State of Israel;
his reported support for international terrorism that targets innocent civilians and
American troops; Iran's pursuit of nuclear ambitions in opposition to
international sanction;
his government's widely documented suppression of civil society and particularly of women's rights; and
his government's imprisoning of journalists and scholars, including one of Columbia’s own alumni, Dr. Kian Tajbakhsh (see President Bollinger's prior statement).

I would like to add a few comments on the principles that underlie this event. Columbia, as a community dedicated to learning and scholarship, is committed to confronting ideas—to understand the world as it is and as it might be. To fulfill this mission we must respect and defend the rights of our schools, our deans and our faculty to create programming for academic purposes. Necessarily, on occasion this will bring us into contact with beliefs many, most or even all of us will find offensive and even odious.

We trust our community, including our students, to be fully capable of dealing with these occasions, through the powers of dialogue and reason. I would also like to invoke a major theme in the development of freedom of speech as a central value in our society. It should never be thought that merely to listen to ideas we deplore in any way implies our endorsement of those ideas, or the weakness of our resolve to resist those ideas or our naiveté about the very real dangers inherent in such ideas. It is a critical premise of freedom of speech that we do not honor the dishonorable when we open the public forum to their voices. To hold otherwise would make vigorous debate impossible.

That such a forum could not take place on a university campus in Iran today sharpens the point of what we do here. To commit oneself to a life—and a civil society—prepared to examine critically all ideas arises from a deep faith in the myriad benefits of a long-term process of meeting bad beliefs with better beliefs and hateful words with wiser words.

That faith in freedom has always been and remains today our nation’s most potent weapon against repressive regimes everywhere in the world.

This is America at its best.

Well, he's almost right, It's America at its most vulnerable. President Bollinger might believe that his intention to voice "sharp challenges" to "the President" in his introduction will prevent this from being a public relations victory for this caliphatist, murdering, genocidal thug. But this is always the way with leftist academics who are so used to being able to intimidate American politicians with their "sharp remarks" that they have no idea how impotent and risible they are in the eyes of the Muslim fanatics who view talking as weak and (as they would say) womanly- tantamount to surrender. While women whose only crime is dressing so that they can be recognized as a human female on the street are beaten, molested and arrested by the religious police and men who want to speak freely about the Iranian government are hung in the public squares in Iran President Bollinger feels that it is "America at it's best" to allow this two-bit religious dictator, this organ-grinder monkey of the Mullahs to take the podium of one of the most prestigious Universities in the nation and then strut home with that on his resume.

A few questions for President Bollinger:

Do you think it is even remotely possible that your pathetic little "sharp remarks"will make it into the state-run news in Iran?

Do you understand that his appearance there will be used as a propaganda victory for him at home and that it will feed the fanatical faction's certainty that their victory is inevitable?

How would you feel if you were an Iranian patriot, or simply an Iranian woman with a mind of your own, who was in danger of being arrested at any moment and you saw this tyrant smiling, waving and prevaricating within the ivy covered walls of that great Institution whose name you are lending to him to sully with his posturing?

You say, "I would also like to invoke a major theme in the development of freedom of speech as a central value in our society." You can invoke it if you want but I would answer you by saying that Mr. Ahmadinejad is not a member of our society and he is demonstrably not a subscriber to even the most basic and rudimentary assumptions of a society of free speech. I would propose that the right to free speech is one that America has won over the likes of your guest By insisting that he be granted this right while he denies it to everyone under his rule you are prostituting it for very dubious purpose.

You insist that "we must respect and defend the rights of our schools, our deans and our faculty to create programming for academic purposes." That's all well and good but will you next encourage the medical school to invite the smallpox virus to an afternoon tea and release it for every one to sample? If the "Polly Sci" students at Columbia want to be "...committed to confronting ideas—to understand the world as it is and as it might be...," They can damn well read about this guy in the newspaper and see what he says at the UN, why should you willingly give him the prestige of Columbia for his next Parade in Tehran.

The silliest part of your statement though is this paragraph:

That such a forum could not take place on a university campus in Iran today
sharpens the point of what we do here. To commit oneself to a life—and a civil
society—prepared to examine critically all ideas arises from a deep faith in the
myriad benefits of a long-term process of meeting bad beliefs with better
beliefs and hateful words with wiser words.

When the world attended the 1936 Olympics in Berlin there was much the same kind of rationalization. It was thought that exposure to the Olympic ideals would somehow confront and change the Nazi regime. Of course, it was an idiotic charade in the end- Hitler wasn't interested in ideals he only wanted to promote the next step in his conquest of the world. The "one-worlder" Olympic promoters couldn't step back from their sincere but foolish belief that athletic competition could transcend fanaticism and so were turned into useful idiots.

You, sir, are also a useful idiot. You are ready to play a role (however small and irresolute) in martyring the Iranian people, Israel and Western Civilization in the service of a pathetic misapprehension of what civil discourse in a civil society really is. Civil discourse, President Bollinger, is a two-way street. Your "deep faith" in that "long term process" is indefensible without an appreciation for the fact that when you are not dealing with a fellow believer in that process, you must be exceedingly careful not to allow him to use your openness against you and those who are fellow believers. When you invite a genocidal despot into your University you are inviting death, repression and intolerance into your home. There are no sharp remarks that will take the stench out of the walls.