Right Wing Nut House

By now, everyone knows about the Washington Times story that John Kerry “stretched the truth” when he said that he met with the UN Security Council for hours prior to the vote on the Iraq resolution. It turns out that Mr. Kerry, adhering to a long established pattern of serial exaggeration, did not meet with all members of the Council but rather he spoke with “representatives” of the UN including Britain and (of course) France with the possibility of a few others.

This is a yawner. I disagree with the Capn’ who believes it might costs Kerry “1 or 2 points.” And I reject Bill OF INDC’s take that this is a serious issue:

“These aren’t exaggerations. This isn’t a case of lying about sex. It’s a story about a man that’s pathological enough to look a nationally televised audience of 55 million people in the eye and tell them a manufactured story, and then use it to propose a conclusion about a deadly serious matter of foreign policy.”

By bringing up President Clinton’s lack of veracity, Bill disproves his own point. Thanks to Mr. Clinton’s Presidency, the American people are now inured to the idea that politicians lie about just about everything.. This consequence of President Clinton’s falsifications was predicted in two fantastic books on the subject: Robert Bork’s “Slouching towards Gomorrah” that examines this issue in an eye-opening analysis using polling data and interviews with ordinary Americans culled from press accounts. And Bill Bennett’s timeless “Book of Virtues that warns of exactly this phenomena when it came to even important issues like war and peace.

The American people have already factored Kerry’s lack of veracity into their calculations when deciding whether or not to vote for him. Thanks to the mainstream media’s and the liberal’s vigorous defense of Bill Clinton during the impeachment, truth in politics just doesn’t matter anymore. To pretend otherwise is wishful thinking.

BTW, Spoons, besides showing his remarkable intellectual acumen by agreeing with me on this, has an excellent round-up of reactions from blogs.

JAY ROSEN: FEELING HIS WAY IN THE DARK:

The writings of Jay Rosen, a professor of journalism at NYU, have always, it seems to me, involved an honest attempt to find a new way of disseminating information to the public. What Rosen calls “public journalism,” has never been, as many of his conservative critics contend, a veiled movement towards government owned press organs, but rather advocacy for a new paradigm for journalists themselves.

The idea of “bottom up” news gathering and reporting is an attractive goal. At a 1997 forum on the subject, Rosen likened the goal of public journalism to critic Irving Howe’s approach to socialism:

“… I and other journalists created the notion that we began to call “public journalism,” which we approached the way the critic Irving Howe always approached socialism. He called it: “The name of our desire.” That’s all it was– public journalism was simply what we were in search of, as we tried to find a way that this institution, the American press, could help revive democracy in its participatory forms and improve civic life at the local level. Public journalism had nothing to do with socialism, but it was, as Howe said, “the name of our desire.”

*And while he would probably deny it, Mr. Rosen can rightly be called “The Father of the Modern Blogosphere.” After preaching in the wilderness for years, Mr. Rosen’s ideas are now starting to resonate with both the mainstream media and the “new media” that Mr. Rosen thinks came of age during the conventions:

“The bloggers, for all their faults and shenanigans and self-absorption, really were the news at this convention. They represented the new. And that is why they received so much attention.” For several days, in traditional media, bloggers were the story, because “there’s an arrow over their heads that points forward. They represent the future, to journalists.” The traditional press was “going through the motions while the bloggers were defining their motions for the first time.”

*(Summary of interview with Barry Lydon at the Democratic Convention)

In a succinct summary of the impact of this new media, Rosen gives a great definition of bloggers and their new role in journalism:

“Blogs are undoing the system for generating authority and therefore credibility of news providers that’s been accumulating for well over 100 years. And the reason is that the mass audience is slowly, slowly disappearing. And the one-to-many broadcasting model of communications–where I have the news and I send it out to everybody out there who’s just waiting to get it–doesn’t describe the world anymore. And so people who have a better description of the world are picking up the tools of journalism and doing it. It’s small. Its significance is not clear. But it’s a potentially transforming development… I like [it] when things get shaken up, and when people don’t know what journalism is and they have to rediscover it. So in that sense I’m very optimistic.”

Is this the face of the future of journalism? Rosen himself is unsure. This past weekend on his excellent blog “Pressthink,” Rosen grapples with 20 issues that define the problems with mainstream journalism and touch on the “new journalism” of blogs. The issues came out of what Mr. Rosen himself describes as an “unsatisfactory” interview with a BBC reporter: Here are some of those issues:

“There’s too much happening. The public world is changing faster than we can invent terms for describing it. Here are some of the things the BBC reporter and I were trying to discuss:

Political attacks seeking to discredit the press and why they’re intensifying
Scandals in the news business and the damage they are sowing
The era of greater transparency and what it’s doing to modern journalism
Trust in the mainstream media and what’s happening to it
Bloggers, their role in politics, their effect on the press: their significance
How the Net explosion is changing the relationship between people and news
The collapse of traditional authority in journalism and what replaces it
Amateurs vs. professionals; distributed knowledge vs. credentialed expertise
The entrance of new players of all kinds in presidential campaigning
The producer revolution underway among former consumers of media
Jon Stewart and why he seems to be more credible to so many
The political divide and the passions it has unleashed this year
The problem of propaganda and the intensity of its practice in 2004
Why argument journalism is more involving than the informational kind
Assaults on the very idea of a neutral observer, a disinterested account
And then there’s this: the separate realities of Bush and Kerry supporters

Good questions. Sounds like a good basis for a book. I sincerely hope Mr. Rosen writes one.

Hat Tip: Instapundit for the link.

UPDATE: SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT…

Bill at INDC has taken me to task for my post on the Washington Times story this morning. His comment was that I was “part of the problem” because I “abetted” the idea of the public perception that politicians lie.

When I pointed out that my intent was to bemoan this loss of public veritude, he answered:

“I don’t think that your analysis is terrible, and I understand your
motivation, but much of the rightie blogosphere is writing this ticket
itself. We aren’t just media commentators any longer - we’re the media.”

Given my post above on Jay Rosen’s quest, Bill makes an excellent point. And I may have taken too much of a flippant attitude…a cynical, world-weariness about Kerry’s lies that, in a way, makes me an enabler of Kerry’s tall tales.

I think what Bill is trying to say that when confronted with this, it’s best to get up on your hind legs and FIGHT IT…and not give in to cynicism.

A lesson taught…a lesson learned.

JOHN KERRY IS A LYING FUCK (PART II)

A few weeks back, I wrote a post entitled “John Kerry is a Lying Fuck” after Mr. Kerry went on national TV and brutally attacked the President’s Iraq policy using so many distortions and lies that it Took my breath away.

Now, I rarely write angry. But what came out of my poison keyboard when writing about his lies two weeks ago is chickenshit compared to what I’m going to say about this moronic, lying, lickspittle, commie loving, traitorous, weak kneed, lily livered, jello brained, monkey shit, two faced arrogant son of a fucking bitch!!!

What set me off you ask? In today’s Opinion-Journal, Fuckface gave an interview to some Polish Newspaper. YOU WOULD NOT BELIEVE WHAT THIS…THIS…ARROGANT TWO FACED AMERICA HATING TRAITOR SAID!

In its entirety…I give you John Fuckface Kerry…betrayer of America and hypocrite extraordinaire:

America must give its allies a stake in stabilizing Iraq. (REALLY, FUCKFACE? SINCE YOU DIDN’T BOTHER TO MENTION THEM IN THE DEBATE?) The best way to achieve that is through binding their interests with the peaceful future of that country. On the economic front this will mean granting true and tried friends–like Poland– (A COUNTRY YOU’VE DISSED ON REPEATED OCCASIONS BY CALLING THEM “COERCED?”) a share in the multibillion-dollar reconstruction contracts, in a share proportional to Poland’s contribution to the coalition. (IN OTHER WORDS, I CAN INSULT YOU AS ONE OF OUR “BRIBED AND COERCED ALLIES” WHEN I’M TALKING TO BUSH BUT WHEN I OFFER YOU A BRIBE IT’S “COALITION BUILDING”) I assure you that just as Poland was treated as an equal with other members of the coalition, so she will be an equal partner in the task of rebuilding Iraq.(YEAH, YOU TREATED THEM AS AN EQUAL SHIT FOR BRAINS…AN EQUAL JOKE)

AAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHH! And that’s not all, folks.

“Poland is playing a significant role in the coalition and I fully appreciate the contribution of Polish units in Iraq. . . . (EVEN THOUGH YOUR CASUALTIES DON’T COUNT BECAUSE EVERYONE KNOWS ONLY AMERICAN DEATHS COUNT WHEN IT COMES TO ATTACKING THE PRESIDENT’S POLICY) Poland showed courage when she joined american and allied forces in Iraq.(COURAGE THAT I’VE NEVER ACKNOWLEDGED AND ONLY BELITTLED) My countrymen are grateful for that and I myself will also never forget that.”(I’LL HAVE YOU KNOW THAT, AS OF THIS MOMENT IT’S SEARED…SEARED INTO MY MEMORY).

Of all the two faced, hypocritical, lying stunts that John Fuckface Kerry has pulled, this is THE ABSOLUTE WORST!

WE ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO BEAT THIS GUY…AND NOT JUST BY A FEW PERCENTAGE POINTS…WE HAVE TO SLAUGHTER HIM, BURY HIM, DRAG HIM THROUGH THE MUD, TAR AND FEATHER HIM, AND RUN HIM OUT OF THIS COUNTRY ON A RAIL.