A Corporate Idiocy: Fallacies Abound (Even For Frank Rich)

I will not explore the great depths of the "Joe the Plumber" story. You know it all too well. I merely want to point out the idiocy of left-wing "debunking."

Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher spoke to Barack Obama last week; he asked a question about taxes. Barack Obama answered. And his answer has been used against him by John McCain.

That's it, in nuce, as we pedants might say.

But note how the San Francisco Chronicle deals with the story:

"His first name isn't really Joe. It's Samuel.

"He's not really a plumber - at least, not a licensed one.

"He's concerned about increased taxes - but hasn't paid his own income taxes."

Surely you see the problem. Let's follow the logic of this particular type of argument employed by the San Francisco Chronicle:

• Stop your ears and cover your eyes! You mean the guy named Samuel whose middle name is Joseph is not really "Joe"? Then Barack Obama's answer is irrelevant!

• Gasp! You mean he is not a fully-licensed plumber? Then there is no need for Barack Obama to defend his answer at all!

• What the &#*? You mean "Joe" the not-exactly-bona-fide plumber has not paid all of his income taxes? Then there is no need at all for Barack Obama to discuss taxes with such a man!

Not that any liberal might even think this way, but it would seem to me that the more liberal tack to take in all of this is to wonder -- with all due hand-wringing and mopping of a concerned brow -- how horrible America must indeed be for a white man to lie about both his real first name and his capacity to pay America's unbearable taxes. And surely a true liberal would perseverate over the social injustices that must have driven "Joe" to seek asylum in a business without first acquiring proper documentation. But that's just me misunderstanding the extent of the liberal spirit.

Check out this capital idiocy from the Chronicle (sorry!):

"Wurzelbacher's expressed concern about paying more taxes looked a bit tarnished with the revelation that he owes Ohio about $1,200 in personal income taxes, according to the Lucas County Court of Common Pleas records. And there's a 2007 civil filing that shows a record for a $1,200 owed to a creditor, St. Charles Mercy Hospital."

Don't you just [expletive deleted] love this [expletive deleted]?

Joe's "concern" is "tarnished" because he CAN'T pay his taxes?! Get it? No, of course you don't, nor should you. For only the insanely partisan can think in such a distorted way. But a clear-thinking commentator would note that Joe's inability to pay taxes is actually PROOF that his CONCERN is real (or at the very least, could be real). Apparently one must be without spot or blemish before asking Barack Obama a question about his tax policies; only those who are not suffering can ask the Great Harbinger of Hope to explain his plan to increase taxes on certain Americans. And can you imagine a liberal journalist chiding poor Joe because he owes $1,200 to St. Charles MERCY (!) Hospital? Can you imagine Joe is dismissed as disingenuous by a liberal member of the press because he DOES NOT HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE?!

Where's your compassion, America?

All this to say that this is what passes in the liberal press for "debunking." For "fact-checking."
______________________

Here's another apparently great bit of "debunking":

In Sunday's New York Times' column by Frank Rich, "He Just Can't Quit W," we find MORE reasons to hate conservatives: Conservatives banish those who don't conform!

Here's the imitable Rich in his own love-of-truth words regarding the seemingly rapid death of the McCain campaign:

"Even Republicans are rapidly bailing on a McCain resuscitation. It’s a metaphor for the party’s collapse that on the day of the final debate both Nancy Reagan and Dick Cheney checked into hospitals. Conservatives have already moved past denial to anger on the Kubler-Ross scale of grief. They are not waiting for votes to be counted before carrying out their first round of Stalinist purges. William F. Buckley’s son Christopher was banished from National Review for endorsing Obama. Next thing you know, there will be a fatwa on that McCain-bashing lefty, George Will."

Beyond noting the tactlessness of thinking Nancy Reagan's and Dick Cheney's health issues are fodder for lame political humor, it should be noted that Mr. Rich does not understand metaphor. But I digress. What is germane to our discussion here is the left's handling of facts, and Mr. Rich proves himself shamelessly competent at abusing facts and his readers.

FACT: National Review has not "banished" Christopher Buckley. The editors merely and amicably accepted Mr. Buckley's resignation, which he, by his own admission, penned without any compulsion other than his own conscience (and maybe a couple of outraged subscribers). Read here, or here.

But YOU don't need to know the truth, only a semblance of it, because you are a reader of the New York Times, or so one must infer from Mr. Rich's artful and misleading prose.

Finally, notice this "clever" trick of the Rich pen (recall the column's title):

"...no matter what McCain says or does, he still can’t quit the guy."

The guy, of course, is President Bush. And the reference? Come now. He can't "quit" the guy? That's right, "Brokeback Mountain."

What, pray tell, is the "homophobic joke" buried beneath Mr. Rich's crass "metaphor"? But Mr. Rich can't be homophobic, can he?

I will let you decide.

©2008. All Rights Reserved.

The New York Times' drug dealers, Part II

(Part I of this ridiculously outstanding series begins here.)

[In keeping with my claim made yesterday that "the New York Times is the opiate of the people," and that its columnists are essentially dealers in said opiate, I continue with Mr. Frank Rich.]

On Sunday, 5.8.05, Frank Rich rebuked the media for its increasing complicity in perpetuating the propaganda of the Bush administration; for its pandering to its own corporate interests; and for its lack of journalistic standards. Laced through Rich's essay, Laura Bush's Mission Accomplished, are heavy doses of soporifics that yield little else but oscitancy, you know, yawning.

Here's essentially Rich's argument: Media respect in the broader culture is on the skids because the masses are sick and tired of the media kow-towing to the Bush adminstration. A more liberal, aggressive, and independent press would do wonders for the press' bad image problems, at least Rich believes.

To think that Rich only mentions the Jayson Blair scandal in passing - which is a real scandal at the Times - and yet suggests that Laura Bush's jokes were scandalously applauded by a "sycophantic" press, reveals that Mr. Rich has his priorities in odd order. It's not that the press has been too timid in its reportage, Mr. Rich, a timidity that has media ratings sliding down the tubes. It's that the press' reportage has been dishonest.

What? Does Rich forget the 60 Minutes documents already? Does he think the Jayson Blair story is a rare anomaly? Does he think that most consumers of news believe that the media are fair, or unbiased? Come now, Mr. Rich. Most people recognize that the media are almost entirely composed of supporters of one political party. That is why media outlets are finding it hard to dominate their markets: Because more and more consumers are hip to the fact that NEWS is no longer the scoop. SPIN is the scoop.

Media outlets no longer (largely because it is a 24/7 never-to-stop lustfest for one-upsmanship) take the time to find real news rooted in real events; they look for real events and real news to spin in a particularly unique and marketable way. Should the NYT begin to market a product that was spun conservative (no gay wedding announcements, an op-ed page like the WSJ, Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, and Bob Herbert replaced by Ann Coulter, Rich Lowry, and David Horowitz), that paper would see its left-leaning market decline, a market it has created by appealing to the left in the tri-state area; complete with a mystique that the "paper of record" is where serious thinkers get their news (a mystique which appeals to the Democrats in my sleepy little NH town). So, it's not about the news, Mr. Rich, but the ideology in which the news is cradled, even shaped.

But here is the reality, gleaned from my own years as a print journalist. Please allow these few anecdotes to help build my case.

In 1983, I believe, while sitting with my father during his lunch break in the main hall of the MacDowell Art Colony (my father was the maintenance foreman at that esteemed retreat), I watched a televised mid-day news conference with President Ronald Reagan. I recall that at no time did President Reagan raise his hand, or touch his face, during his opening statements. Then, as he fielded questions pertaining to numerous topics including the invasion of Grenada, President Reagan scratched the side of his head while listening to one reporter's question. The instant he raised his hand, every motor-driven 35mm camera in the White House press room ripped off countless frames, the mad whirring and clicking evident to the TV audience.

The next day, on the front page of the Boston Globe, above the fold, was a photo of President Reagan, in a boxed story. The photo showed Reagan scratching his head, his mouth slightly open as if speaking, with a pullout quote in bold text adjacent to his image. The quote, about Grenada, read something like this: "Um, I am not sure ... I don't know about ..." Amazingly, the question that was being asked when Reagan touched his head was not about Grenada at all. So, the editors of the Globe ran an unflattering image of the President scratching his head to convey the idea that he did not know what the hell was going on. (Please realize: He was not speaking when the photo was taken; he was listening, and, for an instant, the camera lied.)

THIS is why the media are (and have been) losing America's respect, Mr. Rich!

But there is more. While I was covering Barbara Bush's 1991 campaign for her husband's presidential bid, I recall the repugnant commentary of the press pack following her. It was replete with indecency. The topper? A Boston TV news anchor turned to me and asked rhetorically, "Why should we care what she says. She just f---- the president."

While working as a staffer at what is touted as the "most liberal newspaper in New Hampshire" (the 60 town region it covers now votes almost exclusively Democratic. Surprised?), I recall that the sarcastic, critical attitude that pervaded the newsroom without so much as a moment of self-reflection, struck me as endemic to the whole newsgathering process. And when it came to photographing candidates for office as they stumped through the region, countless photos were taken, with the least flattering images going to the Republicans. In fact, the chief of photography, one of my dearest friends and a longtime Massachusetts Democrat, confessed to me that he ALWAYS submits the least flattering photographs of Republicans possible. Why? Because to him they are nothing but "greedy, lying bastards." And this from an award-winning photojournalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Associated Press and Washington Post.

Recently, I was assigned by a major national news outlet (this admission may cost me my relationship there) to photograph (and I will be as discreet as possible) a story related to a major international conflict. The photo editor requested in an email photo request that I take a "moody portrait" of a particular person. Can you guess which way the story was going to lean when a photo editor asks for a portrait to be "moody"?

That the news media create news where there is none; that they bend it to conform to an ideological market they want to exploit for cash; that they scoop each other not with news but with spin; these are the reasons Americans no longer trust the media. Moreover, Americans don't trust the media because they think more carefully than Frank Rich.

Mr. Rich need only look at his own work, and the work of his paper, to see why the media have fallen in such disrepute and disrepair. The slovenliness of Mr. Rich's colleague, Bob Herbert, for instance, in his last two columns, is a perfect example of why Americans are looking high and low for more trustworthy sources.

Contratimes

PS. Dear Mr. Rich,

Do you mind if I challenge you, since you are part of the press? Surely you don't. So, one more thing. When you berate the press for failing to get into President Bush's face for his announcement two years ago that 'major combat operations were over' in Iraq, you know, the "Mission Accomplished speech"; do you realize how inane you sound? For how is it that controlling a nation's commerce; its infrastructure and superstructure; its airfields and airspace; its military, government and its power plants; its highways and schools, how is it, dear sir, that such an accomplishment does not signify to you the END of major combat operations? Are we still in need of hurling cruise missiles in the Sunni triangle from warships in the Persian Gulf? Are we still in need of B-52 sorties dropping Daisy Cutters on Saddam's Republican Guard? Do we need to send tank battalions to level Iraqi defenses?

How long, dear sir, does America need to control (total control is impossible) a nation thousands of miles away before you - and your clairvoyant colleagues - will tell us when major combat is indeed over?

Peace.

BG

©Bill Gnade 2007/Contratimes. All Rights Reserved.

Is this a Double Standard?

[I offer deep and abiding gratitude to David Horowitz for featuring this essay at his website, Frontpagemag.com, in April.]

By the time the 1960's came to a close, I was in fourth grade, all of nine years old. I recall that the '60s scared me: that the Black Panthers, assassinations, riots, and even the epileptic screaming of Janice Joplin simply frightened me. Having been born in the middle of a war, I found Vietnam scary as well, though the allure of combat teased not only my imagination but the backyard play-fantasies of my New Jersey playmates (till I moved to New Hampshire in 1968). And there, in second grade, in what may have been my first gesture of bravado, I recall telling classmate Timmy Tyrrell, who already was planning on being a minister (his whole family was devoted to that goal), that I wanted to grow up to be a "heroin addict," a boast I completed with a pantomime of shooting up: arm on my desk, sleeve rolled up, pencil heading deep into my vein - and Mrs. Barden nearby. I would join the rebellion, I declared, and I'll have my hair as long as Rapunzel's.

Recently I've been reliving those times, in the trenchant and matter-of-fact analysis of David Horowitz' autobiography, Radical Son. It is a revealing book, prophetic in its disclosure, giving me an anchor for my wind-tossed anxieties about a decade deemed by some "the best of times."

I share this because I am more certain than ever that the causes for my anxiety have not been rebuffed or destroyed. The radicalism that pervaded the '60s remains, with the '60s youth now in places of political and social prominence, and their children and grandchildren, each breast fed on the idealized protestations of their '60s progenitors, now seeking their own Age of Aquarius. Horowitz reminds me of this, and though I am intellectually mature enough to rein in my emotion (most of the time), anxiety still wakes the soul at night. They are here.

They of course, are those who cannot and will not permit dissent from the party line that a "redemptive future", as Horowitz puts it, is possible; a future without poverty, inequality or any perceived injustice. This future is about emancipating humanity from the fears imposed by the Church; about liberating people from the incorporated capitalist greed bent on creating an unquenchable thirst in consumers; about tossing off the common sense shackles of sexual and artistic prudence.

Go back with me, for a moment, and relive the 1960s' radical beliefs about revolution in America. For example, relive the revolutionary conviction that criminals, particularly black ones, were really acting as liberators; that they were merely acting out as repressed people against an oppressive "system"; against "the Man." Recall that the Black Panthers were not merely victims, but liberators, fighting with clenched fist the classism and injustices of a tyrannical white enterprise. The Weather Underground, violent and aggressive; the property-smashing protesters in American university towns; even the Vietnamese communists exterminating the Party's transgressors; each of these received the compassion, mercy, even the all-out support, of American leftists from coast to coast. For these eruptive and confrontational movements, unavoidable according to Marxist-Hegelian theory, were allegedly symptomatic of a repressive, soon-to-die capitalist colossus.

So Horowitz tells in truly chilling detail and - with what cannot be described in any other phrase - he tells with nothing short of bravery. For Horowitz himself was a revolutionary, born into an American family of strident and organized Communists. But after decades of mounting a truly impressive assault on America with revolutionary zeal, Horowitz saw his ideals crumble into the realities of the gulags of the Soviet Union, and the failed socialist economies everywhere Marx was embraced.

Perhaps the single most important line in Horowitz' work is this, which he describes as the subtext for defending the left's moral failures: "No matter how bad my actions seem, my heart is in the right place." This defense, Horowitz argues, was deployed by leftists everywhere as they were confronted by the violent, murderous realities their actions and ideas supported.

It is an important line to remember.

THEY ARE HERE

Sunday, April 24, 2005, in typical fashion, Frank Rich of the New York Times writes of House Speaker Tom Delay that (and I quote Mr. Rich), "It's a lie to argue, as Tom DeLay did last week, that such a judiciary is the 'left's last legislative body.'" One wonders what Mr. Rich means. It is never a "lie" to argue, no matter how one argues. It is a lie to deliberately tell a mistruth. Arguing is not lying. Lying is lying.

Here's Tom Delay's full remark: "And of course, the leftists hate it when we attack the left's last legislative body." That Delay is referring to the judiciary is inescapable. But that it is a lie is hardly accurate; nor is it an argument, as Rich wrongly suggests. If anything, it looks like an incontrovertible truth: it is transparent that the left indeed does hate it when Delay (and others of his ilk) attacks the judiciary. Just look at how the leftist media have reacted to his remarks. They've aimed their guns at him. He's a "liar."

I share this small item for a very important reason. It reveals that the left, embodied by Mr. Rich, is blind to its double standard.

That double standard is this: The left rarely, if ever, inquires why the right, particularly the religious right, is so disenchanted with "the system." Moreover, the right is never offered the rather easy out granted to the left: Tom Delay, for example, will never be acquitted for his 'lies' with the merciful "we disagree with Mr. Delay's actions and words, but his heart is in the right place."

No, Rich never inquires, and I believe he has never inquired, why Delay and his colleagues feel so outraged by the US judiciary. Or why conservatives feel "oppressed"; or why radical opponents of abortion (the few that exist) have taken up arms and shot abortion doctors. Are conservatives' hearts in the right place? Never!

That Mr. Rich (and virtually every leftist pundit in this country) has never granted such tolerant understanding of the right indicates the clear line of demarcation between the two political wings. Leftist writers are much more willing to discern the heart of Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein than the person seated next to them on the train (unless that person be a member of MoveOn.org).

In Radical Son, Horowitz spells it out plainly for all to see. He recounts how the leftist media reacted to his defection from the left: with an onslaught of lies, vitriol and scorn. And he recalls how Garry Wills, protegé of right-wing William F. Buckley, was treated by the right when he defected for the left: He was treated like a human being deserved to be treated, with respect.

Horowitz also makes the claim that pundits of the left are expert in writing, not brilliant arguments, but brilliant indictments. Frank Rich's piece on Sunday, like most of his work, proves Horowitz' point. But Horowitz makes a more chilling claim, and I quote:

"Lenin said that the object of political debate was not to win a debate but to wipe one's opponent from the face of the earth."

Apparently Lenin and his distant relatives don't give a damn about whether one's heart is in the right place.

It's that sort of "understanding" of the revolutionary spirit that keeps me up at night.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2005/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.