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Katie goes to the Dark Side
I've always liked Katie Couric. A decade ago, when she was the MC of a publishing awards event, she presented me with an award and thanked me for my goofball speech. (Technological excellence? Me?) She lives in my 'hood and is nice to people who work in its stores. And as a young widow, she's a demon about preventing colon cancer; I got my first screening test because of her.
But there's a new Katie on 'Today' now. She wears glasses. And does 'harder' segments. Maybe she's teeing herself up for that $20 million-a-year job as CBS news anchor. Or maybe it just gets old flirting with George Clooney.
So, last week, Katie took on Howard Dean. The topic was Jack Abramoff.
You have the facts, right? Abramoff was a Republican lobbyist who did more to corrupt Congress than anyone since the Teapot Dome Scandal. (Look it up). Some of his clients--Indian tribes who were in the casino business--gave to Democrats before he represented them; they gave less under his influence. As for his personal giving: l00% Republican. Not a dollar to Dems.
These are the facts. They are inconvenient to Republicans, who like to think they swept into office to tidy up after that lowlife Clinton. And so the Republicans muddle the conversation. They say this is a bi-partisan scandal--hey, his clients gave to Dems--and they'll be delighted to craft new moral codes to make sure this never happens again (at least, not this exact way).
The Republicans, in short, lie. And the people in the media who go along with their lie are even worse liars. Because the truth is, as they say, out there.
Now comes Howard Dean. Katie adjusts her classes. And then this:
Katie has a source. She cites it. But wrongly. Dean corrects her. She says she'll get back to America on that.
The next day, "Today" does just that. Who do they bring in? Tim Russert! Yes, the biggest White House kiss-ass on all of NBC. No. Wait. Didn't Chris Matthews--who's obviously gone Brokeback for Bush--just say, "I love the way he [Bush] leans into a lectern"? Okay. Make Russert the second biggest White House suck-up.
And what does Russert do? Recites the Republican talking points.
Now this is all very jolly and amusing, because this sort of thing happens all the time. And nobody cares in any way that you can tell. Just another day in the life of Mainstream Media. It's not like it's a secret: Most of these guys are whores who would rather tell a lie than risk losing their movie-star salaries. Anyway, it's not like they're real reporters--they just play reporters on TV.
Is there anyone here who doesn't know where to go for Factual Information? (Oddly, it's not favorable to Bush. But then, neither is most of the world. Check this out: When the Olympics start, watch some of the flagwaving coverage on American TV. Then watch a foreign station. The difference will blow your mind--especially if it's an event "we" lose.) You want the truth about Iraq, you go to Informed Consent, Juan Cole's website. You want the truth about media, you go to MediaMatters.com. Politics is the obsession of DailyKos.com and Eschaton. And for what it all means, there's JamesWolcott.com.
Bloggers. All bloggers. You want truth--that is, assertions with factual documentation attached--you go to bloggers. You want to sleep through life, that's why God invented TV.
It's no one's fault. People are busy. They don't connect the dots. Like these: As I write, on a January afternoon in New York, it's 61 degrees. Today, Exxon announced the biggest quarterly profit in U.S. history. A top scientist was the lead story in the New York Times yesterday; he says the government doesn't want him to talk about global warming as if it's a fact. At Davos, the talk was of a 10-year window before the planet is seriously, irreversibly hurt.
And on Madison Avenue, people smile in the sun.
"Lovely day," they say.
Indeed it is. And a few more years of this, and the streets will look like Venice.
Over the weekend, I read Milton Mayer's 1955 book, "They Thought They Were Free". It's a study of Germans in the years before World War II. None of the 10 people he interviewed--and befriended--were hate-filled Nazis. Far from it. They didn't know. And didn't care. In fact, there were ministers who, every Sunday throughout the war, preached against the Nazis. They were local. They were beloved. No one bothered them.
Which is, Mayer discovered, how Nazism worked. It took only a small number of committed fascists to move the program along. The people in the middle--no one asked anything of them.
In 1938, a Polish Jew shot the German Councilor of Embassy in Paris. A week later, he died. The Nazis were prepared. The word went out to small towns. Kronenberg, for one, a university town of 20,000. Twenty uniformed SA guards entered a bar and instructed a handful of Nazi supporters to burn the synagogue. A handful. That's all it took.
No one's burning American synagogues. But they're jumping up and down in the White House--the most unpopular White House in decades, in polls mean anything--when the airwaves bristle with constitutionally protected hate speech. The only thing worse than Hamas? According to Sean Hannity, it's liberals. Let's see: Hamas wants every Jew dead. Liberals want...? And now CNN has hired a hater of its own....
People think fascism is about hating Jews or racial purity. Wrong. It's about a system that works for business. Big business. The government isn't powerful in itself --- it's the bitch of business. And, hey, people like order. And institutions like the church are....quaint. The only people who are unhappy are the people who, as Martha Stewart liked to say on her version of "The Apprentice," don't fit in.
Our government has failed to protect us from the next 9/11--port security is a joke, the government computers are broken toys. As far as I can see, the only reason there's been no attack is because Bin Laden is doing so well without one. But you can be sure that the men and women charged with our defense will blame Democrats and Liberals if Bin Laden strikes again. That's how they work. The big lie.
The big lie is old news. The story this week--a little story, easy to overlook--is that we now know Katie and Matt (to say nothing of Tim and Chris) will go along with them.
But there's a new Katie on 'Today' now. She wears glasses. And does 'harder' segments. Maybe she's teeing herself up for that $20 million-a-year job as CBS news anchor. Or maybe it just gets old flirting with George Clooney.
So, last week, Katie took on Howard Dean. The topic was Jack Abramoff.
You have the facts, right? Abramoff was a Republican lobbyist who did more to corrupt Congress than anyone since the Teapot Dome Scandal. (Look it up). Some of his clients--Indian tribes who were in the casino business--gave to Democrats before he represented them; they gave less under his influence. As for his personal giving: l00% Republican. Not a dollar to Dems.
These are the facts. They are inconvenient to Republicans, who like to think they swept into office to tidy up after that lowlife Clinton. And so the Republicans muddle the conversation. They say this is a bi-partisan scandal--hey, his clients gave to Dems--and they'll be delighted to craft new moral codes to make sure this never happens again (at least, not this exact way).
The Republicans, in short, lie. And the people in the media who go along with their lie are even worse liars. Because the truth is, as they say, out there.
Now comes Howard Dean. Katie adjusts her classes. And then this:
DEAN: The other thing is the corruption scandals in Congress. Tom DeLay; all these folks involved in getting money--all of whom are Republicans--from Jack Abramoff. We need to, an overhaul of Congress in the worst way.
COURIC: Hey, wait a second! Democrats took money—Democrats took money from Jack Abramoff, too, Mr. Dean!
DEAN: That is absolutely false! That did not happen! Not one dime of money from Jack Abramoff went to any Repub—Democrat at any time.
Katie has a source. She cites it. But wrongly. Dean corrects her. She says she'll get back to America on that.
The next day, "Today" does just that. Who do they bring in? Tim Russert! Yes, the biggest White House kiss-ass on all of NBC. No. Wait. Didn't Chris Matthews--who's obviously gone Brokeback for Bush--just say, "I love the way he [Bush] leans into a lectern"? Okay. Make Russert the second biggest White House suck-up.
And what does Russert do? Recites the Republican talking points.
Now this is all very jolly and amusing, because this sort of thing happens all the time. And nobody cares in any way that you can tell. Just another day in the life of Mainstream Media. It's not like it's a secret: Most of these guys are whores who would rather tell a lie than risk losing their movie-star salaries. Anyway, it's not like they're real reporters--they just play reporters on TV.
Is there anyone here who doesn't know where to go for Factual Information? (Oddly, it's not favorable to Bush. But then, neither is most of the world. Check this out: When the Olympics start, watch some of the flagwaving coverage on American TV. Then watch a foreign station. The difference will blow your mind--especially if it's an event "we" lose.) You want the truth about Iraq, you go to Informed Consent, Juan Cole's website. You want the truth about media, you go to MediaMatters.com. Politics is the obsession of DailyKos.com and Eschaton. And for what it all means, there's JamesWolcott.com.
Bloggers. All bloggers. You want truth--that is, assertions with factual documentation attached--you go to bloggers. You want to sleep through life, that's why God invented TV.
It's no one's fault. People are busy. They don't connect the dots. Like these: As I write, on a January afternoon in New York, it's 61 degrees. Today, Exxon announced the biggest quarterly profit in U.S. history. A top scientist was the lead story in the New York Times yesterday; he says the government doesn't want him to talk about global warming as if it's a fact. At Davos, the talk was of a 10-year window before the planet is seriously, irreversibly hurt.
And on Madison Avenue, people smile in the sun.
"Lovely day," they say.
Indeed it is. And a few more years of this, and the streets will look like Venice.
Over the weekend, I read Milton Mayer's 1955 book, "They Thought They Were Free". It's a study of Germans in the years before World War II. None of the 10 people he interviewed--and befriended--were hate-filled Nazis. Far from it. They didn't know. And didn't care. In fact, there were ministers who, every Sunday throughout the war, preached against the Nazis. They were local. They were beloved. No one bothered them.
Which is, Mayer discovered, how Nazism worked. It took only a small number of committed fascists to move the program along. The people in the middle--no one asked anything of them.
In 1938, a Polish Jew shot the German Councilor of Embassy in Paris. A week later, he died. The Nazis were prepared. The word went out to small towns. Kronenberg, for one, a university town of 20,000. Twenty uniformed SA guards entered a bar and instructed a handful of Nazi supporters to burn the synagogue. A handful. That's all it took.
No one's burning American synagogues. But they're jumping up and down in the White House--the most unpopular White House in decades, in polls mean anything--when the airwaves bristle with constitutionally protected hate speech. The only thing worse than Hamas? According to Sean Hannity, it's liberals. Let's see: Hamas wants every Jew dead. Liberals want...? And now CNN has hired a hater of its own....
People think fascism is about hating Jews or racial purity. Wrong. It's about a system that works for business. Big business. The government isn't powerful in itself --- it's the bitch of business. And, hey, people like order. And institutions like the church are....quaint. The only people who are unhappy are the people who, as Martha Stewart liked to say on her version of "The Apprentice," don't fit in.
Our government has failed to protect us from the next 9/11--port security is a joke, the government computers are broken toys. As far as I can see, the only reason there's been no attack is because Bin Laden is doing so well without one. But you can be sure that the men and women charged with our defense will blame Democrats and Liberals if Bin Laden strikes again. That's how they work. The big lie.
The big lie is old news. The story this week--a little story, easy to overlook--is that we now know Katie and Matt (to say nothing of Tim and Chris) will go along with them.
