Ignoring the Fantasies That Kill Real People
The Atlantic
“When did America become untethered from reality?” asked a 12,000-word Atlantic piece by Kurt Andersen (9/17), detailing the many ways the nation has embraced “small and large fantasies that console or thrill or terrify us.” But missing from the many conspiracy theories Andersen remarks upon are two of the most impactful: the claims that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had a secret WMD program and was connected to the 9/11 attacks. Criticizing those, of course, would have meant criticizing Andersen’s colleagues in elite media—including Atlantic’s editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, one of the foremost proponents of these hoaxes (FAIR.org, 8/10/17).
Andersen does include media among the “institutions and forces that once kept us from indulging the flagrantly untrue or absurd” that have subsequently “enabled and encouraged every species of fantasy over the past few decades.” It’s not clear when the media’s golden age was supposed to have been—US media used to treat white supremacy and Manifest Destiny as givens, after all—but the “species of fantasy” he complains about it embracing of late are not government deceptions about official enemies, but the fact that “cable channels air documentaries treating mermaids, monsters, ghosts and angels as real.”
Here’s What Forgetting History Looks Like
Talking about US/Latin American relations in the Trump era, the New York Times (8/14/17) quoted a regional expert: “An often ugly history of US interventions is vividly remembered in Latin America—even as we in the US have forgotten.” Which the Times followed with:
Under President Barack Obama, however, Washington aimed to get past the conflicts by building wider consensus over regional disputes. In 2009, after the Honduran military removed the leftist president Manuel Zelaya from power in a midnight coup, the United States joined other countries in trying to broker—albeit unsuccessfully—a deal for his return.
Actually, Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton boasted in her memoirs of working behind the scenes to negotiate a plan to restore order in Honduras, and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot.
In other words, the military regime would hold elections to legitimize the coup—which is what happened. It was an ugly intervention—and the New York Times has already forgotten it.
Disclosure: I Get Paid to Fool WaPo Readers About Climate
Ed Rogers
Ed Rogers’ Washington Post column (9/4/17) warned that Democrats “are now captive to the party’s left-wing fringe” due to a “dangerous lurch to the left”:
Economic policies [of the Democrats in 2020] will consist of government giveaways and anti-business crusades. Social causes will give no quarter to moderate positions, and LGBT special interests, labor unions, global warming fanatics and factions such as Black Lives Matter, along with other grievance industry groups, will face no moderating counterforce.
Then, tacked onto that paragraph, was a reminder where that “moderating counterforce” is likely to come from: “(Disclosure: My firm represents interests in the fossil fuel industry.)” There’s no such thing as a “grievance industry,” but there really is a lobbying industry—and the Post gives a regular spot on its op-ed page to one of its most prominent representatives.
Freebooter Turns Freelancer
Erik Prince (photo: Oxford Union)
The New York Times (8/30/17) ran an op-ed by Erik Prince, who founded the notorious mercenary firm Blackwater and now heads the mercenary Frontier Services Group. The point of the op-ed was that Afghanistan needed more mercenaries.
The Times isn’t the only outlet to provide Prince with free advertising for his dubious services.
In the past few months, Prince has published op-ed pieces in the Wall Street Journal (5/20/17) and USA Today (8/8/17), and been allowed to pitch his profession on CNN (8/8/17), Fox News (7/30/17) and NPR (7/24/17).
And by ‘Dethroning,’ We Mean One-10th as Popular
The Week (9/13/17) had an intriguing headline: “How a New Generation of Left-Wing Podcasters Are Dethroning Rush Limbaugh and Right-Wing Talk Radio.” Tell me more!
The most prominent is Pod Save America, the brainchild of former Obama administration speechwriters Jon Favreau and Jon Lovett, as well as former Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor. Episodes draw anywhere from 800,000 to 1.4 million listeners.
Then, in the 11th of 12 paragraphs, comes the “never mind”:
Liberal Podlandia has a long way to go before it rivals the reach and power of Rush Limbaugh, whose 12 million listeners far outpace even the most heavily downloaded podcasts.
Well, that was fun while it lasted!
Trump’s Problem Is That New York Doesn’t Understand Media
Washington Post
The Washington Post published an op-ed (8/27/17) that blamed the failings of the Trump administration on Donald Trump’s hometown: “Why Is Trump So Awkward in Washington? He’s a New Yorker.” The piece, by former Post reporter Henry Allen, claimed that Trump doesn’t understand Washington, where rather than money being important, “The medium of exchange… [is] power brokered by the media.” It’s as if Trump didn’t ride a tsunami of free media into office, the media industry weren’t based in Manhattan and fundraising wasn’t an obsessive preoccupation in DC.
After a weird digression about Ivanka Trump’s undergarments, the piece concluded by claiming that New York know-it-alls had been failing in Washington since at least 1774. Funny, the last two presidents from New York—both named Roosevelt—seem to have made out OK there.
