Political Winds

George W. Bush spoke again today about sacrifice. Once again, his grandiloquent words referred to the only group of Americans who have been asked to make sacrifices in the “war on terror.” Memorial Day, of course, is a day for presidential rhetoric. It should be. Words about war, even conflicts that are just and fought of necessity, leave a bitter aftertaste. George Bush’s words today leave something more poisonous:

They know that one day this war will end — as all wars do. Our duty is to ensure that its outcome justifies the sacrifices made by those who fought and died in it. From their deaths must come a world where the cruel dreams of tyrants and terrorists are frustrated and foiled.

The outcome so far, Mr. Bush, has fulfilled those cruel dreams of terrorists. You’ve given them what they wanted. And while you were spinning about soldiers dying for reasons other than recklessness, arrogance and deceit, your vice president didn’t even try to sound statesmanlike as he talked to live soldiers who might be sent to die. In a single sentence, Mr. Cheney cynically and obscenely degraded the principles for which countless American soldiers have died in so many wars, principles that separated them - and us - from our enemies. Giving the commencement address at West Point on Saturday, Cheney ridiculed the idea of upholding our own values as we fight.

Capture one of these killers, and he’ll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States. Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away.

Your sensibilities, Mr. Vice President, and those of the president, fell away a long time ago, and our country - not the enemy - is paying the price.

There were the usual tired talking points from Republican blusterers after they heard Monica Goodling testify on Wednesday.  Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL) added his own clever take on the testimony, saying, “You’ve been a huge disappointment to a lot of people that were expecting to find some grand conspiracy of the Justice Department to deny justice to the American people.”

Well, guess what Tom, there is ample evidence of the grand conspiracy, and Monica Goodling provided more of it with  you, the Democrats and the media barely noticing.  Yes, the latter reported on Goodling’s acknowledgment that she “… may have gone too far in asking political questions of applicants for career positions…”  But, as Greg Palast and the BBC have reported, Goodling disclosed something much bigger.  It bears directly on what this scandal is really about:  the use of the Justice Department in a Rove-inspired illegal campaign to suppress minority voters.  Here’s a link to Palast’s story on the BradBlog.

AFP:

One person was killed and two others wounded after a California college student opened fire following a row over a PlayStation 2 video game, police said Tuesday.

The shooting took place late Monday near the campus of California State University in Fresno, 219 miles (352 kilometers) northeast of Los Angeles, police said.

Read the full story

I rest my case.  Allowing college students to pack deadly weapons on campuses unquestionably will increase rather than diminish gun deaths on campuses.  That should be overwhelmingly obvious to anyone with a smidgen of common sense, of which there is a huge deficit on the side of extremist gun advocates.

Jim Ascendio, the news director, sent me this e-mail in response to my criticism of WAMU’s story:

We tried presenting the story in two parts with pro gun control voices in one and anti gun control voices in the other as a different way of presenting the subject.

Unfortunately …it was not made clear that we were doing that.

We also followed those reports with another about how Capitol Hill lawmakers are reluctant to tackle the gun control issue which they have labelled “one of the third rails of politics” and ” like kryptonite”.

Your points, however,  are very well taken and are well appreciated.

We do need to be mindful of presenting all sides in each report.

BTW: The Chris Buckley interview was fun but I filled in at the last minute for Kojo and would have appreciated more time to prepare to be the straight man to his funny one.

Thanks for listening and pardon the delay in getting back to you. There were quite a lot of emails.

Jim Asendio
News Director
WAMU 88 5

I appreciated that Jim took the time to respond and that WAMU’s intent was not to present only one side of the issue.  However, I do think that this episode points out the dangers of “objective” journalism in getting to the truth.  Are both sides in this instance equivalent?  Is it enough just to report that one side says this and the other says that?  Isn’t it the journalist’s job to determine which claims are based on evidence and which aren’t?  Doesn’t presenting both sides in this way by definition suggest that they deserve equal weight?  I believe in the non-Fox version of “fair and balanced.”  But “balance” doesn’t mean that both - or many - sides of an issue all weigh the same.  The reporter’s job is to make his or her best effort to determine the truth.

Recently, in the wake of the tragedy at Virginia Tech, Washington’s NPR station, WAMU, aired a report that prompted me to write the following letter to the news director:

Dear Mr. Asendio,

I’ve just heard what I consider to be perhaps the worst news report I’ve ever heard on WAMU.  Speaking as a long-time listener and admirer of WAMU, and as a former broadcast journalist at CNN and elsewhere, including PRI’s Marketplace, I was appalled at Jeff Kamen’s report about the failures of gun control laws.  It was superficial, totally unbalanced and unfair, with sound bite after sound bite from pro-gun advocates who repeatedly made assertions that are controversial to say the least and often contradicted by data and other factual evidence.  I find it hard to believe that WAMU would put a story on the air in which there were no opposing views to those of gun rights advocates who seek legalization of concealed firearms at Virginia Tech and other college campuses.  In many quarters of American society, this is considered an extreme view, and indeed, I challenge Mr. Kamen to find university police chiefs who think having students pack weapons would make everyone safer.  In fact, in the wake of the VT shootings I heard an interview on NPR with the police chief at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who rightly suggested that introducing weapons on campuses and allowing volatile post-adolescents who not infrequently have too much to drink to pack handguns is clearly not a good idea.  Some, me included, think it’s a pretty crazy idea.  And yet WAMU’s report did not even feature a comment challenging it.

I’m extremely disappointed and indeed angry at WAMU.

On a completely separate note (and certainly with a different tone), I’d like to compliment you on the interview you did with Christopher Buckley.

Sincerely,

Grant Perry