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An Agnew/Safire Stab-in-the-Back Award Nominee
On the Weekly Standard website, Michael Novak bids for the Agnew/Safire Stab-in-the-Back Award: "The weakest link in the ability of the United States to sustain military operations overseas...is the U.S. media. They are Islamists' best friends."
"Experience shows that the mainstream press of the United States is alienated from the U.S. military," he adds, the embeddedness program having slipped completely out of his head. "In addition, the American press is extremely vulnerable to anti-U.S. propaganda."
Where is Judy Miller now that we really need her?
First as farce, then as cartoon.
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Clearly, Novak inhabits an alternative universe. He exhibits what psychologists call "poor reality testing," or, to put it more bluntly, He is out of his mind. The American press was drooling for the Iraq war. They were putting on their flak jackets & camo & positively panting to get into the action.
December 3, 2006 6:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
By definition, a reporter cannot objectively "cover" a war when in the company of soldiers who are responsible for helping to protect the reporter's life. The alternative welcomes an even higher risk of death. But that is in the battle zone. In Washington D.C. it is much different. The people there are not facing hails of bullets and thus are not due the respect and deference from a reporter that combat GIs are due. They deserve the full brunt of questioning and requests for explanation and justification that would be unfair and improper to a GI in the battle zone. And only if these desktop warriors receive the full brunt of inquiry can the checks and balances intended by the framers for a free press be maintained. Note: only propagandists themselves ever think of using a phrase such as "anti-U.S. propaganda."
December 3, 2006 6:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the link. Michael Novak is just another right winger reduced to babbling, blaming everyone but himself for a failed war.
If the chaos in Iraq is an illusion created by Al Qaeda and perpetrated by American journalists, I urge Michael Novak to test his thesis by taking a walking tour of Baghdad outside the Green Zone.
December 3, 2006 6:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
... except for Knight-Ridder and some random good columnists Scheer, Rich, Krugman, etc.
Tom
December 3, 2006 6:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's the "blame America first" meme still failing to get traction.
It wasn't the nature of the lies that got us into the war, the foolish way it was waged, or the lack of an exit strategy, it was those damn weak willed Americans Media types that failed the President and the Chickenhawk Brigade. Newt must be on to something with that "rethinking" of the First Amendment and that whole pesky freedom of speech thing. It only encourages those "nabobs of negativism".
Ok, I'll take the blame- cut off the funding, bring the troops home, and I'll take the blame for not getting any more soldiers killed for petulance, pride and incompetence.
Alphonse ( Al ) Kada
December 3, 2006 6:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Wow. Send this Novak character back to Area 51 for analysis. We need to find out what planet he's from.
Did he never hear the ominous (yet up-tempo) "America at War" soundtracks on FOX,CNN,ABC,NBC,CBS,CNBC,BloombergFN, etc.? Was he never mesmerized by the night-vision videography of Baghdad buildings being blown to bits? Did he never peer at the Presidential package, tightly accentuated in that flightsuit on the carrier deck, the day we all learned the "Mission" was "Accomplished?"
Already, the Division of Blaming Everyone but Ourselves has joined forces with the Making Stuff Up As We Go Department over at Conservatives, Inc.
-- "Good people can have honest differences of opinion. Republicans who are neither should just STFU."
December 4, 2006 8:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
He does not inhabit an alternative universe he's simply doing his job.
The noble hero betrayed by the perfidious(fill in the blank has been the myth flogged by the right since the Postdam Conference. This time it's America's Army being undermined by the traiterous and gullible left wing media.
Considering how successful the tactic has been for them there is no reason for them to abandon it now.
December 4, 2006 10:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is what the right wing is all about-- pile hatred on facts and the people who report them.
If you can demonize the media that strives for impartiality as the liberal MSM, then you don't have to deal with any facts you don't like. Just hear what the Limbaugh show, or National Review, or Drudge have deemed politically correct and useful, and dismiss anything other facts as biased. Ross Douthat has written about this conservative cocoon.
It was always a terrible idea, but then all three branches of the federal government were controlled by cocoonists in a pivotal moment. This Republican assault on professionalism and accuracy has been a much greater catastrophe for the country than could have been imagined.
December 5, 2006 12:59 PM | Reply | Permalink