MediaBloodhound

Story of the Day: Actions, Consequences and Reality

Take a look at this photo.

Maybe if the mainstream media didn't go gaga over Bush's costume show, things would be different for this young man and the tens of thousands of other U.S. soldiers like him.

And now let's revisit the memory hole:

Chris Matthews on MSNBC, May 1, 2003:

MATTHEWS: What do you make of the actual visual that people will see on TV and probably, as you know, as well as I, will remember a lot longer than words spoken tonight? And that's the president looking very much like a jet, you know, a high-flying jet star. A guy who is a jet pilot. Has been in the past when he was younger, obviously. What does that image mean to the American people, a guy who can actually get into a supersonic plane and actually fly in an unpressurized cabin like an actual jet pilot?

...

MATTHEWS: Do you think this role, and I want to talk politically [...], the president deserves everything he's doing tonight in terms of his leadership. He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics. Do you think he is defining the office of the presidency, at least for this time, as basically that of commander in chief? That [...] if you're going to run against him, you'd better be ready to take [that] away from him.

Brian Williams on CNBC, May 1, 2003:

WILLIAMS: And two immutable truths about the president that the Democrats can't change: He's a youthful guy. He looked terrific and full of energy in a flight suit. He is a former pilot, so it's not a foreign art farm -- art form to him. Not all presidents could have pulled this scene off today.

Wolf Blitzer on CNN, May 1, 2003:

BLITZER: There was a riskier landing that the president wanted to make. The Secret Service, though, just wouldn't let the commander in chief ride in an F/A-18 strike fighter. But CNN's Kyra Phillips will be doing just that in a matter of only a few minutes. She's in the cockpit of this F/A-18 Hornet. Right now, Navy jets like this one, of course, helped win the war in Iraq. Now, they're headed home. We'll talk with Kyra as soon as she catapults off the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln. That's coming up.

A little bit of history and a lot of drama today when President Bush became the first commander in chief to make a tailhook landing on an aircraft carrier. A one-time Fighter Dog himself in the Air National Guard, the president flew in the co-pilot seat with a trip to the USS Abraham Lincoln. And he then mingled with the pilots and the crew members of the carrier on its way back from a deployment which covered the war in Iraq and before that, the war in Afghanistan. From that same deck tonight, the president will make more history. He'll deliver a major address to the nation.

David Sanger in The New York Times, May 2, 2003:

But within minutes Mr. Bush emerged for the kind of photographs that other politicians can only dream about. He hopped out of the plane with a helmet tucked under his arm and walked across the flight deck with a swagger that seemed to suggest he had seen Top Gun. Clearly in his element, he was swarmed by cheering members of the Lincoln's crew.

Even in a White House that prides itself on its mastery of political staging, Mr. Bush's arrival on board the Lincoln was a first of many kinds.

Never before has a president landed aboard a carrier at sea, much less taken the controls of the aircraft. His decision to sleep aboard the ship this evening in the captain's quarters conjured images of the presidency at sea not seen since Franklin D. Roosevelt used to sail to summit meetings.

Karen DeYoung in the Washington Post, May 2, 2003:

Bush, who had taken off his helmet and thus avoided photographic comparisons to presidential candidate Michael S. Dukakis's unfortunate episode with a tank helmet during 1988 campaign, jumped down in full flight regalia, a smile splitting his face. The Navy had planned an official greeting, with Bush being piped aboard and walking through two rows of "sideboys" saluting him -- a tradition that dates from the days when visiting officers were hauled up the side of the ship in a boatswain's chair.

Bush ignored it all, swaggering forward and pumping hands with everybody in sight before they could salute. "Here's a man with a birthday," he yelled at a television cameraman as he swung his arm around a sailor. "Put him on C-SPAN." For once, there were no security concerns to keep Bush from pressing flesh, and he made the most of it, hugging and patting everyone on the back -- from the greasy flight deck crew to F-18 pilots waiting to fly home this afternoon.

Bob Schieffer and Time columnist Joe Klein on  CBS, May 4, 2003:

SCHIEFFER: As far as I'm concerned, that was one of the great pictures of all time. And if you're a political consultant, you can just see campaign commercial written all over the pictures of George Bush.

KLEIN: Well, that was probably the coolest presidential image since Bill Pullman played the jet fighter pilot in the movie Independence Day. That was the first thing that came to mind for me. And it just shows you how high a mountain these Democrats are going to have to climb. You compare that image, which everybody across the world saw, with this debate last night where you have nine people on a stage and it doesn't air until 11:30 at night, up against Saturday Night Live, and you see what a major, major struggle the Democrats are going to have to try and beat a popular incumbent president.

If those in the mainstream media who helped to promote and sell this war, treating it without the seriousness it deserved then, don't come clean about their culpability now, what's to say they'll change anything about their reporting the next time we're in a similar situation? Whether it's in respect to Iran or another country presently unforeseen?

There is a direct connection between what journalists do and how the world is shaped. Actions have consequences, regardless of their affect on ratings or good standing with the White House. How are all of these journalists not somewhat responsible for that young man's prosthetic arm, specifically, in this case, if that soldier lost his limb after Bush's claim of victory in Iraq.

Yet these members of the mainstream media, and their cohorts who followed suit, refuse to substantively apologize and alter their coverage to assure this never happens again. These are the same people who fool themselves by saying, as Brian Williams has, that the reason why ratings continue to drop off is because people now prefer to make up their own news or to seek out only news that tells them what they want to hear.

Sorry. The main reason why network news rating keep waning is simple: people want better journalism. Not different sets. Not more emoting. Not more everyday small-town American stories. Not more personality-driven or triumph-over-adversity pieces. And, of course, not more celebrity, shark, serial killer, missing persons, mountain searches and wacky animal tales.

They just want you to be journalists. Who, what, where, when, why and how. What I learned in my high school journalism class. It's not a mercurial vocation. But it takes hard work and honesty. No more he said/she said, FOX-ification of the news. If something is a fact, then there is no other side. That's not balance; that's propaganda Orwell-style. And if something is debatable - like, say, Is Obama electable? Can Mitt Romney get his party's nomination? - then you better damn well have an even division of voices from all sides - left, right and center (study after study by F.A.I.R. has shown the deck is always stacked with conservatives, the Sunday morning talk show circuit a weekly unfair fight).

Maybe they're all too close to it to see this. Or maybe they see it, but realize and accept that the media establishment will never allow their news programs to truly right themselves. And so hanging on to the power, prestige and well-paid positions for as long as they can outweigh the alternative, even if that means watching millions of viewers turn away from them with each passing year.

Op-Ed Column: NBC’s Lame Gonzales Interview Lost in the Mix

Couric-Edwards vs. Williams-Gonzales
In Monday night’s “exclusive" interview with embattled (and Constitutionally challenged) Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, NBC’s Pete Williams manages to make Larry King look like Edward R. Murrow.

Nevertheless, the Bush White House must have been tickled to wake Tuesday and find not the Pete Williams interview with Gonzales drawing fire but Katie Couric’s one-note sit down with John and Elizabeth Edwards. Though I doubt this surprised anyone in the administration. That Couric’s interview (whether one thought it egregious or not) attains the spotlight says much about our national media focus and how it shapes our citizens’ views of what matters most. And to be fair here, even sometimes how it shapes what those in the progressive media decide to cover in response. (Also in fairness, our chronically negligent national press corps, charged with covering the most criminal and incompetent presidential administration in our nation’s history, makes it extremely difficult to note every piece of lousy journalism and White House wrongdoing.)

As network news programs continue to rev up their emoti-thon narratives, with ever-increasing focus on first-person stories and personalities instead of substantive news and issues, it makes perfect sense that Pete Williams’ feckless interview with Mr. Gonzales is lost in the shuffle. It’s not that Couric’s interview with the Edwardses isn’t newsworthy or shouldn’t be covered and critiqued. But are John and Elizabeth Edwards’ thoughts on why they’re staying in the race and Couric’s handling of that discussion more important than whether our attorney general committed a federal crime and the conduct and quality of questions of his interviewer?

While members of the progressive media and everyday American commenters vociferously defended the Edwardses (ironically, possibly a boon to CBS, which consistently trails in the nightly news ratings), they, along with the mainstream media, have largely given NBC and Pete Williams a free pass on what must be one of the lamest interviews of a political figure under investigation for criminal activity. Even CJR Daily, Columbia Journalism Review’s online arm, which posted an article that defends Couric’s interview (without somehow noting its shortcomings), failed, as of yet, to cover the woeful Williams-Gonzales tête-à-tête. As has the reliable Media Matters and many of the usual suspects who provide sound media analysis.

And Here Comes the Softball
Please note: The following is commentary on the full NBC interview, which is found here. Above the transcript, it simply states, “Attorney General Alberto Gonzales spoke to NBC News’ Pete Williams in an exclusive interview on Monday about the controversy surrounding the firings of U.S. attorneys. The following is a transcript of their discussion.” Which initially led me, and I imagine many others, to believe this was what aired. The edited version, however, which did air during the newscast, manages to be even less informative and more beneficial to Gonzales because the ponderous absurdity of his stated defense is mostly excised; in addition, a juxtaposition of chronology not only makes his answers appear more credible in their clipped presentation but also portrays him in a more sympathetic light.

So what made the NBC interview such an embarrassment?

For starters, here’s Pete Williams introductory question: “Mr. Attorney General, what is it that you would like people to know about this controversy?” This classic softball allows Gonzales to largely frame the entire segment and, of course, he happily obliges. It might as well have been Jay Leno conducting the interview. (About the only thing missing is the obligatory humiliating high school yearbook photo, or, in Gonzales’ case, maybe an excerpt from the memo in which he called the definitions of torture stipulated in the Geneva Conventions “quaint” and “obsolete.”) Following this time-honored late-night talk show setup question, Williams then sits back and listens obediently, failing to interject with relevant context or factual information that contradicts Gonzales’ muddled, apocryphal narrative.

The attorney general starts by playing the victim: “Let me begin with the attacks on my credibility, which really have pained me and my family. You know, I have grown up — I grew up with nothing but my integrity. And someday, when I leave this office, I am confident that I will leave with my integrity.” (In the on-air version, Gonzales ends with these words. A noteworthy edit. Beginning this way makes him sound contemptuous of those who dare question his truth-telling ability; placed at the end, however, it has the effect of softening his words and correcting their ill-considered real-time deliverance, leaving viewers with the thought that, in addition to a desire to get to the bottom of things, he actually takes this stuff to heart. A generous edit, indeed.

This controversy, though, has nothing to do with attacks on Gonzales' credibility, which is merely ancillary to the matter at hand. His image, or attempt to inspire trust, is of little consequence in the eyes of the law. The issue is whether he broke it by firing U.S. attorneys for partisan reasons. But leave it to this attorney general, to George W. Bush’s attorney general, to put his personal feelings before the facts and accountability.

Though if he wants to go down that road, Williams should be there to point out that Gonzales’ credibility is far (as in light years) from above question – from architecting this administration’s “legal” defense of torture, to knowingly green-lighting the transport of detainees to countries where torture was certain to occur, to his recent admission (lost in all of this) that the FBI broke the law in obtaining personal information of Americans, to his days as then Governor Bush’s legal counsel in Texas, where, as journalist Lou Dubose of LA Weekly noted in 2004:

Bush presided over the executions of 150 men and two women, a record unmatched by any governor in modern American history. Journalist Alan Berlow sued and forced the state to release Bush's execution memoranda. In Atlantic Monthly and Slate, he laid out the 57 memos Gonzales prepared during the two years he served as counsel to the governor. They were the primary source of information Bush relied on to determine if someone were to live or die. "A close examination of the Gonzales memoranda," Berlow wrote in Slate, "suggests that Gov. Bush approved executions based on only the most cursory briefings on the issues in dispute. In fact, in these documents Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence."

If Gonzales did grow up with “nothing but his integrity” (to which, of course, no earthly being but he and his family and friends are privy), his record clearly shows that he subsequently chucked it overboard on his lapdog journey to the highest law enforcement position in the land.

Gonzales then tells Williams, “The United States attorneys that were asked — to resign — were appointed by this president, they serve, like me, at the pleasure of the president.”

False. Certainly Gonzales knows this isn’t the case. So it’s not only false but also a bald-faced lie. Williams, however, remains silent. The fact is, while they are appointed at the pleasure of the president, once they begin their duties, by law, they are to serve only the American people, in that they mete out justice according to sound legal judgments and our Constitution; moreover, they are prohibited from being fired for not producing partisan judgments, i.e., refusing to do the president’s or attorney general’s bidding. Since this point lies at the very heart of this case, Williams’ failure to correct Gonzales is all the more irresponsible. What’s more, by starting with this frame – that all presidential administrations do this (one of the first administration talking points as this scandal broke) – viewers are misled and misinformed from the outset. Again, to be clear, this is patently false. It’s against the law. It’s why we have presidents and not kings.

Then Gonzales says, “I asked for their resignation not for improper reasons. I would never have asked for their resignations to interfere with a public corruption case or in any way to interfere with an ongoing investigation. I just wouldn't do that. And if you look carefully at the documentations we've provided to Congress, there's no evidence of that.”

This begs – yelps - the question: OK, then what were the reasons behind the firings, Mr. Attorney General? It also should have compelled Williams to mention the case of Carol Lam (to whom Gonzales seems to be alluding), who was fired just after successfully prosecuting Representative Duke Cunningham, a California Republican who received $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors; at the time of her dismissal, she was in the middle of building a case against Dusty Foggo, the third-highest-ranking official at the CIA, who subsequently resigned and then, along with a defense contractor, was eventually indicted on 11 counts of conspiracy and money laundering.

Yet Williams’ silent partner act continues.

When he finally poses another question, it’s with the utmost deference: “Can you answer some of the questions that have come up over the weekend? As you know, there was a — an email that came out Friday night that showed that ten days before the firings there was a meeting in your office which you attended to discuss the firings. And yet when you talked to us here at the Justice Department two weeks ago, you said you were not involved in any discussions about the firings. Can you — can you explain what seems like a contradiction?”

Can you…can you, please, Mr. Attorney General? What “seems like a contradiction”? It is a contradiction. It’s this kind of questioning that makes the interview sound at times more like we're listening in on a defense attorney prepping his client for trial.

But by all means, let’s hear Gonzales’ explanation (a sizable excerpt follows because there’s no better way to truly grasp the absurdity of his argument without it):

Let — let me just say — a wise senator recently told me that when you say something that is either being misunderstood or can be misunderstood, you need to try to correct the record and make the record clear. Let me try to be more precise about my involvement.  When I said on March 13th that I wasn't involved, what I meant was that I — I had not been involved, was not involved in the deliberations over whether or not United States attorneys should resign.

After I became attorney general, I had Kyle Sampson coordinate a department review of the performance of United States attorneys. And I expected him to — to consult with appropriate Department of Justice officials who had information and knowledge about the performance of United States attorneys. From time to time, Mr. Sampson would tell me something that would confirm in my mind that that process was ongoing.

For example, I recall him mention to me that — inquiry from the White House about where were we in — in identifying underperformers? And there are other similar type reminders that occurred during this process that I’m going to discuss specifically with the Congress. I was never focused on specific concerns about United States attorneys as to whether or not they should be asked to resign. I was more focused on identify — or making sure that the White House was a prop — was appropriately advised of the progress of our review. And I was also concerned to ensure that the appropriate Department of Justice officials, people who know — knew about the performance of — of United States attorneys, that they were involved in the process.

Now, of course, ultimately at the end of the process or near the end of the process, the recommendations were — were presented to me. There had been a lot of work done to review the performance of the United States attorneys. And recommendations were presented to me that reflected the recommendations of Kyle Sampson and of others in the department. And so there was obviously a discussion with respect to that — that recommendation.

And, of course — having decided there will be changes, there was — there was a discussion about how do we implement this change? And so that is in — in essence — the context of my involvement and the substance of my comments on March 13th.

Williams’ only follow-up to this? “So you didn’t get into the decision about specifically which U.S. attorneys to include on this list until the very end?” If there was ever a follow-up that provided a clean getaway for a public official drowning in the convoluted logic of his own defense, it’s this. And Gonzales pounces on it, then continues to leap from one contradiction to another:

Absolutely. Now, that’s not to say that during the process I may not have heard about the performance — or particular matter with respect to the United States attorney. For example — we’ve already confirmed that Senator Domenici did call me about the performance of the United States attorney in New Mexico.

The president — the White House has already confirmed that there was a conversation with the president, mentioned it to me in a meeting at the Oval Office — in terms of concerns about — about the commitment — to pursue voter fraud cases in — in three jurisdictions around the country. I don't remember that conversation, but what I’m saying is during the process there may have been other conversations about specifically about the performance of US attorneys. But I wasn’t involved in the deliberations as to whether or not a particular United States attorney should or should not be asked to resign.

The rest of the interview follows suit, Gonzales’ statements a series of obfuscations, feints, and utterances of circular logic that serve only to confuse the matter in the mind of the American people and create doubt as to the role he played. In Williams, he has a worthy accomplice. After allowing Gonzales to easily circumvent the question of how he can be sure the U.S. attorneys were fired for proper reasons if he was not engaged in the deliberation process, and prove that with “a shortage of documentation,” Williams again channels Larry King: “Obviously you're — you've chosen to stay and — and fight this issue. Why?”

I was waiting for Williams to ask Gonzales how his faith sustains him during such difficult times. But no such luck.

Curious Conflict of Interest
Finally, I’m guessing many people don’t realize the conflict of interest involved in Pete Williams covering this administration at all. Prior to joining NBC, Mr. Williams was, under Bush 41 and then Assistant Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. In that position, Williams was named Government Communicator of the Year in 1991 by the National Association of Government Communicators.

Talk about the perfect mouthpiece for this administration. As the saying goes, you really can’t make this up.

Story of the Day: Trickle-Down Irresponsibility

In today's cartoon, Ted Rall targets the millions of Americans who now claim that Bush fooled and betrayed them.

It's no wonder this narrative isn't questioned in the mainstream media. Too many of its members who initially fell into line behind this White House, who questioned too little or not at all, have since taken to willful amnesia. While some members of Bush's administration, if not the big fish, are finally getting their comeuppance, those in the media who made a mockery of journalism when Bush was riding high have shown no sign of contrition, humility or restitution (in the form of producing more responsible work). Well, we might have asked tougher questions at times simply doesn't cut it.

Without further adieu, here is Rall's ode to that broad segment of "horn-swoggled" Americans:

Ted Rall
GoComics.com

Story of the Day: A Recipe for Sizzle

A common refrain of network news executives and their anchors is that they’d like to spend more time on substantive issues or events if they could, but they are forced to focus on news that matters most to their viewers. At best, this defense makes them enablers – akin to the parent who plies an obese child with Twinkies, Big Gulps and bologna sandwiches because that’s what he enjoys eating. 

Of course, the ability to shape what viewers deem important is largely controlled by these same news execs and anchors. Their audience doesn't naturally feel that a couple of people lost in an Oregon forest or another missing Caucasian woman demand more attention than a spike in violence in the ongoing genocide in Darfur, where women are commonly raped and then slaughtered along with their children, where over 200,000 people have already been ethnically cleansed, yet still no sense of urgency emanates from anchor desks. But when 24-hour networks and nightly newscasts saturate their broadcasts with the story of two human lives lost in a wooded fortress or one young woman’s disappearance – interviewing loved ones and friends, rescue workers, law enforcement officials, splashing sentimental photos across the screen and emoting every step along the way – they certainly send a message to their viewing audience that these are bigger stories.

Moreover, it’s not merely catastrophic global events like Darfur that receive little coverage; network news execs and anchors claim they are hamstrung from focusing on domestic issues as well. Not enough “sizzle” they say. Healthcare (gets more attention during a campaign year but inevitably returns to the backburner post-election). Poverty (ditto; and, at the moment, it wouldn’t even be part of the current political discourse without John Edwards). Education (see previous ditto). Yet, arguably, these three issues affect more Americans, more directly, than any other. And, like it or not, all of us – rich, poor and everyone in between – do have a stake in seeing these three issues addressed with a combination of innovation, pragmatism and candor. 

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert’s op-ed “Stepping on the Dream” shows, by example, why it’s more than the issue or event being covered; rather, it’s how it is covered, the substantive nature of the presentation and quality of context provided, that allows audiences (or, in this case, readers) to shape well-informed decisions or opinions. 

Herbert’s latest piece zeroes in on the shameful lack of government support for the college bound, or college aspiring, amid increasingly skyrocketing tuitions. He begins, “One of the weirder things at work these days is the fact that we’re making it more difficult for American youngsters to afford college at a time when a college education is a virtual prerequisite for establishing and maintaining a middle-class standard of living.”

You know, that middle-class that every national candidate and mainstream pundits like to discuss each campaign season, that broad swath of Americans re-anointed “the backbone of our society” every two years, in between their ever-accelerating extinction. So, right from the start, Herbert gives the context that makes this story vital and then proceeds to tease out why this matters to all of us. And not because he’s liberal – even if he might be – but because he supports his premise with undeniable truths that really have nothing to do with ideology. (Something of which his fellow Times columnist David Brooks seems totally incapable.) This isn’t a liberal or conservative issue.

Young men and women are leaving college with debt loads that would break the back of a mule. Families in many cases are taking out second mortgages, loading up credit cards and raiding 401(k)s to supplement the students’ first wave of debt, the ubiquitous college loan.

At the same time, many thousands of well-qualified young men and women are being shut out of college, denied the benefits and satisfactions of higher education, because they can’t meet the ever-escalating costs.

You want a recipe for making the U.S. less competitive over the next few decades? This is it.

Think this issue doesn’t contain enough sizzle for Americans? Just ask the millions touched by this problem. 

Along with their degree, most graduates leave college now with a loan obligation that will hover over them for years, maybe decades. Student loans have decisively overtaken grants as the primary form of financial aid for undergraduates.

Two-thirds of all graduates now leave college with some form of debt. The average amount is close to $20,000. Some owe many times that.

Herbert goes on to quote from Tamara Draut’s book Strapped: Why America’s 20- and 30-Somethings Can’t Get Ahead:

"Back in the 1970s, before college became essential to securing a middle-class lifestyle, our government did a great job of helping students pay for school. Students from modest economic backgrounds received almost free tuition through Pell grants, and middle-class households could still afford to pay for their kids’ college.”

Since then, tuition at public and private universities has soared while government support for higher education, other than student loan programs, has diminished.

Then Herbert crystallizes the underlying, self-defeating absurdity of such a system:

This is a wonderful example of extreme stupidity. America will pony up a trillion or two for a president who goes to war on a whim, but can’t find the money to adequately educate its young. History has shown that these kinds of destructive trade-offs are early clues to a society in decline.

It’s a statement that many – arguably most – in the mainstream media reflexively label “liberal” or “anti-war,” when, in reality, it’s just common sense. Moreover, it contextualizes the issue of college intuition while further contextualizing just one of the myriad additional costs of this war. Both, like so many issues and events in our country and the world, are inextricably linked; they don’t happen in isolation from one another – it’s just that they’re almost invariably reported that way.

Herbert then provides a deeper portrait of the deleterious impact that this not only has on the dreams of young adults but also on the progress of our country:

The kids who graduate with enormous debt burdens — $40,000, $80,000, $100,000 or more — face a range of uncomfortable and even debilitating consequences, the first of which is the persistent anxiety over how their loans are to be repaid.

I’ve spoken recently with a number of law students who have already decided to go into corporate practice because their first choice — public interest law — would not pay enough to cover their loans. Many students have turned their backs on teaching for the same reason.

At that stage of life, you shouldn’t have to choose between a job you would love and one that you would take simply because it would pay the bills. Talk about stepping on a dream.

There are also plenty of cases of students who have postponed marriage or buying a home or having children because of their college loan obligations.

And then there are those who never see a graduation day. There’s no way of telling what talents have been squandered, or what great benefits to society have been lost, because bright students who were unable to afford the costs have been forced to leave college, or never went to college at all.

In a nation as rich as ours, it should be easy to pay for college. For some reason, we find it easier to pay for wars.

It’s not left. Just right. With plenty of sizzle.

Stepping on the Dream, by Bob Herbert
The New York Times

Op-Ed Column: Thanks for the Memories

Brian Williams opened NBC Nightly News tonight with these words: “Good evening. The war that started with the sharp blinding impact of precision-guided weapons hitting their targets in Baghdad in the middle of the night has now gone on for four years. The fifth year of combat in Iraq starts now. U.S. involvement in this war is now longer in duration than the Korean War. Longer than World War I or World War II. And here are the numbers of great importance to all Americans: So far at least 3,218 Americans have died, at least 24,000 have been wounded; estimates of Iraqi dead are close to 60,000; and so far over 2 million Americans have cycled through Iraq at least once.”

While this is a low estimate of the number of wounded American soldiers, it pales in comparison to the woefully inadequate accounting Williams serves up for Iraqi dead. “Estimates of Iraqi dead are close to 60,000” is an egregious underrepresentation. If a journalist is going to couch his number in “estimates” than he shouldn’t mention a figure from the low range without mentioning one from the high range, especially when the discrepancy is so vast. A John Hopkins study, published in the esteemed medical journal Lancet, estimated the high end of Iraqi dead at over 650,000. And that was nearly six months ago. (You might recall that only one member of the White House press corps, Suzanne Malveaux of CNN, broached this study with Mr. Bush, to which, being The Decider, he just decided it had been discredited. Never mind that wasn’t the case. Or that Malveaux only meekly followed up, asking him if he stood by his number – 30,000 – while failing to question Bush’s glib and baseless dismissal of the John Hopkins study.)

Williams ends this broadcast with a brief retrospective of the Iraq War. In prefacing the video montage, he says, “Before we go tonight, a look back at what we’ve seen. Some of the images and sounds of these past four years of war in Iraq. They have become part of our collective memory.” If Williams had used different footage, if he had reflected the true ravages of this war – both on our soldiers and the Iraqi people – as well as hit upon the breathtaking incompetence and mendacity of the administration that started and prosecuted it, then this segment might have shone. Instead, due to its content, it is little more than Brian’s love letter to himself, his colleagues at NBC and the viewers who’ve been following his Iraq coverage. Consequently, this piece, aided by Williams' intro, has a cumulative effect not so dissimilar to the clichéd climax of a romantic comedy, when one character suddenly looks back on all the times shared with an ex, culminating with a race to find her and pledge his undying love and fidelity. And, a little desperately, Williams and NBC want you to say, "I do." (They didn't just replace their executive producer for nothing.)

True to the NBC Nightly News tagline, “Reporting America’s Story,” the our to which Williams refers in "our collective memory" is that of Americans. Not all Americans of course (though it certainly behooves him to project this notion). Just the millions who receive most of their information on U.S. and world events from watching network news. This video montage – the on-air segment is titled “Witness to War” no less – remains faithful to the manner in which Williams and his mainstream colleagues often reported, and continue to report, this war: Nearly bloodless. No screaming wounded or horribly disfigured writhing in agony. No dead babies or adolescents or teenagers, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, grandparents. No dead American soldiers. No caskets. The real effects of this war? Williams and his network peers have labored at sparing our “beautiful minds” from such ugliness (to paraphrase the humanitarian Barbara Bush). (To be fair, correspondent Richard Engel has provided the one saving grace for Williams' war coverage; Engel seems committed to giving an accurate accounting of the war zone, even as his choices are limited in what footage his bosses deem fit for American eyes.)

In tonight’s montage down memory lane, we see even less: First, the “sharp blinding impact of precision-guided weapons” that Williams referenced at the kickoff of his newscast. Then the news ticker in Times Square telling us over here that the war in Iraq has begun over there. Bush informing our country that the invasion is underway “to defend the world from grave danger.” U.S. military firing machine guns, Rambo-like, into the night. Jingoistic footage including an American soldier speaking exuberantly of “Operation Iron Fist,” Tom Brokaw getting choked up as he thanks a soldier for his service and the toppling of Saddam’s statue (what everyone should now know was a patently staged event, which this snippet, without that context, helps to further confuse in people's minds). A sullied and sun-dappled Williams playing intrepid reporter on the ground in Baghdad. L. Paul Bremer's triumphant press conference announcing Saddam's capture, in which he shouts, "Ladies and gentlemen, we got him!" (Not the dejected Bremer who fled shortly thereafter or the Bremer who criticized Bush's war strategy.) Free elections and the new Maliki-led government. Blurry video of the moments right before Saddam's hanging (sans the taunting).

Meanwhile, the stains on this war often didn’t warrant a snippet of dialogue, just quick-cuts or flashed stills: Bush standing below the “Mission Accomplished” sign. Two photos: One of Abu Ghraib torturer Lynndie England, the other of the now iconic hooded torture victim standing Christ-like on a box, hooked up to wires. When dialogue did accompany them, it was if we were given but a glimpse of the last frame of a movie or the final note from a novel's epilogue: Donald Rumsfeld, a central figure in the prosecution of this war, standing beside Bush and his replacement Robert Gates at the press conference announcing his departure – we’re denied even one soundbite of Rumsfeldian poetics to remind us of the accumulative incompetence and Strangeloveian madness that finally forced him to resign. The 1,000 dead milestone for U.S. troops mentioned by Williams in a voiceover at the top of his broadcast, with a couple of helmets for a visual: no coffins, no funeral services, no bodies, no grieving friends and family. David Gregory holding up a published copy of The Iraq Study Group Report, saying it’s a harsh critique of the war in Iraq, with another quick-cut preventing us from hearing a single criticism in it. The Walter Reed scandal (in which "Walter Reed" isn't stated) summed up by one healthy-looking uniformed soldier, who says, "I wouldn't live there even if I had to - it wasn't fit for anybody"; then a fleeting view of darkly lit photo of what appears to be a patient returning to his hospital quarters (though it's impossible to see the state of either the ailing soldier or his quarters). General David Petraeus mentioning that this war can’t be solved militarily alone, while simultaneously we see an overlay of footage showing U.S. troops dashing heroically toward their next skirmish, appearing in full command of the situation. Each blemish blunted, downplayed, shown in the best light or, literally, in no light.

A few months ago, Brian Williams wrote an essay for Time magazine titled “But Enough About You…” Lamenting the demise of centralized news in the age of the Internet, he wrote: “The problem is that there's a lot of information out there that citizens in an informed democracy need to know in our complicated world with U.S. troops on the ground along two major fronts.”

Precisely. If it weren’t for the Internet and progressive media, our collective memory would be more easily subsumed by the mainstream’s scrubbed war coverage. Fortunately, we no longer live in the time that Williams is still pining for. In that same article, he also wistfully notes: “We work every bit as hard as our television-news forebears did at gathering, writing and presenting the day's news but to a smaller audience, from which many have been lured away by a dazzling array of choices and the chance to make their own news.” Yet Williams fails to grasp, or refuses to acknowledge, what comprises that “dazzling array of choices.” At least in part.

Better journalism with no corporate influence. Reporters unflagging in their pursuit of truth. Incisive and in-depth analysis devoid of received notions. People interested in fairness and accountability in reporting.

Is that so much to ask?

Editor's Note

You might have heard of the recent storms here in the east that stranded travelers. Well, yours truly was one of those lucky folks. And let me tell you, two extra nights at a Holiday Inn in Ft. Lauderdale, right off the highway and just a stone's throw from the airport, with no car...well, a dream come true.

Originally, I was supposed to be returning on Friday but just made it back now, by way of Baltimore, where I then hopped on a train to NYC. It was that or wait until Monday or Tuesday. And, seriously, it was either through Baltimore or I was ready to spend my life savings on a helicopter just to avoid facing another trip back and forth from the Ft. Lauderdale Airport and the Holiday Inn. It was like Groundhog Day except things got progressively worse instead of better and Andie MacDowell wasn't working the front desk.

Anyway, I intended to post something this weekend before I knew I'd be engaged in an existential journey to the heartland of travel hell. I'm going to sleep now. But I look forward to returning with something worthwhile tomorrow. Thanks for your understanding and patience.

-MediaBloodhound   

Editor's Note

Sorry for the dearth of posts here this week. I'm away for my grandmother's funeral. Look for new stuff this weekend. And thanks for understanding.

-MediaBloodhound

Story of the Day: What They Knew And When They Knew It

The New York Times public editor Byron Calame today scolds his paper for taking nearly a week after the Washington Post story broke to report on the Walter Reed scandal. Calame also points out this sluggish reaction time is hardly unprecedented, noting, “Last year, the paper took two months to tell readers about the disclosures in Time magazine’s exclusive account of the alleged massacre of Iraqi civilians in Haditha by American troops.” He blames this lag time on “excessive pride,” citing that editors take it personally when scooped by competitors, and concludes, “The reality is that when significant news breaks — even in the form of an exclusive in a competing publication — The Times must be committed to getting on the story. Anything less seriously damages the paper’s value to readers."

While these criticisms are noteworthy and true, Calame fails to inform his readers of a far worse related offense committed by his newspaper and by the mainstream press at large: the story of squalid conditions and substandard care for wounded U.S. soldiers first broke over three years ago in a United Press International report by journalist Mark Benjamin, who later penned other scoops on troop treatment that were largely ignored by the media establishment as well.   

In “Sick, Wounded Troops Held in Squalor,” published on October 17, 2003, Benjamin wrote, “Hundreds of sick and wounded U.S. soldiers including many who served in the Iraq war are languishing in hot cement barracks here while they wait -- sometimes for months -- to see doctors. The National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers' living conditions are so substandard, and the medical care so poor, that many of them believe the Army is trying push them out with reduced benefits for their ailments.” Soldiers spoke of being treated like a “third-class citizen.” At Fort Stewart, Benjamin noted that “approximately 600 sick or injured members of the Army Reserves and National Guard are warehoused in rows of spare, steamy and dark cement barracks in a sandy field, waiting for doctors to treat their wounds or illnesses,” adding, “Some of the soldiers said they have waited six hours a day for an appointment without seeing a doctor. Others described waiting weeks or months without getting a diagnosis or proper treatment.”

More on the conditions:

Most soldiers in medical hold at Fort Stewart stay in rows of rectangular, gray, single-story cinder block barracks without bathrooms or air conditioning. They are dark and sweltering in the southern Georgia heat and humidity. Around 60 soldiers cram in the bunk beds in each barrack.

Soldiers make their way by walking or using crutches through the sandy dirt to a communal bathroom, where they have propped office partitions between otherwise open toilets for privacy. A row of leaky sinks sits on an opposite wall. The latrine smells of urine and is full of bugs, because many windows have no screens. Showering is in a communal, cinder block room. Soldiers say they have to buy their own toilet paper.

More on the care:

"I think it is disgusting," said one Army Reserve member who went to Iraq and asked that his name not be used.

That soldier said that after being deployed in March he suffered a sudden onset of neurological symptoms in Baghdad that has gotten steadily worse. He shakes uncontrollably.

He said the Army has told him he has Parkinson's Disease and it was a pre-existing condition, but he thinks it was something in the anthrax shots the Army gave him.

"They say I have Parkinson's, but it is developing too rapidly," he said. "I did not have a problem until I got those shots."

First Sgt. Gerry Mosley crossed into Iraq from Kuwait on March 19 with the 296th Transportation Company, hauling fuel while under fire from the Iraqis as they traveled north alongside combat vehicles. Mosley said he was healthy before the war; he could run two miles in 17 minutes at 48 years old.

But he developed a series of symptoms: lung problems and shortness of breath; vertigo; migraines; and tinnitus. He also thinks the anthrax vaccine may have hurt him. Mosley also has a torn shoulder from an injury there.

Mosley says he has never been depressed before, but found himself looking at shotguns recently and thought about suicide.

Mosley is paying $300 a month to get better housing than the cinder block barracks. He has a notice from the base that appears to show that no more doctor appointments are available for reservists from Oct. 14 until Nov. 11. He said he has never been treated like this in his 30 years in the Army Reserves.

…

Another Army Reservist with the 149th Infantry Battalion said he has had real trouble seeing doctors about his crushed foot he suffered in Iraq. "There are not enough doctors. They are overcrowded and they can't perform the surgeries that have to be done," that soldier said. "Look at these mattresses. It hurts just to sit on them," he said, gesturing to the bunks. "There are people here who got back in April but did not get their surgeries until July. It is putting a lot on these families."

Over two years ago, reporting for Salon, Benjamin detailed specific indignities soldiers suffered at Walter Reed in “Insult to Injury,” which, for starters, included paying for their own meals out-of- pocket after having served their country:

Soldiers in medical hold are considered outpatients, but they usually live on hospital grounds -- some are put up in nearby hotels if housing on the grounds is full -- and have little choice but to buy food at the Walter Reed chow hall. Even as outpatients, soldiers in medical hold often have serious injuries. Some have been blown up by roadside bombs or crumpled in Humvee wrecks. They have serious head wounds and amputations. Others are struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder after being flown out of Iraq with shellshock. Some soldiers in medical hold are waiting to get processed out of the Army because their wounds are so serious that they will never return to duty. But processing at Walter Reed can take over a year, much to the frustration of the soldiers who would prefer to get outpatient treatment near their homes and families. Soldiers in medical hold also complain they are still expected to line up for daily formations and buy new uniforms even as they struggle with debilitating physical and mental trauma from their service in Iraq. They say being charged for food while they're recovering is one more indignity.

Benjamin followed this up with another Salon piece one month later, “Behind the Walls of Ward 54,” in which he delved deeper into the shamefully negligent treatment afforded soldiers at Walter Reed. (This story, along with others, was used to highlight the dearth of mainstream media coverage on the high number of wounded troops and their treatment in the MediaBloodhound op-ed “Out of Sight, Out of Mind.”) On January 27, 2005, Benjamin reported:

In fact, repeated interviews over the course of one year with 14 soldiers who have been treated in Walter Reed's inpatient and outpatient psychiatric wards, and a review of medical records and Army documents, suggest that the Army's top hospital is failing to properly care for many soldiers traumatized by the Iraq war. As the Soto-Ramirez [a wounded soldier who committed suicide at Walter Reed after complaining of inadequate care] case suggests, inadequate suicide watch is one concern. But the problems run deeper. Psychiatric techniques employed at Walter Reed appear outmoded and ineffective compared with state-of-the-art care as described by civilian doctors. For example, Walter Reed favors group therapy over one-on-one counseling; and the group therapy is mostly administered by a rotating cast of medical students and residents, not full-fledged doctors or veterans. The troops also complain that the Army relies too much on pills; few of the soldiers took all the medication given to them by the hospital.

Perhaps most troubling, the Army seems bent on denying that the stress of war has caused the soldiers' mental trauma in the first place. (There is an economic reason for doing so: Mental problems from combat stress can require the Army to pay disability for years.) Soto-Ramirez's medical records reveal the economical mindset of an Army doctor who evaluated him. "Adequate care and treatment may prevent a claim against the government for PTSD," wrote a psychologist in Puerto Rico before sending him to Walter Reed.

…

The high level of satisfaction among inpatients as reported by Walter Reed is completely opposite what I saw and heard while tracking soldiers there over the last year. The soldiers I interviewed invited me to their bedsides in the lockdown ward. They handed over their private medical records. They allowed me to call their buddies, their girlfriends, their mothers. All professed to loving the Army, though some said their trust in the institution had been irrevocably shattered. All said their symptoms either stayed the same or worsened while at Walter Reed; two said they made suicide attempts. While it's true that patients' self-reports about treatment are not always objectively based, the repeated, bitter complaints I heard over the course of more than a year, in combination with conversations with civilian experts, cast serious doubts on Walter Reed's approach to treating PTSD sufferers. It all convinced me that something is seriously amiss at the Army's top hospital.
…

When it is done right, PTSD treatment is a delicate task. Trust is crucial, and medications are carefully administered and monitored. Most critical is getting patients to control the powerful and destructive emotions that can follow a traumatic event like fighting a war. What bewildered the soldiers at Walter Reed, though, was that the Army seemed determined to downplay their war trauma and search for other causes for their mental health problems. In group therapy, sessions often focused more on family relationships and childhood experiences than war, the soldiers said. One outpatient soldier was so angered about this avoidance of the topic of war, he threw a chair during group therapy. Doctors promptly sent him to lockdown.

"When you get [to Walter Reed], they analyze you, break you down, and try to find anything wrong with you before you got in" the Army, said Spc. Josh Sanders, in a telephone conversation from his home in Lovington, Ill. "They started asking me questions about my mom and my dad getting divorced. That was the last thing on my mind when I'm thinking about people getting fragged and burned bodies being pulled out of vehicles," said Sanders. "They asked me if I missed my wife. Well, shit yeah, I missed my wife. That is not the fucking problem here. Did you ever put your foot through a 5-year-old's skull?"

Though this White House knew about the horrid conditions and inadequate treatment at Walter Reed and other military healthcare facilities years before the Washington Post story broke (the Bush administration directed the very cuts in service and put in place the brain-dead yes-man that would set into motion this FEMA-like management fiasco), it now, once again in a PR effort to cover up its instituted negligence, feigns outrage, stumbling over itself to finger some scapegoats. Similarly, our mainstream news outlets knew about this story years ago as well. And even if they lacked the responsibility and good sense to proactively investigate this matter on their own (fear of being labeled “unpatriotic” surely played a part), it’s not as if United Press International or Salon are so far off the mainstream radar that they had any reason not to know. Yet now they, too, speak of this appalling tale with shock and moral indignation. None so far have had the courage and honesty – including New York Times public editor Byron Calame in his tunnel-visioned critique – to admit their failure to cover this story when it first broke. When it really first broke. When it might have eased the pain and suffering of our wounded soldiers two to three years earlier. When it might have saved the lives of those who have committed suicide or sunk ever deeper into the abyss during that vacuum of press oversight. 

Though it’s easy to see why they don’t fess up: Acknowledging this failure would make them, like this White House, complicit - which of course they are even if they don't have the honesty to admit this to their readers.

Reporting the News Even When a Competitor Gets There First
By Byron Calame
The New York Times

Story of the Day: CBS Journalist Ridicules Media Focus on Libby Verdict

When the jury declared I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby guilty on Monday, he became the highest-ranking White House official to be convicted of a crime in two decades: a crime tied to the biggest U.S. executive branch scandal since Watergate. Considering it's rooted in the manipulation of pre-war intelligence - which led to a war of choice resulting in hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths and the loss of thousands of American soldiers – the larger crime for which Libby helped his superiors cover up is dramatically worse than the one perpetrated by Nixon’s bungling burglars in the night.

But what sat prominently on the CBS Evening News website last night? Under a section labeled “news commentary” by journalist Hillary Profita was this headline: “It’s All Libby All the Time in the Media: Guilty Verdict Dominates Nation’s Major News Outlets, But Does Anybody Else Really Care?”

Profita begins, “Volume II of a lengthy Washington saga that captured the media's attention - and pretty much no one else’s - is over.” Thank goodness. All that media focus on real news. Why, it's enough to make people more informed.

She goes on to say, “All of today’s front pages (including the top of the Wall Street Journal’s newsbox) document the details of yesterday’s verdict in which Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby was convicted of lying to investigators in the CIA leak investigation.” Isn’t that what they’re supposed to do? This isn't warranted but explicit details of John Mark Karr's in-flight dinner was? Or the round-the-clock "Anna Nicole Smith Is Still Dead" marathon?

Profita then says, “Everyone takes note of a special historical fun fact: Libby is the highest-ranking White House official to be convicted of a felony since the Iran-contra scandal. Or, as USA Today notes, he is also 'the highest-ranking Bush administration official to be convicted of a crime.'" Would she prefer journalists didn’t “take note of this historical fun fact”? And what does she mean by fun fact, anyway? Is she actually suggesting that pointing this out is somehow irrelevant or gratuitous?

Profita continues, “And beyond that, each paper also has its own opinions on what this trial and the conviction represented for America.” Oh, no, that would be…what papers do. That’s why they also have editorial sections. You’d figure that Profita, a journalist, would understand the basic structure and content of your average newspaper.

How accurate is this commentary's initial headline and premise, "It’s All Libby All the Time in the Media"? I did a quick check of a few mainstream news sites to find out. Here were the top stories gracing CNN's homepage on the same night:

• Couey convicted of raping, murdering young girl
• Georgia trucker has big lottery haul
• Bush on Latin America, Libby verdict, VA care
• Two charged in abuse of formerly conjoined twin
• NASA fires astronaut | Steamy e-mails
• Beheading threat made doctor flee
• Time.com: Ten notorious presidential pardons
• Cause of Smith's death known, but kept mum
• Potty lockdown has students flush with anger
• Big Bopper autopsy puts rumors to rest
• Britney's antics make K-Fed look like good dad
• Suspected meteorite crashes into bedroom
• Declared dead, elderly man makes a comeback

Libby is in there but not as the main focus of a story. Sandwiched between two other news items is Bush's mention of the Libby verdict in passing. A new national story about a murdered white girl and a belabored pun about a trucker winning the lottery both trumped that Libby crumb. A case of abuse involving a once conjoined twin nearly edged it out as well, only to be followed by the firing of everyone's favorite zany astronaut. Then, of course, there's more news about Anna Nicole (still dead), Britney's "antics," an autopsy of a rocker who succumbed to plane crash nearly a half century ago, a "suspected" meteorite landing in someone's sleeping quarters and a "dead" man's ultimate comeback.

Over at MSNBC's website, only one headline related to the Libby verdict could be found among its top stories: "Juror urges Libby pardon." Some other noteworthy top stories?

• U.S. coins missing "In God We Trust"
• Humans caught "crabs" from gorillas
• Red Tape: How difficult is it to snag text messages?
• NASA fires Lisa Nowak
• Man claims half of $390 million lottery

And the top stories for the CBS Evening News website, for which Perfita writes?

• Congress Takes Aim at Credit Card Policies
• Man Found Guilty of Murdering Florida Girl
• More Bloodshed for GIs, Iraqi Civilians
• Trucker Claims Half of $390 Million Jackpot
• Astronaut in Love Triangle Fired
• Suicides Rock Two High Schools

No Libby, none of the time.

It's All Libby All The Time In Media
By Hillary Profita
CBS Evening News "The Skinny"

Op-Ed Column: Dowd Targets Obama for Another Attack

Just over two weeks ago, Maureen Dowd took an axe to presidential candidate Barack Obama in a catty, vapid op-ed entitled “Obama, Legally Blonde.” In her latest column, Dowd returns to her new favorite target, disseminating further received notions and negative talking points for all takers – the Hillary camp, fellow mainstream pundits, right-wing radio hosts, future Swift-Boaters, indiscriminating readers. Anyone who’ll listen now that Dame Dowd has spoken. A one-on-one interview in Obama’s Senate office inspired this cutesy, knife-twisting episode.   

She begins, "As I sit across from Barack Obama in his Senate office, I feel like Ingrid Bergman in 'The Bells of St. Mary’s,' when she plays a nun who teaches a schoolboy who’s being bullied how to box."

Dowd sets the stage with these first words, summing up her self-image and the power she wields (or wishes she did) over Obama. She’s the good nun and Obama’s her schoolboy. Yet unless Ingrid Bergman’s nun repeatedly cracked a ruler across that schoolboy’s knuckles without warrant, then Dowd's metaphor fizzles in fulfilling its intended meaning. Had she applied the same nun-schoolboy metaphor to indicate a mainstream pundit's power to unduly influence national debate, to unfairly lambaste a candidate before citizens have a chance to see where he or she stands on the issues, then it would've been apt.

"After David Geffen made critical comments about Hillary, she seized the chance to play Godzilla stomping on Obambi."

First, she infantilizes him with “schoolboy,” then she emasculates him with “Obambi.”

"If Hillary is in touch with her masculine side, Barry is in touch with his feminine side."

Dowd piles on the emasculation. (How long before Ann Coulter calls Obama a "faggot”? And other conservatives once again cheer.) Adding insult to injury, Dowd disparagingly refers to him as "Barry," his anglicized first name by which he was known to his classmates as a youth in Hawaii. She not only calls his manhood into question but also his blackness. In her prior Obama column, she referred to his "smooth-jazz facade," helping to fuel the mainstream media's blatantly racist "Is He Black Enough?" storyline.

"He told The Times’s Jeff Zeleny that he had not been engaged in the vituperative exchange because he was traveling on a red-eye flight, getting a haircut and taking his daughters to school."

More emasculation: Obama as the motherly metrosexual. I guess real men don't take their daughters to school or get haircuts. The bottom line here is that Dowd and her fellow poison pens in the media didn't get a juicy enough quote from Obama's camp, preferably from Obama himself. He didn't play their game. He didn't allow himself to be drawn willy-nilly into Hillary's hands. And so Dowd and her colleagues would make him pay by painting the received notion that this means he's weak, he's got a glass jaw; it couldn't possibly mean he might genuinely want to wage a different kind of campaign. Thus, quite the opposite of Dowd's narrative, maybe Obama feels he's strong enough, substantive enough, even likeable enough, to withstand both vapid potshots from the Hillary machine and criticisms from those members of the media who aim to penalize him for not jumping at the bait.

"Channeling Ingrid, I press on and say: 'I know you want to run a high-minded campaign, but do you worry that you might be putting yourself on a pedestal too much? Because people also want to see you mix it up a little. That’s how they judge how you’d be with Putin.'"

So diving into the trough with Hillary is supposed to make him appear presidential? More like a statesman? “That’s how they judge how you’d be with Putin.” Really? Who exactly are the “they” here? They couldn't be your colleagues in the mainstream media who failed to report that they had every reason to believe George W. Bush wasn't fit to run a lemonade stand, let alone the most powerful nation in the world, right?

No, I suppose Dowd means the public. It behooves pundits who feed on these petty political skirmishes to peddle the received notion that just how down and dirty a politician is willing to sink defines his or her ability to lead. (Which is not to be confused with an utter abdication of political common sense, as evidenced by the Kerry campaign's now infamous failure to adequately respond to Swift Boat accusations.)

Can Obama remain above the fray in American politics? One would assume that's an impossible task in the entrenched media climate, where issues always play second, third or even seventh or eighth fiddle to mudslinging. Nor should he be expected to do so just because he is suggesting there must be a better way to conduct a political campaign. But Obama can, and should, and does appear to aim to make the national political debate more worthy of the seriousness of what we as a nation and member of the world community face - the war in Iraq, extreme poverty, a spiraling healthcare crisis, the worldwide encroachment of religious extremism (which includes all religions) on democratic societies, rampant global warming, and genocide in Darfur spilling into neighboring countries. Just to name a few of our monumental challenges in this country and around the world.

Maybe it's idealistic, but a little idealism is always necessary to effect fundamental positive change. Contextually, it's also the only way - in addition to such measures as true campaign finance reform - to ensure we are choosing from the best candidates instead of our usual option: the lesser of two evils. The mainstream focus on personalities over issues is exactly what leaves us with candidates like the junior Bush from Texas. Also predictable, however, is that the gatekeepers pillory any politician who attempts to raise the level of debate. What would all those establishment pundits write and talk about if their topics always had to have a basis in substantive issues?

As Newsweek columnist and MSNBC commentator Howard Fineman wrote recently, "Presidential elections are high school writ large..." Yes, sadly, they are in this country. But Fineman, Dowd and other mainstream pundits fail to acknowledge their complicity in creating these shallow high school narratives. It is their job to ask better questions, their job to stick to the facts, their job to provide realistic, substantive and honest portraits of the candidates from which our citizens must choose. So if presidential elections are high school writ large, who do you think are the screenwriters, directors and producers of these amateurish productions?

Then comes Dowd's second questioning of Obama's blackness, particularly unseemly given the subject matter:

"When the Tiger Woods of politics goes to a civil rights commemoration in Selma, Ala., this weekend — just as the story breaks that his white ancestors had slaves — he will compete for attention with Hillary and the man billed as the first black president."

How clever. How cheeky. Tiger is of mixed race and so is Obama. He's successful, good-looking and likeable, too. Can you imagine if "respected" members of the press had referred to Joe Lieberman when was running for president as the Shecky Green of politics? Or George W. Bush as the John Bonham of Republican nominees? Does Dowd plan on designating Mitt Romney the Donny Osmond of conservatives? Or Hillary the Tammy Wynette of centrist Democrats (actually, she may have already done that)?

And, of course, there's the allusion to the story about Obama's white ancestors having had slaves - the ultimate 'gotcha' in the "Is He Black Enough?" campaign.

Maureen Dowd is familiar with the bubble effect. She's written about it skillfully in reference to the latter-day Bush's presidency. She also wrote well on the topic of Judy Miller (her former colleague at The Times) and her editors' inclination to let her "run amok" with her false WMD stories. Maybe a little time off would do Dowd some good. Maybe gaining greater perspective from hearing voices in America other than her own and those in her echo chamber, along with additional input from her editors, would help Dowd keep her sights on targets who deserve her knives now rather than on targets who may, or may not, deserve them in the future.