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S&M, Meet MSM

A tardy discovery: There’s a new dirty word for people like me who have earned their living from the filthy advertising- and subscriber-derived dollars that support newspapers, magazine, television, radio, and online news sites. It used to be we were just lowlifes, practitioners of a sordid verbal form of sado-masochism. But now we’re MSM — mainstream media — as in MSM journalist. It’s not a complimentary term. Generally it denotes the dull, the slow-witted, the lazy, the dim defenders of the status quo (often to pursue secret liberal agendas; often just to lord it over and disrespect bloggers and anyone who’s not on the inside of the MSM world).

Go ahead, try Googling something like “MSM journalists.” Fascinating.

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Rage Against the News

So, a journalist videotapes something we’d rather not believe can happen — a Marine killing a wounded, unarmed enemy. The official response is that the incident is under investigation. And the unofficial response is: from people who feel the war is a misguided, ruinous dead end — people like me — that the incident somehow shows how senseless and tragic the whole adventure is. And from people who appear to feel that all the devastation of life and treasure in Iraq is just part of the cost of preserving our freedom and security — a view I find mind-bendingly out of touch with reality — there’s rage: that a reporter would dare do his job, that the actions of one of our soldiers would be questioned, that anyone could second-guess the need to blow away a wounded enemy, regardless of the circumstances.

Of course, the reactions on the other side (here and here for instance) go a lot farther than that. Kevin Sites, the journalist who shot the pool video, is now the enemy, “a turd,” “a slimy bastard,” and worse. Another blogger urges: “Note to all soldiers: If a prize-greedy journalist films something you don’t want aired because you know it could get your fellow soldiers killed, take the camera and destoy [sic] the film. You have the permission of the people who support you and NOT the savages you are so rightly killing.” Some posts even advocate violence against the journalist.

What’s stunning is the desire, on one hand, to deny what the pictures show, and on the other to punish or even shut down the source of the information. The right-wing site MichNews (“Most In-Depth, Conservative Honest News & Commentary) ran a column today that made the modest, unhysterical charge that Sites is an accomplice to al Qaida and Saddam Hussein and decrying how the video besmirched the “heroic warrior.” The column, by someone named Irwin Graulich, calls for a boycott of NBC and its owner, General Electric for “their despicable practices.”

OK, I was moved enough by that last piece of writing to send a letter in response:

Dear Mr. Graulich:

Regarding your piece “Fahrenheit Fallujah,” two points:

First, have you seen the videotape? If so, you would seem to be intentionally mischaracterizing it. The individual or individuals involved did not face any kind of “split second decision [sic]” in this case. Indeed, one voice can be heard identifying the wounded enemy as casualties from the previous day, then other voices discuss whether one of the wounded men is feigning death; then comes the shooting. If it’s improper to jump to the conclusion that the videotape

shows a Marine committing what amounts to murder, it’s also improper to characterize the tape as showing a Marine facing a life-and-death situation with no time to assess the situation.

Second, your comments about Kevin Sites amount to slander of a journalist who has a long and very accessible record of sympathetic coverage of our troops in Iraq. Far from portraying them as heartless killers, he’s done as much as any U.S. journalist I’m aware of to put a human face on a group of people who’ve been called upon to do an inhuman job in inhuman circumstances. Don’t take my word for it — check out his independent writings on the war at kevinsites.net.

The truth of this war is ugly and savage. It’s also ugly and savage to so casually condemn those who honorably and professionally try to convey that truth.

Respectfully yours,

Dan Brekke

Trying to respond reasonably and respectfully in this situation may be absurd. It’ll be interesting to see what, if anything, comes back in response.

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TomDispatch.com

TomDispatch.com is a blog published by Tom Engelhardt, an editor and journalist who teaches at UC-Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. It’s a challenging, thoughtful site. Especially worth reading as soon as you have the time are a couple long posts he put up a few weeks ago dealing with Iraq: “The Costs of War,” a piece from a Texas woman named Teri Wills Allison whose son has been sent to the war, and a followup with reader reaction to her account. Among the many passages from Allison’s essay that struck a chord:

“For the first time in my life, and with great amazement and sorrow, I feel what can only be described as hatred. It took me a long time to admit it, but there it is. I loathe the hubris, the callousness, and the lies of those in the Bush administration who led us into this war. Truth be told, I even loathe the fallible and very human purveyors of those lies. I feel no satisfaction in this admission, only sadness and recognition. And hope that –given time — I can do better. I never wanted to hate anyone.”

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Winning Iraq, One Iraqi at a Time

Sometimes soccer balls aren’t enough to win the battle for hearts and minds. Sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands. As in Falluja, where it’s hard to avoid the echo of the legendary (and, naturally, disputed) Vietnam quote reported by Peter Arnett, “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” But beyond the spectacle of blowing the town to bits in order to make it safe for democracy, our mission to destroy the most evil of the evildoers produced an incident that’s sure to make us even more beloved not just throughout Iraq, but everywhere in the world where people are just hoping we’ll show up to spread our special brand of liberty. Not to be too elliptical, NBC reporter Kevin Sites (check out his blog; it’s excellent) witnessed a Marine execute a wounded Iraqi insurgent in a mosque.

From MSNBC’s online account of the incident:

“Sites saw the five wounded men left behind on Friday still in the mosque. Four of them had been shot again, apparently by members of the squad that entered the mosque moments earlier. One appeared to be dead, and the three others were severely wounded. The fifth man was lying under a blanket, apparently not having been shot a second time.

“One of the Marines noticed that one of the severely wounded men was still breathing. He did not appear to be armed, Sites said.

“The Marine could be heard insisting: ‘He’s f—ing faking he’s dead — he’s faking he’s f—ing dead.’ Sites then watched as the Marine raised his rifle and fired into the man’s head from point-blank range.

” ‘Well, he’s dead now,” another Marine said.

“When told that the man he shot was a wounded prisoner, the Marine, who himself had been shot in the face the day before but had already returned to duty, told Sites: ‘I didn’t know, sir. I didn’t know.’ ”

One may object to this incident being singled out since, hell, we’re up against savages and after all, this kind of thing happens in every war. Maybe so. But part of the mission ought to be to cling to whatever separates us from the savages, and the fact this happens in every war is no endorsement for it; in fact, it’s the strongest argument for making war the absolute last resort.

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Progress in Iraq

According to the Iraq Coalition Casualties site, 65 U.S. troops died in the first 12 days of the Iraq war in March 2003. Between Monday and Saturday last week, six days, 59 63 64 U.S. troops were killed, about two-thirds of them in the Falluja fighting (and let’s not forget the 1,200 Iraqis the U.S. says it terminated during the last week and whatever civilian casualties were inflicted). So, in Month 20 of the Great Regime Change, we’re experiencing the most intense and deadly combat to date. Now, of course, things are bound to get better.

(Update: The Iraq casualties web site updated the number of killed earlier today, so that’s why I’ve changed it above).

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Der Österreicher Kommt

The dark cloud on America’s political horizon is growing a little more ominous. No, not the ultrafundamentalist, ultraright, the-Bible-is-law crowd (they’re not on the horizon; they’re directly overhead, raining all manner of hail and hell on the heads of the unbelievers). No, I’m talking about California’s favorite Austrian, Arnold Schwarzenegger. As noted previously, there’s a fairly serious though so far fairly quiet move afoot to amend the U.S. Constitution to remove the requirement that the president must be born a U.S. citizen; that way, Arnold could run and bring his brand of bombastic, hit-and-run populism to all the people of America.

Now the campaign is getting aggressive. A new organization somewhat disingenuously called “Amend for Arnold and Jen” — at amendforarnold.org — is launching a series of TV ads promoting a change in the Constitution. I say disingenuous because the site name attempts to make the effort look as if, gee, it benefits all qualifying immigrants, even Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, who hails from British Columbia. But it’s clear looking at the site that this is purely an effort to try to get The Austrian into das Weißhaus.

Some of Arnold’s rich Silicon Valley friends are behind the drive, The main mover appears to be Lissa Gaye Morgenthaler-Jones (she’s also known by various permutations of that collection of names). A Google search shows:

–She’s been a heavy contributor to and participant in Schwarzenegger’s various California campaigns.

–She’s an investment banker and analyst and daughter of David Morgenthaler, an early Silicon Valley venture capitalist; in campaign finance statements, she’s said to be head of something called Laeta Capital, though I haven’t found anything on the firm tonight.

–She’s a moderate, pro-choice Republican who’s contributed to the WISH List — a Republican knockoff of the Democratically-focused Emily’s List; the WISH List steers money to pro-choice Republican women candidates on the local, state, and federal level.

It’s really hard for me to look at this calmly, never mind objectively. It’s clear that the principal reasons that foreign-born Americans were barred from the presidency are no longer relevant and that’s it’s reasonable for long-ago naturalized citizens to stand for president. When it comes to talent and ability, there’s nothing magic about being born in the United States. Just look at the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. On the other hand, amending the Constitution to benefit one man just stinks of opportunism. Of course, that fits the Arnold mold perfectly: He’s the opportunist’s opportunist. He proposed a measure to create a rich statewide after-school program for all de children of Colly-fornia; but he forgot to include any way to pay for it. He’s governing a state in the midst of a profound fiscal crisis, and his solution is to foist the bill off on the next generation. Meantime, he proposes balancing the budget by slashing education spending. And to get his way, he blusters up and down the state and bullies anyone who tries to stand up to him (his current civics project involves getting rid of the Democratic majorities in the state Legislature and its congressional delegation by putting an amendment on the ballot that would create a new reapportionment commission). And as far as his moderation goes: The guy stood by Bush, a conservative radical, and helped him get re-elected. I think the Austrian would be a friggin’ menace in the White House.

So, my ambivalence aside, I’ll be counting on the narrow-minded knee-jerk xenophobia of my fellow Americans to win out over their slack-jawed drooling love of celebrities in general and The Terminator in particular to keep foreigners out of the White House. For a little while, anyway.

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Sidewalk Reading

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The sign outside the Berkeley Friends Meeting House:

"We utterly deny all outward wars and strife, and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or any under pretence whatever; this is our testimony to the whole world. The Spirit of Christ by which we are guided is not changeable, so as once to command us from a thing as evil, and again to move unto it; and we certainly know, and testify to the world, that the Spirit of Christ, which leads us into all truth, will never move us to fight and war against any man with outward weapons, neither for the Kingdom of Christ, nor for the kingdoms of this world."

–From "A Declaration of the Harmless and Innocent People of God, called Quakers," presented to King Charles II, 1660

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Judge Randy

I got a call this afternoon from one of my oldest friends, Randy Robinson. He was a couple years ahead of me in school, but from seventh or eighth grade on he was my closest friend in our little semi-rural neighborhood outside Park Forest. He went off to the University of Illinois, wound up going to law school there, and in 1976, the same summer I came out to Berkeley, he moved to Lewiston, Idaho, as a Legal Aid Society attorney. And he’s been working Legal Aid ever since — a position in which he’s been an advocate for lots of people who wouldn’t otherwise have decent access to an attorney when they’re dealing with courts.

We haven’t talked for months — the better part of a year, for sure. He said he had news, and it turned out to be good news. And it was: He applied for a vacant judgeship in Clearwater County, east of Lewiston (which is the county seat of Nez Perce County) and he’d just been informed that the committee reviewing candidates had unanimously chosen him for the job. The position he’s been assigned — he’ll be on the ballot for public approval in four years — is magistrate judge; the court doesn’t hear felony cases — those go to the state district court — or civil cases involving $10,000 or more. So it’s roughly equivalent to a municipal court judgeship in California. Which means that it’s one where you’re really dealing with local people in matters involving their day-to-day lives. In a county with just 9,000 people, the judge is a pretty important figure.

I think Randy will be great at it . I’m ready to chart his rise to, well, who knows? Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wasn’t appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court until he was 61.

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Road Blog: Eugene

Cimg2617We made it to Eugene. Got up early, but not super-early, and drove up Interstate 5 from Yreka to Eugene. It’s different up north: They actually have an autumn with trees turning color and frost in the air and the whole bit. The country along the way starts out mountainous — you have to cross the Siskiyous (SISK-yoos, to you auslanders) to cross into southern Oregon. Then you travel through the valley towns of Ashland (lovely unto annoyance) and Medford (annoyingly ordinary), then begin crossing a series of divides into the watersheds of the Rogue and Umpqua rivers, their various branches, and lesser streams. North of Roseburg, about 130 miles north of the California border, the road begins flattening out some as you pass towns like Oakland, Rice Hill, and Drain. Eventually, you enter the watershed of the Willamette (wa-LAMB-it) and soon get to Eugene.

Cimg2634 We wanted to attend a 1 p.m. orientation session, and we got there in plenty of time to park and get to the Erb Memorial Union (Emu for us auslanders). Since it was a holiday, Veteran’s Day, the session was packed (about 40 or 50 people). We spent an hour hearing how much the University of Oregon cost, what sort of grades and test scores you need to get in, and many, many other aspects of campus life. At 2 p.m., a sophomore business student named Matt Plumb gamely took the whole group on a tour: of the union, a dormitory, a future dormitory (now a hole in the ground), the student rec center, the library, the new Lillis business building, the journalism building, a new science building, and much more.

Quick impressions of campus: Smaller than expected, on a much more humane scale than any of the Big Ten campuses I’ve seen or the UC-Berkeley campus in its present incarnation — maybe more the way Berkeley was through the ’60s (the scale probably reflects enrollment; Oregon’s got a total of about 20,000 students, including graduates; Berkeley’s got about 34,000; several of the Big 10 schools have long since been at or above 50,000 for years). The tallest buildings at Oregon seem to top out at about five or six stories, and there are only a handful of those; there’s just one big lecture hall, and it seats about 500 or so; that’s mid-size by Berkeley standards. The campus is beautifully landscaped; lots of trees, lots of green, lots of open space, still, so it doesn’t have the overbuilt feel you get in some areas of Berkeley. You can’t judge much from a single afternoon, but overall the place felt quieter and less rushed and crowded than Berkeley.

The tour lasted an hour. We decided to drive around Eugene a little to see what flavor we could get. Well — not much from driving, aside from confirming the fact that drive-through espresso is huge north of the California border. Afterward, with no real plan, we decided to drive back south to Ashland to spend the night. But by the time we got there, about 7 p.m. or so, we were in driving mode and after a walk up and down the main street looking for something to eat and deciding we weren’t hungry, we decided to drive all the way home (another 340 miles or so). After stopping for bad Mexican food in Mount Shasta (note: Stay away from Lalo’s, except maybe if you just want a beer), we split the driving (me to Mount Shasta, Tom the next 165 miles or so to Williams — site of the phantom Dairy Queen — and me the last 100 miles) and got back to Berkeley a little before 1 in the morning.

(Pictures: Top: Tom listens to University of Oregon tour-leader guy. Bottom: People, trees, and autumn colors abound on Eugene campus.)

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Guilty Bastard

After my extensive experience as a journalist and legal observer (I’ve put in hundreds if not thousands of hours watching top-notch crime dramas such as “Homicide: Life on the Streets,” “Law and Order” in regular, special, and extra-crunchy criminal flavors, “CSI” episodes set in venues as varies as Las Vegas, Miami, and New York City; not to mention formative undergraduate stints as a watcher of “Dragnet,” “Adam 12,” “Hawaii Five-O,” “Perry Mason,” “The Defenders,” and even “Burke’s Law“), I was unconvinced that Scott Peterson was guilty of anything but being a lying, conniving bastard (with a dash of sociopath thrown in). But that’s why we have a legal system in this country: to tell when people like that are also murderers. In any case, he’s guilty. At least until the case goes into overtime.

The best part of catching the verdict coverage early this afternoon (this can be read as an admission that I failed to occupy my time with more meaningful business; no need for a trial on that one) was the proliferation of mugging nitwits who showed up in the courthouse shots of every channel covering the story (I checked CNN, Court TV, MSNBC, and Fox News; the two specimens pictured here were captured on MSNBC). I mean, of course it’s nothing new. But it is kind of extraordinary that we’re all so conditioned to the presence of cameras that this kind of behavior — now apparently accompanied by cellphones, so we can talk to our buddies while we’re on screen — has become sort of automatic.