Google: 102
Technorati: 15
Yahoo! News: 6
Google News: 6
Nexis: 2
Daypop: 1
Blogdex: 0
Torturegate … Is on the Air!
I just got .15 seconds (yes, 15/100ths of a second, or about 12 gnat heartbeats) of fame deriving from my historic role as the father of torturegate (the word). This sliverette of recognition arrived in my Outlook Express inbox from The O’Franken Factor at 8:45 a.m. PDT:
Dan,
I’d like to talk to you ASAP to ask a question about the word “torturegate”—my number is [deleted], or you could email me your number. Much appreciated!
Ben Wikler
Producer
The O’Franken Factor
Yeah, I got all hot and bothered about it. I called as soon as I saw the note, having visions of snappy on-air repartee with Al Franken and perhaps the spontaneous creation of a new career in radio. But the reality fell somewhat short of that. As Mr. Wikler told me, Mr. Franken was talking about torturegate (the word) this morning on the show, and specifically the claim from Fox’s Sean Hannity that the word was invented by Democrats who are part of a vast left-wing conspiracy to politicize the abuse allegations and get rid of Rumsfeld. So, off the air, he asked me — probably the world authority on torturegate (the word) — whether I was a Democrat? whether I had called for Rumsfeld’s resignation? whether I was part of the vast left-wing conspiracy to politicize the abuse case (answers: yes; no; no, I think).
I would love to have talked to Franken, though.
They Had It Coming
Sen. James Inhofe,Republican of Oklahoma, has had enough of the crying and moaning over torture of Iraqi prisoners. It’s real simple, he says: The guys who were mistreated had it coming. As quoted by CNN and Reuters:
“I’m probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment. I am also outraged that we have so many humanitarian do-gooders right now crawling all over these prisons looking for human rights violations, while our troops, our heroes are fighting and dying,” he said.
“These prisoners, you know they’re not there for traffic violations,” said Inhofe.
“If they’re in cell block 1A or 1B, these prisoners — they’re murderers, they’re terrorists, they’re insurgents. …. Many of them probably have American blood on their hands. And here we’re so concerned about the treatment of those individuals.”
Not a Lie, Not the Truth
One of the tactics the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld Damage Control Team (BCRDCT) is using to try to contain Torturegate is to show the world how utterly forthcoming they are — have always been — about the issue of prisoner abuse at the Abu Ghraib facility. Rumsfeld testified, backed up by an official Pentagon timeline, that in January “the Central Command public affairs people went out and told theworld. They told everyone in the world that there were allegations of abuse and they were being investigated.” That statement set everyone running to Web and news archives to find the January release. Saturday, the LosAngeles Times reprinted the information the military actually put out on January 16, 2004:
“An investigation has been initiated into reported incidents of detainee abuse at a Coalition Forces detention facility. The release of specific information concerning the incidents could hinder the investigation, which is in its early stages. The investigation will be conducted in a thorough and professional manner. The Coalition is committed to treating all persons under its control with dignity, respect and humanity. Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the Commanding General, has reiterated this requirement to all members of CJTF-7.”
The Times’s story notes that the release — what you might call understated, given the fact someone had just presented officers with a pile of hot photographs of prisoners being abused by soldiers — was one of three released that day (the other two focused on U.S. military activities). BCRDCT did some Nexis homework before Rumsfeld hit the Hill on Friday, because one of the points mentioned to show how the authorities have done their best to bring this whole situation to light was that the media picked up on the story in January. And in fact, a Nexis search shows that the bare facts of the press release did make it into dozens of news outlets the day after the military put it out, almost always as one item in an extended digest of other developments. The Associated Press, NewYork Times and others talked to the Pentagon about the release, and came away with statements saying that the abuse allegations were”serious” and “credible.” The story got wide, but not deep, play in Canada. Two days after the release, London’s Sunday Times ran a longerstory on detainee abuse, highlighting the case of a man who had fallen into the hands of U.S. forces, then was imprisoned and beaten.
But for the most part — with notable exceptions, such as a March 3 Salon story that detailed abuses at Abu Ghraib — the story stopped for most of the media. Bottom line for now: the damage-control folks downplayed the events in January and got away with it; it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that most of the media never looked hard enough at what was there.
George, Rummy — Listen Up
From Justice Louis Brandeis’s dissent in Olmstead vs. United States:
“… Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. …”
Nice Dog
By way of a post on Salon, we have this wonderful juxtaposition of images as well as this heartwarming story from the heartland: “Dog from Iraq Finds New Home in Area Town.” From the Clinton (Iowa) Herald:
“A thin, hungry stray in Iraq, the dog’s chances for a long, happy life were slim. Dogs are not welcome house pets in that country, but rather are forced to live off roots, bugs or whatever they can find to survive. Some of the animals, like Sheeba, even eat rocks that make them feel full.”
The Layoff
Wired News: “TechTV to Lay Off 285”
News.com: “TechTV Lays Off San Francisco Staff”
And there were other stories, too. Just to comment on one little detail in both of these: You’d think that Comcast gave us 60 days’ notice out of the goodness of its soft ol’ cable heart. Witness the quote from the G4 spokesguy (who is named David Shane in one of the linked pieces above and David Shone in the other):
“Today we gave notice to 285 employees that they’ll be impacted by the merger. We wanted to give employees as much notice aspossible so that they can begin to make other plans.”
Uh huh. As I noted yesterday, though, Comcast and G4 had no choice in the matter. The 60-day notice is required by federal law because shutting down a workplace of our size is considered a plant closing (the company needs to do other things under the law, too, like notifying the mayor of San Francisco that it’s putting a bunch of people on the street). So I can now consider myself the beneficiary of one of the few labor-friendly laws to get through Congress in recent memory.
The staff gets to meet with G4’s CEO, Charles Hirschhorn, on Monday and hear what else is in store for us (for instance, will we continue producing our daily show all the way through July, when the 60 days is up?).
More on Torturegate (the Word)
The number of Google references was at 13 on Thursday and is 31 this evening (mostly on blogs, and counting my two earlier posts). Nexis shows two mentions: One during "Hannity and Colmes" on Fox News on Thursday and
one in a short news item in a paper somewhere. Google News shows one reference, Yahoo! News shows zero, and Google’s search ofUsenet groups shows three (all Thursday). "Torturegate" doesn’t appear at all on two
select indexes of blog content, Daypop and Blogdex.
OK, so that’s today’s unscientific take on one new word. However, some people are trying to be a little more scientific about how new wordsand ideas spread in cyberspace. Wired News has a story today called "How the Word Gets Around," on an experiment to follow the spread of a new memeonline. After reading the article, I’m not sure what the project proves, though, because it invited people to participate as a sort of self-conscious exercise. It’d be more interesting to trace an idea that just sort of gets thrown into the collective consciousness. Like
"torturegate."
Some Military Heroes
Good New York Times story on some of the military officers defending terror-war detainees in upcoming military tribunals. It takes a lot of courage, and belief in what are often termed basic American values, to fight the system:
"Last month, an audience at Oxford University in England was stunned, witnesses said, when two of the lawyers, Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift ofthe Navy and Maj. Mark Bridges of the Army, said the tribunals were not capable of producing a fair and just result.
"The several hundred people who had gathered for a talk about the Guantánamo detention facility did not expect to hear the American officers’ objections.
"Murray Wesson, a Rhodes Scholar from South Africa who attended, wrote on his Web log: ‘What I was unprepared for, given that these were, after all, military lawyers, was how critical of the process they were. Indeed, they went so far as to describe the tribunals as`fundamentally flawed’ and insinuated that they would not amount to fair trials.’ "
I Was Going to Say …
… something funny earlier this morning. But then I, and just about everyone else at TechTV, got laid off. It’s not a shock — the station was sold several weeks ago and it was clear from the grapevine that the new owner (Comcast) wasn’t too interested in continuing our original programming. Anyway, it’s actually a relief to know what’s happening and that our office will be shut down.The down side — maybe it’s this way every time a shutdown or layoff happens, though we upper-middle-class types might not think about it when the closure involves a can factory or a poultry processor — is the hurt among all the people here who really have given their best to do something good here. The up side is that under the WARN Act,the federal law governing plant closures, we got 60 days’ notice plus a severance package. It could be a lot worse. More later.