Sunday, June 05, 2005

MSM America: Twistin' twistin' - in the wind

The WaPo, obsessed with it's own past and image, has gone into a greater than usual ideological assault mode, attempting to fire for effect. Today it is very nearly a museum of spin.

There are 4 items on Mr. Throat, and one more which is simply a good-old-fashioned personal abuse of a dead man who can't respond, Richard Nixon (stubble, paranoia, listmaker, couldn't fire J. Edgar Hoover even though no-one before him could either)... Jim Hoagland

There is also no question of his motives, even though he was conciderably less honest and straightforward than Linda Tripp was when she blew the whistle on Clinton's whistle being blown. The press immediately questioned HER motives, even though Felt hid behind anonymously behind the office that he abused. There are "human interest" angles/pushes about Felt, reflecting tenderly on the 'pain of keeping a secret from the world and his family', and similar unsolicited praise, complete with flattering photos - the very opposite of the treatment they gave any of Mr. Clinton's "problem stories".

Below the page header for this group of stories is the subtitle "deeper meanings", and they proceed to avoid looking them like the plague, instead focussing on the static surrounding the events.

They're rehashing story of Timothy McVeigh for no particular reason, I suppose other than to compare Nixon to him be association. This by Mike German, and places on the front page. Also 2-1/2 full pages on France and the EU, not really mentioning the Netherlands at all. One of them is implausibly titled "Pursuing Growth: France's U.S. Business model" by Anne Dumas, formerly with Le Point. She sites a few minor government funded and driven programs, completely missing the point that successful job creation involves government staying out of that business altogether.

Further the Post's Outlook section proselytizes on the social front with a half page op-ed above the fold on page 3 by a graduating high school girl titled: "Not Just a Family Matter - Some of Us Teens Would be Lost Without Sex Ed". This is a response to a dust-up in Montgomery County (in the US state of Maryland) letting gay activists circulate "how to" literature in high schools which is what the parents objected to, not sex-ed itself. Running the item is clearly intended to reframe the issue in favor of activists who want access to people's children. After all why can't adults homosexually model children against their and their parents will, right?

Immediately below is another thought modification piece about DDT by Max Behrenbaum form the famously loony and non-scientific University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Titled "If Malaria's the Problem, DDT's Not the Only Answer" - and no-one has ever suggested that it is. The only death-toll figure he sites, he attempts to diminish by not quoting science, but quoting Michael Chrichton, author of "State of Fear". «They have accused environmental activists of having "blood on their hands" and causing more than 50 million "needless deaths" by enforcing DDT bans in developing nations.» He actually put "needless deaths" is suspicious scare quotes and neglects to omit that this argument is coming from the developing world itself, the primary victim of the narcissistic policy which was put in place on the basis of finding 10 dead birds in the US where more than a billion birds die annually.

Here’s an insight on the “do-gooder” low view of needless deaths:

«Population control advocates blamed DDT for increasing third world population. In the 1960s, World Health Organization authorities believed there was no alternative to the overpopulation problem but to assure than up to 40 percent of the children in poor nations would die of malaria. As an official of the Agency for International Development stated, "Rather dead than alive and riotously reproducing."»
-[Desowitz, RS. 1992. Malaria Capers, W.W. Norton & Company]
A lovely bunch.

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