BY DAN
KENNEDY
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See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes (Rodale, October 2003),
click
here.
Tuesday, September 16, 2003
Lies from a lying liar. It's
a rare day indeed when the media call the White House on one of its
mind-boggling lies. So it was refreshing to pick up this morning's
Globe and find this
front-page story by Anne
Kornblut and Bryan Bender that takes Dick Cheney to task for his
continued attempts to link Saddam Hussein and Osama bin
Laden.
At issue is Cheney's
appearance on Meet the
Press this past Sunday. Among other things, host Tim Russert let
Cheney get away with this:
Now, is there a connection
between the Iraqi government and the original World Trade Center
bombing in '93? We know, as I say, that one of the perpetrators of
that act did, in fact, receive support from the Iraqi government
after the fact. With respect to 9/11, of course, we've had the
story that's been public out there. The Czechs alleged that
Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi
intelligence official five months before the attack, but we've
never been able to develop anymore of that yet either in terms of
confirming it or discrediting it. We just don't know.
It's true! We don't know.
But we're pretty sure, aren't we? As the Globe notes, the
Czech connection has been "widely discredited." Kornblut and Bender
write:
A senior defense official
with access to high-level intelligence reports expressed confusion
yesterday over the vice president's decision to reair charges that
have been dropped by almost everyone else. "There isn't any new
intelligence that would precipitate anything like this," the
official said, speaking on condition he not be named.
But the story goes on to note that
"69 percent of Americans believe that Hussein probably had a part in
attacking the United States, according to a recent Washington
Post poll."
Cheney knows a good thing when he
sees it. And he's not going to give it up -- the truth be
damned.
Duke! Duke! Duke!
Globe columnist Joan Vennochi has some well-considered nice
things to say about Michael
Dukakis this
morning.
Vennochi -- who is exercised over
John Kerry's attempts to distance himself from Dukakis, under whom he
served as lieutenant governor in the early '80s -- writes of the
former governor, "He is a man of dignity and conviction. After all
that he has gone through in politics, he remains idealistic and
loyal."
I also suspect that if Dukakis had
had this field to run against in 1988, he would have won the
Democratic nomination for president even more easily than he
did.
You want some Velveeta on that
cracker? Salon has an interview with one
of my favorite conservatives, Tucker
Carlson, ex of the
Weekly Standard and now with CNN.
You've got to be a subscriber to
read the whole thing, but here is Carlson on what's wrong with the
talking-heads shows that have come to dominate cable news:
Well, what I think the
problem is in general and, not just with Fox, but the genre, is
that it encourages you to use a straw man. So for example you see
hosts bring on, "This is Jeffrey Mohammed X, and he's the
president of the Association to Kill White Motherfuckers," and
he'll be presented as a spokesman for black America. And then the
host will say, "Well, how can you support lynching white people?
That's just wrong!"
Well, of course, it's wrong!
This guy doesn't represent anybody! The classic flipside, which
I've seen much more, is that you get some 62-year-old,
semi-retarded cracker whose [sic] like the lone member of his chapter of
the KKK, and he represents white supremacists. How many white
supremacists are there in America? There are about nine, and
they're all mentally retarded.
Carlson has succeeded in defining
everything that's wrong with The O'Reilly Factor and
Hannity & Colmes in two paragraphs. For that, I can almost
forgive him for The Spin Room.
Salon is also running
excerpts from Carlson's book, Politicians, Partisans and
Parasites: My Adventures in Cable News.
posted at 8:28 AM |
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MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
