Friday roundup - Iraq, FCC, Troy Smith
The big news in political journalism this week is the release of the Iraq Study Group report. There is some excellent commentary on this to be found, but you have to dig around for it. Media Matters, which specializes in cutting through conservative misinformation, has identified six findings in the report that the mainstream media seems to have overlooked:
I feel like Claude Rains in Casablanca when I say that I am shocked that the mainstream media would not trumpet these findings. But at least Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi continues to provide the type of analysis that the dailies just don’t seem capable of:
Taibbi cuts through the BS with refreshingly frank pearls of wisdom about American politics such as:
The successful politician today is the one who can best convert the agendas of his campaign contributors into politically saleable policies. That’s the business of government today; both the legislative and the executive branch are mainly engaged in searching out and finding the acceptable mean between voter sentiment and financial interest. It’s sort of an ongoing math problem — figuring out how many voters you can afford to fuck every four years, or how much money you should be extracting, and from which sponsors, for each rape of your constituents.
You just don’t ever read anything like that in the Washington Post. But Taibbi’s just getting warmed up:
And so, when faced with an unsolvable or seemingly unsolvable political conundrum, most politicians feel there’s only one thing to do. You appear onstage with your rival party’s leader, embrace him, announce that you’re going to find a “bipartisan” solution together, and then nominate a panel of rotting political corpses who will spend 18 months, a few dozen million dollars, many thousands of taxpayer-funded air miles, and about 130,000 pages of impossibly verbose text finding a way for both parties to successfully take the fork in the road and blow off the entire issue, whatever it was.
It’s important, when you nominate your panel, to dig up the oldest, saggiest, rubberiest, most used-up political whores on the Eastern seaboard to take up your cause. That way, you can be sure that the panel will know its place and not address any extraneous issues in its inquiry — like, for instance, whose fault a certain war is, or whether the whole idea of a “War on Terrorism” needs to be rethought, or whether the idea of preemptive defense as a general strategy is viable at all, or whether previously unthinkable solutions may now have to be countenanced, or whether there is anyone currently in a position of responsibility who perhaps should immediately be removed from office and hung by his balls. Your panel should contain people who are not experts or interested parties in the relevant field (since experts or interested parties might be tempted to come up with real, i.e. politically dangerous solutions), but it should contain people who are recognizable political celebrities whose names will lend weight to your whole enterprise, although not for any logical reason.
Baker-Hamilton was a classic whore-panel in every sense. None were Middle East experts. None had logged serious time in Iraq, before or after the invasion.
Prose like that offers hope for the future of journalism, but it’s sad that Rolling Stone seems to be the only print media outlet that will currently let someone like Taibbi channel the ghost of Hunter S. Thompson in modern reportings. And the newspaper business wonders why young people don’t read their middle-of-the-road rags?
Meanwhile, FreePress.net is urging us all to beware that the FCC is once again looking to sell out the public interest in favor of a sweetheart mega-merger for corporate monsters AT&T and BellSouth:
The FCC is at it again, ignoring the public interest to give handouts to massive corporations. This time, Chairman Kevin Martin has thrown the FCC’s ethics out the window to speed the mega-merger of BellSouth and AT&T before the incoming Congress can provide oversight.
Martin is forcing one commissioner, Robert McDowell, to overlook a conflict of interest and rubber stamp the AT&T merger without safeguards for Net Neutrality — the longstanding principle that prevents Internet providers from discriminating between Web sites. This move could undermine basic freedoms for all Internet users.
If you’re not familiar with the importance of the net neutrality issue, click here to read more about it.
Click here to send an email to your congressmen asking them to take action against this.
Moving on, my fellow Cleveland native Troy Smith, quarterback for the best damn football team in the land, will win the Heisman Trophy at the Manhattan Athletic Club tomorrow. ESPN.com’s Pat Forde has penned a great story about what a long and winding road Smith had to traverse to get to this point:
Pride will pulse throughout a village of legal guardians and guardian angels who raised this child, helping him from the mean streets of Cleveland to the bright lights of Manhattan — and, ultimately, beyond. But even with all the assistance, the kid had to take the hardest, loneliest steps of this climb himself.
When you consider where Troy Smith came from to reach this point, hero fits. And heroic describes his journey.
Smith, mom to share heartwarming moment of triumph
Forde
By Pat Forde
ESPN.com
Finally, Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto, a historical epic about the decline of the ancient Maya, hits theaters today. As an aficionado of the ancient Maya and their intriguing galactic calendar which ends on December 21, 2012, I have been looking forward to this film for some time. Early reviews appear mixed. I will check out the flick this weekend and report back soon…
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