WHY GOD MADE TABLOIDS. This Herald front doesn't quite rise to the level of the drunken toga party during a late-night House session several years ago. But it will do. Dave Wedge writes:
While the unfinished state budget sat back at the State House, the parade of representatives at the Hyannis public course began at 9 a.m. sharp, with several reps taking trips to the driving range, putting on sunblock and lacing up their golf shoes. Several unidentified players were spotted drinking beer in their carts.
DURBIN GETS IT. Even if some of his defenders don't. From the senator's apology yesterday:
Mr. President, I have come to understand that was a very poor choice of words. I tried to make this very clear last Friday that I understood to those analogies to the Nazis, Soviets and others were poorly chosen. I issued a release which I thought made my intentions and my inner-most feeling as clear as I possibly could.Let me read to you what I said. "I have learned from my statement that historical parallels can be misused and misunderstood. I sincerely regret if what I said causes anybody to misunderstand my true feelings. Our soldiers around the world and their families at home deserve our respect, admiration and total support."
Mr. President, it is very clear that even though I thought I had said something that clarified the situation, to many people it was still unclear. I'm sorry if anything that I said caused any offense or pain to those who have such bitter memories of the Holocaust, the greatest moral tragedy of our time. Nothing, nothing should ever be said to demean or diminish that moral tragedy.
Now let's get back to the real issue: the well-documented abuses - including torture - that have taken place at Guantánamo and other detention facilities, thus damaging American moral authority in the eyes of the world. (Via Andrew Sullivan.)
11 comments:
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Anthony - Mark Jurkowitz has an enormous amount of intellectual integrity. So you're likely to be disappointed.
Right on, DK. I would add that if you, in fact, don't "understand how today's world of politics, media and marketing work(s)"(sic), you have done a masterful job of snowing The Trustees of N.U. I may disagree with you politically but I'm not enough of a dolt to diss your abilities. Mark J. shouldn't have much trouble with a guy unaware that "erstwhile" would indicate that you have already left.
Rick
Don:
I was the subject of what some folks are calling torture, I had bags placed over my head, stripped searched, pushed around by some really mean people, held in small boxes at times and subject to loud noises, sometimes called music. Not allowed to sleep or eat and if caught put in those small boxes that I mentioned. This went on for several days till I escaped.This was done at the Air Force survial school at Fairchild AFB. You folks must remember our guests at GitMo are not nice people. The are illegal combatents. During WWII these types were shot on the spot.
When they start getting bamboo spikes under their finger nails you can talk to me about torture.
Hey, Paul: do tell how many of the following you experienced at Air Force survival school:
1. Sodomy with broomsticks & chemical lightsticks
2. Biting by military dogs
3. Simulated drowning
4. Hanging from hooks by your wrists for hours and days
5. Women wiping menstruel blood on you
6. Lit cigarettes pushed into your ears
7. Being chained to the floor in 100-degree heat with speakers blasting in your ears until you pull your hair out, urinate and deficate on yourself
8. Repeated beatings to your legs until the muscles are pulpified
9. Forced masturbation and sexual contact with other men.
If Iraqis did any ONE of these things to Americans, we'd call it torture.
Our governmnet shouldn't do it and historically we haven't because:
a) It doesn't work - tortured people tell you whatever you want to hear to stop the torture
b) You inevitably kill and torture innocent people.
c) It turns places like Gitmo into what Sen. Biden correctly called "the greatest propaganda tool that exists for recruiting of terrorists around the world."
Anthony,
Rule #1- When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
Belch, burp & fart.
Gasbaggery run rampant.
Anthony, if aggressive=
obnoxious=
verbose,
you have already won.
Michael Miner's column (www.chicagoreader.com/hottype/index.html)
on the coverage of Durbin's speach is a must-read. Excerpt:
<>
Readers who believe what they're told to believe would have been foaming. But other readers like to make up their own minds, and they must have noticed the missing fact -- namely, what the FBI agent had said in the e-mail Durbin read to the Senate. The Tribune didn't report that. (On Saturday it would get around to it.) Here's the entire passage:
"On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. . . . On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor."
When Durbin said this sounded like the work of totalitarians, it's curious that no senator stood up to tell him, "Don't be silly. The rap music's the giveaway. Only freedom-loving Americans torture like that."
<>
Mike_B
Anthony - You're on to something, but the biggest difference is very simple: most liberal journalists are journalists first. Most conservative journalists are conservatives first, and oftentimes not journalists at all.
I mean this not to criticize conservatives, but to explain something very real. Conservatives tend to come into journalism from other walks of life, and see their roles as to be as partisan and activist as possible. Liberals tend to come up through the ranks as straight news reporters, and adhere to the rules and customs of the business even after they move over to the opinion side.
That's why even though most of the mainstream media are vaguely liberal, at least on certain cultural issues, the activist right-wing media are able to drive the conservation.
The solution is not for liberal commentators to stop being professional journalists. The solution is for the mainstream media to stop giving in to right-wing attacks, but instead to identify and expose them.
Anthony - It's now been three days since I officially shut this blog down, so I suppose I shouldn't keep responding. Let me just say that we should continue this conversation whenever I set up my new blog, which I will announce at some point during the summer at dankennedy.net.
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