25 May 2005
Spectator
The View from Here: Heroes, liars and the real failure of journalism
The current administration in Washington is finding out the inherent danger in pathological lying: once the snowball starts rolling down the hill, it's awfully hard to stop.
Pat Tillman became the poster boy for the "War against Terror" when he eschewed a multi-million-dollar professional football contract to become a Ranger in that war. When he was killed, the Army slathered him with accolades and awarded him medals that were supposed to salve his family's sense of loss and trumpet the heroism of another soldier offering the "last full measure of devotion" to his country. But even the best of intentions don't obviate prevarication. The army knew all along that Tillman, who as a Ranger was deemed the "best of the best," had been killed by his own comrades. They knew and they were ashamed of it and they destroyed evidence to cover up the fact that Tillman had been killed by friendly fire rather than heroically taking on a determined enemy to protect his comrades. Make no mistake about it: Tillman is still a heroic figure. The circumstances of his death don't cheapen his commitment or his dedication and certainly not his heroism. But this is what happens when the foundation of our policy is based on lies.
Remember Jessica Lynch? - the blue-eyed blonde heroine of an Iraqi ambush that resulted in her capture and subsequent "rescue" from the hands of the infidels? Remember what we were told about the circumstances of her capture? How she had fought off the Iraqis with her trusty M-16? How her rescuers fought through armed guards to rescue her? Remember the pride you felt knowing that soldiers still had that kind of heroic commitment? How happy you were to see that smiling face of hers riding through the parade in her hometown with her shiny new Bronze Star? Then remember the revulsion you felt (or should have) when you found out it was all propagandized bullshit? There were heroes the day Lynch was wounded, of course; they just didn't fit into the Army's image of who was fighting the war in Iraq. Thus, the Army ignored the fact that Jessica Lynch's weapon jammed and she never fire a shot. They ignored also that the woman who did the shooting and who did actually keep the Iraqis at bay was a Hopi Indian named Lori Pestewa, who paid for her heroism with her life. The real tragedy, besides the obvious tragedy of needless death in a needless war, is the habitual lying dishonors and discards those who don't fit the military's image of heroism and elevates those who do, regardless of their merit.
But that is the way of the Bush Administration. It is not enough to allow programs to stand on their merits. Discussion is stifled when the president's audiences are all hand-picked and forced to sign loyalty oaths before being allowed in to hear him speak. Fake reporters are surreptitiously bought and paid for with taxpayer money to preach the gospel according to George. Character assassins are paid to destroy the reputations of those who deviate from that gospel. And in the greatest hypocrisy of all, the entire charade is applauded, encouraged, promoted, repeated, and alleleuia-ed by an unholy chorus of officious religious fanatics embracing "moral values."
Have you, like the Spectator, wondered when the media in this country is going to stop its self-flagellation and tell the Administration to pound salt? The flap about the Newsweek story about the desecration of the Koran is just the latest straw. Here's an administration that made a decision to go to war without any evidenciary justification, and administration that justified its war on the rantings and ravings of an Iraqi liar the rest of the world knew was full of crap. An administration that who lied repeatedly to the Congress, the media and the American people now saying the media has to be "more responsible." Give me a break!The media did what Bush did - used one anonymous source. The media did what Bush did - got it wrong because the source was unreliable. But the media also continues to do what Bush refuses - they admit their mistakes.
The White House spinmeisters must be giddy every time the media makes a mistake. Those mistakes allow the attention to be moved off the sins of the administration and focused on the media. Look at Dan Rather. The real story in that tawdry episode was the truth about what was being alleged in the phony memo: Did Bush get favored-son treatment that allowed him to avoid service in Vietnam, to get into flight school, and continued to protect him when he washed out of flight status, and when he went absent without leave? Instead, Dan Rather and the "liberal bias" of the media became the story. Attention was diverted away from the fact that Bush cheated and lied and didn't deserve an honorable discharge at all.
Most newspapers have an obscure place for corrections. Why don't they use it in cases like this? Or put it on page one, where it belongs, right alongside the latest spin or fiction to come out of the White House?
Copyright 2005 by Buffalo Report, Inc.