You may have read this article by Howard Kurtz a couple of days ago. Kurtz is the Washington Post’s media critic, and I saw his piece linked by Drudge. Very interesting piece, on the media’s gushing treatment of President-elect Obama. Makes several good points. But what’s missing is this, I believe: something elementary, and something important. The media are liberal (in the modern American sense, of course — don’t get me started . . .); Obama is liberal. Of course the media are nuts about him!
If this could be admitted, I think life would be much sweeter, much easier. It’s the pretending — the pretending that there is no liberal media bias — that’s so bothersome. If the “MSM,” as we call them, could just say, “Yes, we’re liberal, do you want to make something of it?” it would be so much better. We could get on with life — and have an open European-style system, where there’s the Socialist newspaper, the Christian Democratic paper, the Communist paper, etc.
I work for an opinion journal, and am therefore nice ’n’ labeled: as a conservative journalist (or worse than conservative). I don’t mind the labeling (sort of). But why do so many on the left get to be unlabeled? Do you know what I mean?
End of whining, for now . . .
Oh, hang on, let me whine for a second longer, on this: Some weeks,
Time and
Newsweek are no less an opinion journal than
National Review — or at least disturbingly close.
So, I’m on an airplane, and there’s a
New York magazine jammed into the pocket. The cover shows a picture of an infant with his fist up. He is wearing a shirt that says “Obama,” three times. What we read is, “The President for Us: The triumph of the Obama idea, and the peculiar feeling of being part of America again.”
Lots of people are now admitting, or semi-admitting, that they don’t feel part of America unless their preferred candidates win. Fine. But isn’t that sort of — not so admirable?
Okay, another item, media-related: An American friend of mine who lives in Switzerland wrote, “I told my wife last night that there might be one positive outcome of an Obama victory: Maybe we’ll get some good news about America now and then . . .”
So, Greg Craig is back, as White House counsel? Wasn’t he last seen plumping for the Sandinistas — or protecting Bill Clinton from the Tripp truth-tellers? As you don’t need to hear from me, gonna be a long four — or eight — years . . .
You may have seen
this article — also linked by
Drudge, also from the
Washington Post — about Obama and federal workers. It begins, “In wooing federal employee votes on the eve of the election, Barack Obama wrote a series of letters to workers that offer detailed descriptions of how he intends to add muscle to specific government programs, give new power to bureaucrats and roll back some Bush administration policies.”
Okay. Couple of points of interest, if I may. The article says, “The letters, all but one written Oct. 20, reveal a candidate adeptly tailoring his message to a federal audience and tapping into many workers’ dismay at funding cuts and workforce downsizing in the Bush years.”
You have heard my song before: By the Right, Bush is seen as a terrible big spender, the leader of bloated government. By the Left, he is seen as some Friedmanite Scrooge. (That would be Milton Friedman, not Thomas L. Friedman or Ignaz Friedman or any other.) (Ignaz Friedman was a pianist who lived from the 1880s to the 1940s.)
Have some more of the article: “Obama wrote to employees in the departments of Labor, Defense, Housing and Urban Development, and Veterans Affairs, along with the TSA, the EPA and the Social Security Administration. Defense was the only area in which he did not make promises requiring additional spending, the letters show.”
But of course!
And a little more: “Obama repeatedly echoed in his correspondence the longstanding lament of federal workers — that the Bush administration starved their agencies of staff and money to the point where they could not do their jobs.” This starvation of government is something that anti-Bush conservatives would have a very, very hard time believing.
Finally, wish to make a point I have often made — and I apologize to longtime Impromptus readers for the repetition: People who want government money, or more government money, for one aspect of life should avoid making reference — especially snotty reference — to money spent on another aspect of life.
Let me explain myself, in part by quoting from the
Post article — which quotes Jeff Ruch, the executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. He says, “A small diversion from the Iraq conflict, if they were put into Interior, EPA or NASA, those agencies would be in their salad days. The National Park Service is laboring under a [maintenance] backlog that would be cured by a month and a half of Iraq expenditures.”
Do you remember my favorite political cartoon of all time, or one of them? Comes from the 1980s. There are two panels. In the first, Tip O’Neill puts his arm around Reagan, saying, “Do you know how many hot school lunches your $100 million to the contras would buy?” In the second, the president says, “Why, yes, Tip: half as many as your $200 million in aid to Northern Ireland.”
Look, if you want more money for free false teeth (as WFB would say), just say so — put it out there. And if you don’t like the Iraq War, fine. But gimme a break . . .
Do you know what I mean?
Here is another pet theme: Too few people appreciate what risks Iraqi politicians take when they step up to serve. I am always hearing Iraqi politicians condemned and belittled, and often they deserve it. But a little perspective is nice. A little perspective would be nice at, for example, Davos: where I hear political leaders who know nothing but comfort knock Iraqi leaders, who are facing assassination and kidnapping and other things every day. Some of those political leaders, by the way — the knocking ones — are American.
Anyway, I thought of all this when reading
this news article. It begins, “At least 12 Iraqis were killed Sunday in a spate of attacks” — and later we read,
The deadliest attack was in the town of Khalis in Diyala Province, northeast of Baghdad. Five civilians were killed and 10 were wounded when a bomb was detonated in the path of a car carrying the district’s top two political and military officials, according to a provincial security official.
The two officials, Uday al-Khadran, the district commissioner, and Lt. Col. Nihad al-Saadi, were wounded in the attack, the sixth attempt on Mr. Khadran’s life since he took office in 2004.
Yup. The sixth attempt on Khadran’s life since 2004. And how many such attempts have you and I faced? Last month, I watched Iraqi “carabinieri” being trained for the purpose of “dignitary protection.” And it is very, very serious business. Of course Iraqi politicians screw up — bad. And they should be called on it. But, myself, I always cut them a little slack . . .
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