Glenn Greenwald complains that Barack Obama's various pecadillos are covered more than John Yoo because journalists are a bunch of arrogant lightweights:
Needless to say, these serious and accomplished political journalists are only focusing on these stupid and trivial matters because this is what the Regular Folk care about. They speak for the Regular People, and what the Regular People care about is not Iraq or the looming recession or health care or lobbyist control of our government or anything that would strain the brain of these reporters. What those nice little Regular Folk care about is whether Obama is Regular Folk just like them, whether he can bowl and wants to gorge himself with junk food.Our nation's coddled, insulated journalist class reaches these conclusions about what Regular Folk think using the most self-referential, self-absorbed thought process imaginable. The proof that the Regular People are interested in these things is that . . . the journalists themselves chatter about it endlessly.
Daniel Drezner responds:
To me, this indicates the following:1) Comparing NEXIS searches of events where the media cycle has yet to play out with events where the media cycle has played out is really disingenuous way of making one's point;
2) There are more press mentions of an event when the target of the media inquiry actually responds to the press. To my knowledge, John Yoo has said nothing since the terror memo was leaked, and the Bush administration has clammed up as well. Barack Obama, on the other hand, clearly did respond to the Jeremiah Wright business, leading to multiple news cycles about that issue;
3) Shockingly, the press appears to be more interested in events that determine the future (i.e., who will be the next president?) than in events that look back at the past. [Isn't that a slanted way of contrasting these events?-ed. Compared to Greenwald's slant? No, not really.];
4) Glenn Greenwald might be a good blogger/columnist, but he's not that great at social science.
For a guy who works in the media, he doesn't know much about his profession, either.
Start with Barack Obama. Americans care more about him than John Yoo because, well, John Yoo isn't running for president. Indeed, if one in ten Americans had even heard of John Yoo, I would be shocked, because most people don't care about minor government functionaries, no matter how pivotal their role may be in screwing up the world. I live in Washington DC, the throbbing heart of political trivia, and my sister works for HUD. Nonethelss, I had to look up the name of Alphonso Jackson, the HUD secretary, when allegations surfaced that he had grossly misused his office to help friends. After being forced to step down, he garnered slightly more Nexis hits than John Yoo's name in the last month. But both lost out to Jamie Lynn Spears, who ooh! might be secretly engaged.
This is not because journalists are insulated from their readers. It is because readers buy more papers with headlines about Jamie Lynn Spears than they do with headlines about Alphonso Jackson or John Yoo, since as I think I just mentioned, they have never heard of either person. You can lead a consumer to stories of vital national importance, but you cannot make him care. You can just make him pass over your paper in favor of the Enquirer.
It's all very well to say that journalists should cover the more serious stories, and bloggers like Glenn Greenwald, and maybe occasionally me, make such complaints all the time. But even really successful bloggers on things like economic and foreign policy have fewer daily readers than a struggling local paper in a moderately sized midwestern city. Now imagine those readers evenly distributed across a nation of 300 million, and then ask yourself why their concerns do not headline every paper. As well to wonder why they aren't all carrying stories on fire response times in the Syracuse, NY area.
Obviously, I think John Yoo's adventures are a matter of slightly greater national importance. (As indeed do our nation's media, who--aside from the Syracuse Post-Standard--ran virtually no coverage of the topic over the last month.) But voters can't do much about John Yoo now, other than choose a different type of president. Maybe they should do that by eagerly scanning Obama and Clinton and McCain's platforms--though I am at a loss to think how one might have divined a John Yoo from the anodyne folia of the Bush 2000 campaign. As far as anyone can tell, however, this is not how voters decide. Believe me, nearly every journalist in DC wants to write in-depth stories on foreign policy questions, and nearly every editor in the nation would dearly love to sell them. If there were a millions-deep wellspring of interest in the topic, some enterprising publication would already have tapped it dry.
The great unanswerable question: would Drezner and Megan make the same arguments if it was McCain Greenwald was defending? (Answer: Megan, maybe. Drezner, no way. But then, I'm failing to honor the number one rule of talking about Drezner, saying something other than "He's such a nice guy!")
The corollary: would Greenwald actually defend McCain using the same kind of argument to defend Obama? (Answer: very, very unlikely.)
Uhhhhhhhhhh
Saying a question is unanswerable and then immediately answering it... not my proudest moment.
Ummm . . . as I have already announced that the only major party candidate I will consider voting for is Barack Obama, I don't know why you think I'd be more interested in defending McCain.
I think stories about Barack Obama bowling are stupid, and I'm not particularly interested in his minister. But claiming that American political coverage doesn't follow Glenn Greenwald's preferred lines because journalists are lightweights who hate Barack Obama displays profound ignorance of his own industry.
You didn't feel compelled to read the entirety of a 50 word comment?
America is torturing people. A prominent law professor from one of our best schools is writing papers defending and enabling torture. However, people are writing about Obama bowling.
I know you have access to Nexis. You should do a comparison on the coverage of the Yoo torture memo and Ward Churchill.
You didn't feel compelled to read the entirety of a 50 word comment?
You have trained her well.
Meanwhile...Glenn Greenwald? Isn't that like shooting fish in a gun barrel? I say, let him have his sop and hope he doesn't start venting his spleen against anything meaningful.
Most journos seems to be lighweights who are schilling for Obama, but maybe that's just NBC (and various permutations thereof) and the NYT.
There's nothing in Obama for anyone who seriously considers themselves to be a classical liberal or any kind of libertarian. OTOH, there's not much there in McCain or Clinton either.
Rev. Wright, as an individual, is not particularly important - rather, he is part of a patterin in BHO's life - all of his companions, mentors and teachers seem to be rather radical - from his commie father who he never knew (but who's approval he still seems to seek in his book), to his lefty hippie mother, to William Ayers, to his America-bashing wife through to his America and Whitey hating pastor of 20 years - kind of a pattern, no? Mix in the fact that he almost completely avoids actual policy positions as part of his campaign (hope and/or change are not plans) and his uber-liberal Senate ranking, and I think we have a guy well to the left of Governor Dean, albeit a pretty nice, collegial guy. Unlike most Dems/politicians, he's not a dick to his opponents, but he's a hard-core lefty nonetheless.
Mouse: have you changed names again?
Mickslam: I'll pose the same question to you as in the last thread. The Yoo "torture memo" is here.
Please show the part where Yoo defends or enables torture. Or, if that memo is not what you were referring to, please give me a link or something to whatever it is that supports you assertion.
Drezner, April 7:
To my knowledge, John Yoo has said nothing since the terror memo was leaked, and the Bush administration has clammed up as well.
Washington Post, April 2:
Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, defended the memo in an e-mail yesterday, saying the Justice Department altered its opinions "for appearances' sake." He said his successors "ignored the Department's long tradition in defending the President's authority in wartime."
"Far from inventing some novel interpretation of the Constitution," Yoo wrote, "our legal advice to the President, in fact, was near boilerplate."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/01/AR2008040102213_2.html
Drezner might be a good janitor, but he blows at being a journalist, blogger, social scientist or anything else that requires mental effort. No wonder he was denied tenure.
as I have already announced that the only major party candidate I will consider voting for is Barack Obama
I dunno, Obama could be worse than McCain. The devil you konw, right? That's the libertarian analysis.
How the hell did you completely miss Greenwald's point, that the media pays more attention to Barack Obama's bowling, John Kerry's windsurfing, and George Bush's manliness at being a cowboy than actual issues?
I thought Drezner stopped guestblogging for you.
Megan, Glenn Greenwald is no idiot, and he's perfectly well aware that one of the reasons why torture crimes committed by this administration get less press coverage than Britney Spears is that media outlets are businesses and they get more readers covering Britney than torture. (Your own magazine's current issue comes to mind, cf. The American Prospect.)
Greenwald's point--obvious to all--is that the press has obligations over and beyond making money. It needs to rethink its proclivity to covering drug-addicted celebrities and mocking politicians for non-substantive reasons, like being bad at bowling.
He's urging the media to improve, to serve the country by seriously reporting issues that matter greatly to this country, even though some people don't care. Your lecturing him on the business realities of journalism is plain silly.
I love this post because it points out the false equivalencies horrible people like Greenwald employ all the time in their dishonest attack pieces. Of course, John Yoo and Barack Obama can't be compared, for the very reasons you point out, i.e., Obama's running for president, Yoo's not.
But I am, perhaps, a bit perplexed by your opening sentence where you state that, "Greenwald complains that Barack Obama's various pecadillos [sic] are covered more than John Yoo [sic] because journalists are a bunch of arrogant lightweights."
I understand that bowling a 47 might be considered a "peccadillo." But can you say the same thing about Yoo as the architect of the unprecedented policy of torture that our country embarked upon? Bowling a 47 might be a peccadillo; torturing people is not.
"Believe me, nearly every journalist in DC wants to write in-depth stories on foreign policy questions, and nearly every editor in the nation would dearly love to sell them."--MM
" By the end of episode two, we were lamenting the absence of a revolution to which we could credibly pledge our "Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor".--MM
Megan,
what other lies do journo's tell themselves to quell Conscience's mid-night pangs?
con·science (knshns)
n.
1.
a. The awareness of a moral or ethical aspect to one's conduct together with the urge to prefer right over wrong: Let your conscience be your guide.
b. A source of moral or ethical judgment or pronouncement: a document that serves as the nation's conscience.
c. Conformity to one's own sense of right conduct: a person of unflagging conscience.
2. The part of the superego in psychoanalysis that judges the ethical nature of one's actions and thoughts and then transmits such determinations to the ego for consideration.
3. Obsolete Consciousness.
Idiom:
in (all good) conscience
In all truth or fairness.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin cnscientia, from cnscins, cnscient-, present participle of cnscre, to be conscious of : com-, intensive pref.; see com- + scre, to know; see skei- in Indo-European roots.]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
conscience·less adj.
ThesaurusLegend: Synonyms Related Words AntonymsNoun 1. conscience - motivation deriving logically from ethical or moral principles that govern a person's thoughts and actions
moral sense, scruples, sense of right and wrong
superego - (psychoanalysis) that part of the unconscious mind that acts as a conscience
ethical motive, ethics, morals, morality - motivation based on ideas of right and wrong
small voice, voice of conscience, wee small voice - an inner voice that judges your behavior
sense of duty, sense of shame - a motivating awareness of ethical responsibility
2. conscience - conformity to one's own sense of right conduct; "a person of unflagging conscience"
morality - concern with the distinction between good and evil or right and wrong; right or good conduct
conscientiousness - the quality of being in accord with the dictates of conscience
unconscientiousness - the quality of being willing to ignore the dictates of conscience
3. conscience - a feeling of shame when you do something immoral; "he has no conscience about his cruelty"
shame - a painful emotion resulting from an awareness of inadequacy or guilt
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/conscience
though I am at a loss to think how one might have divined a John Yoo from the anodyne folia of the Bush 2000 campaign
The presence of Dick Cheney. His alarming view of the power of the Presidency was evident in his Iran-Contra dissent. But in 2000, he was just the running mate of the guy you could see yourself having a beer with.
The media has no "responsibility" to anyone. The 1st amendment says that you have freedom of the press (among others). It does not say that the press has to write what you think is important.
What annoys Greenwald is: 1. He doesn't get to control the entire debate (although we could argue about who the media is in the tank for), 2. The mass of people don't agree with him (rightly or wrongly) about what is important enough to be worthy of coverage, and finally 3. A sizable chunk of the population agrees that the president should be allowed to have the power to decide whether or not to torture terrorists (a smaller but not insignificant number thinks it should be allowed period).
Start with Barack Obama. Americans care more about him than John Yoo because, well, John Yoo isn't running for president.
And hence Americans care more about Obama's bowling than about Yoo's legal arguments which facilitated torture by the US government? If Yoo barricaded himself into the Berkeley library and started shooting pedestrians with a high-powered rifle, would Americans care less about this than about Barack Obama trimming his cuticles?
This is silly. Americans paid more attention to the bowling story because 1. there was amusing video footage and 2. America is a debased and illiterate nation of zoned-out morons drooling in front of their monitors, and this goes for the voters and the journalists alike. Since the entire system is corrupt, it's easy when anyone points to one element (viz. Greenwald pointing to journalists) to say they're simply reacting to the other parts of the system, and it's not their fault. But it is, in fact, their fault for running these stories, just as it is the voters' fault that they prefer to read them.
I exaggerate for effect, obviously. Only perhaps 60% of Americans are zoned-out morons drooling in front of their monitors.
The media has no "responsibility" to anyone. The 1st amendment says that you have freedom of the press (among others).
Interestingly, there exist certain duties which are morally binding even though they are not enumerated in the US Constitution or legal code. The Hippocratic oath, honor thy father and mother, and a few others I think.
The press has a morally binding duty to report on stuff that no one wants to read? That's an odd sort of moral obligation.
You think nobody wants to read about torture? Why was Abu Ghraib such a big story then?
You'd think with so many constitutionalists around here there might be a few more people arguing that of course anything that violates the constitution and is illegal as f*ck should be shouted from the rooftops. But whatever, dude's not running for office so who cares.
Remember, if it's already happened then nobody cares. If it might happen we need to spend days and months examining it.
I don't know that they report on Obama's peccadillos at all. Not bowling well, come on, that's a puff piece kind of along the line of the early 20th century candidate wearing an Indian headdress at some campaign event. It says he's game, what we would like to be or invited to be or accredited for even if we can't do the event like the president throwing the first baseball pitch. Peccadillos? How about his not renouncing his warm up speaker calling McCain a "warmonger?" How about his continuing to say McCain is for a '100 year war in Iraq;' it doesn't reflect the original quote; even the liberal Columbia Journalism Review says that.
John Yoo says the 5th and 8th amendment didn't apply to irregular enemy combatants if not US citizens. Offhand I don't think he should be struck by lightning.
Yes, the press does have an obligation.
They have enormously wide latitude to write about politicians without being sued for slander because of the First Amendment. It's almost impossible for a politician to win a lawsuit against the press for writing lies--you have to show "with malice."
The reason why it's next to impossible for a politician to sue a media outlet is because the Supreme Court decided that a truly free press--allowed to criticize our political leaders either fairly or unfairly--is much, much more important than the politician's ability to collect money damages.
The quid pro quo is that the media can say pretty much whatever they want, because a vigorous, inquiring press is essential to a free society. But they have to act in the public's interest--not by publishing celebrity gossip--but by reporting serious issues, like torture, that matter a great deal to our country as a whole.
BladeDoc says,
What annoys Greenwald is:...
Greenwald also appears to be annoyed by the torture, And the unfortunate lack of coverage of how the U.S. administration's torture policies came to be.
Rob,
Did you even read the very first paragraph of the memo?
mickslam
How about his not renouncing his warm up speaker calling McCain a "warmonger?"
I call topic drift. However, John McCain simply is a warmonger:
warmonger
noun
1. (pejorative) someone who advocates war; a militarist
The notion that Obama should distance himself from someone who called McCain a warmonger is ludicrous. It's like saying McCain should distance himself from any adviser who calls Obama a big-government liberal. Except that calling McCain a warmonger is at least accurate.
I can't help but wonder what the libertarian position on torture or warmongering. I surely know what the pseudo-libertarian (i.e., Republican) positions are. But what are the real libertarian positions?
Obama immediately issued a statement saying that McCain is not a warmonger (showing that Obama is not always honest!) and that McCain should not be called one. But he didn't use the word "renounce" or "condemn" in the statement so, since running for president is apparently a year long game of Password, the Obama statement doesn't count.
"It's all very well to say that journalists should cover the more serious stories, and bloggers like Glenn Greenwald, and maybe occasionally me, make such complaints all the time. But even really successful bloggers on things like economic and foreign policy have fewer daily readers than a struggling local paper in a moderately sized midwestern city. Now imagine those readers evenly distributed across a nation of 300 million, and then ask yourself why their concerns do not headline every paper. As well to wonder why they aren't all carrying stories on fire response times in the Syracuse, NY area.
Obviously, I think John Yoo's adventures are a matter of slightly greater national importance. (As indeed do our nation's media, who--aside from the Syracuse Post-Standard--ran virtually no coverage of the topic over the last month.)"
The writing (I can't even begin to guess at the logic) is this horrendous passage is unworthy of the author or, for that matter, any professional journalist working in English.
Here's hoping it's an aberattion.
McArdle should give serious thought to revising the above. What she has now wouldn't pass muster in a freshman comp class at a community college.
Failing that, she should simply explain what she was trying to say. You know - have another go at it.
Sorry to be so blunt, but this is truly a horror of prose, managing to be both clunky and incoherent.
Did you even read the very first paragraph of the memo?
Yes. Executive summary for non-lawywers: if it isn't torture under the US code, it also isn't torture under the Torture Convention. Also, the ICC lacks jurisdiction because the US never ratified the treaty.
Somebody explain to me how this is naked grab for Executive power.
I will look for the other memo tomorrow, but if someone has it to hand, that would be nice.
Megan - Please, I can't find the section in Greenwald's column where he states--or even implies--that "journalists are lightweights who hate Barack Obama". Can you point it out for me?
What kind of an idiot stages a bowling photo op when they can't actually bowl? Seriously, I don't care that he can't bowl - I haven't touched a real bowling ball in about a decade (I don't think that Wii bowling counts) - but Obama claims that his superior "judgment" is one of his best qualifications to be President. I think that photo op showed a serious lack of judgment, though it is not as bad as Kerry's picture in the powder-blue space-bunny suit.
holdfast: you aren't serious, right? Obama has run one of the most amazing political campaigns of recent times and is reshaping the political landscape and you seize on his being caught bowling badly as an proof of his poor (political) judgement! Perhaps he isn't so fantastically insecure and is happy to just turn up and have a go.
Blake is right that Greenwald is questioning the commercial ethic. He probably doesn't realise just how difficult it is to send back this tide--even breaking from the received narrative when you know it is hoey is incredibly hard: in that sense Megan is right. To that end Greenwald should find a different language that is much less dismissive of journalists. If he would do that and lots more people would join Greenwald then there would be a better chance of getting something done.
The real answer is that people should stop receiving their news passively and get alot more of their news and analysis through blogs (and disconnect altogether from broadcast media). I used to get the Guardian newspaper but now refuse but read the same articles on their blog--it is like being in a different world. Not everyone is going to do this but to the extent that people do the situation will become more sane.
I absolutely second the call to completely disconnect from broadcast media. Television news is run by people who are just plain stupid. The characteristics which are rewarded in the TV marketplace have nothing to do with being able to analyze the political world in any kind of intelligent fashion; in fact those characteristics are actively hostile to intelligent analysis. Obama's extraordinary speech on race was generally received intelligently and respectfully in the print media, even by those who disagreed with him. The TV newsmedia responded as usual: by stepping on their tongues, sticking their fingers in their noses and farting.
I often bemoan the lack of coverage of real issues when there's so much time spent covering fluff.
But, then, I recall the all-too-common incidents where journalists tell us things like, oh, the Bush administration wants to reclassify fast food jobs as manufacturing. A story that was completely inaccurate, and stemmed from a very simple example described in a publication, a couple of sentences in plain English, published on plain, easy-to-read paper, and printed online in the usual English alphabet with which journalists are ostensibly familiar.
They can't get sh*t like that right, I don't want them "informing" people on vastly more complex topics any more than we absolutely have to allow them.
booksfoe, My memory is apparently short. Please point out the comments on the recent post 'The Confederate problem' where 'militarist' was a characteristic applid to those who supported Lincoln's war.
My comment: This is post is... dumb.
It's all very well to say that journalists should cover the more serious stories, and bloggers like Glenn Greenwald, and maybe occasionally me, make such complaints all the time.
Gee, that's funny. I read Greenwald exact post as... exactly doing the thing you just said here is "all very well". So if it is, in fact, "all very well", then why did you spend a whole blog post ripping him about it?
Meanwhile, Drezner comes up with a couple simple excuses that most eighth-graders could have come up with. I have a feeling that Mr. Greenwald could have come up with them as well, but Greenwald's point was not to come up with all the petty, self-interested reasons why journalists do a bad job at actual journalism. Greenwald is an outrage driver who seems problems as morally evil and demands change.
And that's really what you find offensive about the man. Here, I hand you the Mickey Kaus Lifetime Achievement Award, given to a blogger (call him "B"), in response to blogger A's post about some topic, writes a post saying:
#1. Blogger A was really shrill, man.
#2. Oh, yeah, I mean, I agree with Blogger A, you know, in theory.
#3. But geez, Blogger A. Really impolite.
#4. Don't forget about all these crappy and stupid reasons why the status quo is the way it is. Sure, they're not *good* reasons. But really, you can't blame people for doing bad things for stupid reasons.
#5. Really, the problem here isn't [topic]. The problem is Blogger A's lack of a tone of resignation, indifference, or abstract meandering.
Anyone who cares already knows about John Yoo's memos. How would further coverage inform anyone? There really just isn't anything new in this memo, and this issue is years old.
What would the stories even really say? A memo is released that says what we all know it said anyway? This isn't even remotely about that.
Gleen Greenwald is clearly just mad that the media isn't following his narrative in this. He continually links the memos to Abu Gharaib, which is ridiculous, and the whole issue is idiotic anyway. So what if John Yoo wrote a theoretical defense of various actions?
It doesn't make him responsible for anything. John Yoo had an opinion, and intepretion of what the law might mean. That's it. Glenn's entire approach to condemning Yoo for war crimes stems from his conflation of writing a theoretical memo to "authorizing" war crimes themselves. Not only that, but he then assumes that these war crimes occurred. I mean, wah?
How is this nonsense any more or less ridiculous that what Glenn alleges about Yoo's actions? Glenn is criminalizing legal opinions now, and he's doing with incoherent statements like "used the law as his instrument to authorize criminality." What the hell does that mean? If he's using the law, how is it criminal?
Glenn imagines himself the supreme and final authority on what the law is. He doesn't really argue how Yoo's argument are incorrect, he just rants and raves about how the fact he even suggested them is not only an affront to the law but illegal. Wow. Note to self: Don't discuss the law with Glenn, he might accuse me of breaking it for doing so.
Glenn just wants this story to repeat in the news until the American people finally share his indignation. That hasn't been forthcoming (and won't be), and that's why he's so upset.
Re: Teh Torture and Yoo (if we're permitted to discuss), good stuff here.
Believe me, nearly every journalist in DC wants to write in-depth stories on foreign policy questions, and nearly every editor in the nation would dearly love to sell them.
hahahahahaha ROTFLMAO.....
wait, you were being serious?
The funniest thing about this blog post is that the second paragraph that McArdle cites from Greenwald's article:
describes her reasoning, exactly, later on in this post:
I dunno, maybe the National Enquirer is popular because its reporters do actual reporting rather than spending their time justifying their own laziness. I never thought I'd say this, but maybe the writers at The Atlantic could take a few lessons from them.
Torture is abhorent, but to me, and I think to Greenwald, the question of our basic civil liberties is the key issue raised by Yoo's memo. I take Article I, Section 9, of the Constitution (guaranteeing habeas corpus rights) and the Sixth Amendment (guaranteeing a speedy trial and legal representation) to be the basis of our liberties. It seems evident that these are being infringed by the Bush administration in the name of national security, and that a substantial number of people posting in this thread agree with the President's view that he can do anything he likes in his role as Commander in Chief. I'm not surprised by this, but I still think it's very sad.
How the hell did you completely miss Greenwald's point
I suspect the answer to this question is "intentionally."
Gee megan- Miss the point much? Maybe the reason no one has heard of John Yoo is because the establishment media does not report anything about him to the public? Is it possible that the media not fullfilling their purpose might have something to do with how missinformed the public is in general?
Boy... Thick aren't we.
Spencer:
Glenn just put up a new post where he rips Drezner and McArdle a new one. Good times!!
I should have posted the link. Here.
Megan, I typically find your posts interesting, even if I disagree with them. Here, you're either being intellectually dishonest or this entire post is a perfect example of exactly the mindset Glenn is describing.
I don't know which, and at this point I no longer care.
/ignore
Rob you realize that the memo by Yoo redefines torture in the following way right? On page 3 of the brief.
"The United States understands that, in order to constitute torture an act must be specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering ..."
In other words if your intent is to torture someone for the sake of torturing someone, that's illegal. But if you are torturing someone for information well that's fine. Just below this paragraph they make this argument explicit.
"it made crystal clear that the intent requirement for torture was specific intent." They took the term "intentionally inflicted" to mean that the intent is the intent to cause harm. If you tortured someone to get information your "intent" wasn't to cause harm but to get information. The language "intentionally inflicted" was added to cover accidental harm, not to add an intent requirement for torture.
Rob - you clearly didn't read the memo and since the administration has since repudiated this memo, I wouldn't spend too much energy defending it. It redefined torture in a a way that was convienent for the administration.
"Believe me, nearly every journalist in DC wants to write in-depth stories on foreign policy questions, and nearly every editor in the nation would dearly love to sell them."--MM
" By the end of episode two, we were lamenting the absence of a revolution to which we could credibly pledge our "Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor".--MM
Megan,
what other lies do journo's tell themselves to quell Conscience's mid-night pangs?
from GG's link, above:
"It can never be the case that there is anything profoundly wrong -- fundamentally wrong -- with the American political establishment. Why not? Because the McArdles and Drezners both support it and are part of it, and they are Good and thus can't possibly be responsible for things like "war crimes" or "torture regimes" or illegal wars of aggression. That's why the political establishment is so desperate to stay in Iraq until we "win" and to convince everyone that the public supports them again. They are desperate to wash their hands of that which they enabled so they can pretend they never did.
As is frequently pointed out by historians and other scholars, the types of aggressive wars that McArdle, Drezner and their fellow establishment mavens support inevitably lead to exactly the sort of war crimes and pervasive government lawbreaking which they want to pretend doesn't matter. Here is what lead American prosecutor Robert Jackson said in his closing statement at the Nuremberg Trials:
We charge unlawful aggression but we are not trying the motives, hopes or frustrations which may have led Germany to resort to aggressive war as an instrument of policy . . . It merely requires that the status quo not be attacked by violent means and that policies be not advanced by war. . . .
The central crime in this pattern of crimes, the kingpin which holds them all together, is the plot for aggressive wars. The chief reason for international cognizance of these crimes lies in this fact. Have we established the Plan or Conspiracy to make aggressive war?
Aggressive war is the linchpin of war crimes and tyranny and inevitably produces them. And that's precisely the evidence that is now emerging as a result of the endless, aggressive war people like McArdle and Drezner supported -- the systematic implementation of a regime of torture and lawless detention by the highest levels of our government, the assertion of the right to suspend even the most basic Constitutional liberties such as the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, the seizure of power even to break the law and to immunize the lawbreakers, and the ongoing willingness of our highest government officials to lie about terrorist attacks and the law in order to obtain still more unchecked power.
But the people who caused and enabled that to happen are -- understandably so -- desperate to avoid acknowledging what they've done. Hence, these are all just irrelevant matters of the dead and worthless past. They're just the totally unexpected by-products of isolated bad actors like Lynndie England and John Yoo -- "low-level functionaries" -- and it's all been fixed now anyway. There's no real reason to harp on it or have our media investigate it. We have a fun presidential election to watch on the TV and there's no reason to let dreary, partisan, overheated accusations get in the way of the unfolding soap opera.
Is Obama smoking again? Why can't he bowl? Did you see the way he nibbled on his chocolate like a girl? Let's watch those Jeremiah Wright videos again. Hillary was in the White House when Bill played with his cigars!!! "What's wrong with that?," ask the befuddled Megan McArdles and Dan Drezners of the world. That's what they want to focus on so that what they've done continues to be ignored, concealed and forgotten.
-- Glenn Greenwald
Brophy: Find me a figure in the Civil War who also supported the Mexican-American War and went on to advocate the Indian Wars, and I'll be happy to name him a warmonger. I'm sure they were legion. There were no doubt plenty of warmongers among Northerners who supported that war, as well as plenty of people who reluctantly supported only that war, and not the others, because of its moral urgency. Sort of like Barack Obama, who thinks the wars in Afghanistan and Kosovo were wars of necessity, but the wars in Iraq and Vietnam were stupid mistakes.
John McCain, in contrast, has supported 9 of our last 5 wars. He's a warmonger.
I'm afraid Glenn ground your bones dust this morning.
Ta ta.
I think Greenwald is kind of a crappy writer and has an overly literalistic and legalistic cast of mind. But on the substance of this point, he's pretty clearly right.
OF COURSE american journalists are lightweight. bush and his thugs have turned your country into a fascist nightmare, and it is simply accepted. you guys are TORTURING people for fucks sake. you argue politely over what constitutes torture, splitting your fascist fucking hairs. you have gulags, secret prisons. and none of this matters. it's all business as usual, pathetic stories about non-issues, whilst you ignore the fascist swill.
greenwald is right. he's a light shining in your black bloody hole.
The press's fixation on Obama's bowling and pastor (but not McCain's endorsement by religious extremists like Hagee and Parsley) to the exclusion of John Yoo coverage -- for example -- is very demeaning to the press itself, because it shows two things: (1) Spoonfeeding this worthless pap to the American public shows in what low regard the press holds the American public it nevertheless depends on to keep it in business, and (2) this type of empty, inconsequential celebrity-oriented "reporting" may well be the only type of reporting the press is capable of anymore.
You seem oblivious to the bad light this type of reporting shows the press in.
The press decides what news it will provide to the public, not the other way around. The public isn't demanding coverage of Barak Obama's bowling prowess. The press is giving it to them whether they want it or not -- and I for one don't want it. I want coverage of consequential matters like John Yoo, and the unprecedented politicization of the DOJ.
Ever since its largely uncritical acceptance of the administration's pretense for the Iraq invasion, the mainstream press has had egg all over its face, and it keeps adding more layers of rotten egg to its collective face all the time. Glenn Greenwald holds a brightly lit mirror up to those egg-covered faces. No wonder you don't like it.
Madam;
The United States government has willingly and even enthusiastically caused innocent men to be tortured to death and Yoo worked closely with the Administration at the very highest levels to make this happen.
You claim that Americans don't care about this; I put it to you that you are the one who doesn't care about this: I put it to you further that even if all of America were the heartless uncaring psychopaths you make them out to be, it'd be your responsibility as a member of the media to expose the horrible crimes committed in their name and to try to make them care.
"Also, the ICC lacks jurisdiction because the US never ratified the treaty."
Lucky that lack of ratification, otherwise we would be guilty of torturing people.
Well, on preview I see that Glenn Greenwald nailed it; from his article:
"At bottom, both McArdle and Drezner are defending media fixations on the pettiest and stupidest of matters while ignoring the weightiest. Rather obviously, the issue isn't that they're covering Barack Obama too much and John Yoo not enough. The issue is that more Americans were aware of how much John Edwards paid for his haircut than were aware that Saddam Hussein didn't personally plan the 9/11 attacks -- far more. Does someone who defends that media behavior -- who is incapable of recognizing why that's so destructive -- really merit any serious refutation?"
I'm curious, Ms. McArdle: can you possibly refute this?
Ms. McArdle,
No no no no no no no. Sorry, that's what keeps repeating in my head when I read your blog entry. John Yoo wrote a memorandum that became the basis for the Bush administration's foreign and domestic policies; policies that in varying degrees continue to be employed today. It is not looking backwards, the events that took place only five, six, seven years ago have dramatic impact upon how our government runs today! For example, many of the arguments about FISA are based upon the same fallacies that Yoo based his memorandum such as during 'wartime' a President is given unlimited power such as search and seizure power. For you, a political reporter, to just gloss over the Yoo documents as artifacts from the past that have little bearing upon today's "news" stuns me. I would think the suspension of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States would warrant a little interest, if not concern, on your part. What I want from news organizations, rather, DEMAND from news organizations today is to treat governmental matters seriously and to investigate them truly in-depth. If I want to learn about Obama's bowling or Clinton's cackle I'll always know I can look in The National Enquirer or on Entertainment Tonight.
Sincerely,
Joshua
ps. I'm disappointed that a political reporter would not know Alfonzo Jackson or the controversies that surrounded him before his resignation. Just had to write that because it makes me further concerned about our Washington-based, establishment press.
Megan McArdle says:
My response to this:
Speaking for myself and no one else, I read Glenn Greenwald every day, and Megan McArdle hardly at all. After 35 years as a professional journalist, I think that by now I can tell substance from filler.
By Megan's reasoning, McDonald's must be serving the best food in America because more people eat there than anywhere else. Well, in terms of thought-provoking commentary, you're feeding us McDonald's, Megan, and Greenwald is serving us big juicy steaks. That's my consumer feedback from the marketplace of ideas.
Blake, who in your opinion does not have a duty to serve the country? Your statement of the media could apply to just about any organization or individual. Do you follow the McCainian idea that national service is the responsibility for all within the nation?
brooksfoe, honoring thy father and mother is a choice, not a duty, regardless of the text in which it was published.
So Megan's argument is: The press isn't a bunch of lightweights, they simply _act_ like a bunch of lightwieights. I don't see how that invalidates Greenwald's point. I'm sure you all _really, really_ want to investigate US torture policy (just like you _really_ wanted to do real journalism in the run-up to the war). Well boo hoo.
Megan, it's hardly my concern what the market perceptions of the news directors are at various news channels. Since their product claims to be "news," I hold them to a different standard, and I don't remain morally neutral under by claiming, "oh, it's just business." I look at who benefits from such idiocy, and I condemn it, forcefully.
You're defending such deviant behavior from the media for the same reason you're not too concerned about the institutionalization of torture: you're a morally vacuous human being.
I can't help but feel embarrassed for you, Megan. Glenn so outclasses you as a thinker and writer, that merely reading this post makes me cringe. Is this really what you want to defend? His response to this post has shut you down completely, which was entirely predictable. What's really puzzling is that you have no shame, and will continue this pathetic, dimwitted blog, impervious to pointed and valid criticisms. After all, it can't be the case that you are wrong headed, have poor judgment, or lack insight and perspective. That just isn't possible, so why not keep scribbling?
Oh, and I love the argument that events from a year or two ago are "the past." Ah yes ... Gitmo, secret rendition camps, illegal wiretapping ... such a dark era in American history. I'm so glad our nation has moved on!
Ms. McArdle,
No no no no no no no. Sorry, that's what keeps repeating in my head when I read your blog entry. John Yoo wrote a memorandum that became the basis for the Bush administration's foreign and domestic policies; policies that in varying degrees continue to be employed today. It is not looking backwards, the events that took place only five, six, seven years ago have dramatic impact upon how our government runs today! For example, many of the arguments about FISA are based upon the same fallacies that Yoo based his memorandum such as during 'wartime' a President is given unlimited power such as search and seizure power. For you, a political reporter, to just gloss over the Yoo documents as artifacts from the past that have little bearing upon today's "news" stuns me. I would think the suspension of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States would warrant a little interest, if not concern, on your part. What I want from news organizations, rather, DEMAND from news organizations today is to treat governmental matters seriously and to investigate them truly in-depth. If I want to learn about Obama's bowling or Clinton's cackle I'll always know I can look in The National Enquirer or on Entertainment Tonight.
Sincerely,
Joshua
ps. I'm disappointed that a political reporter would not know Alfonzo Jackson or the controversies that surrounded him before his resignation. Just had to write that because it makes me further concerned about our Washington-based, establishment press.
Oh, my.
Ms. McCardle if I were you I'd quit while I'm behind. You are obviously not in the same league as Mr. Greenwald. Seriously, your piece, rather than refuting Mr. Greenwald's contention about the media actually supports it. And the most painful thing for your readers to see is that you are so far gone that you don't even recognize that fact.
Megan,
Just curious, how's your head after that GlennZilla! pile driver?
That's about all I have time for - the rest of your rant is gah-bige.
"Start with Barack Obama. Americans care more about him than John Yoo because, well, John Yoo isn't running for president."
Hahahhahahahaha....You cannot be serious. How would you know, since the media has written very little about Yoo? As yoo-sual, you are presuming that you stand for the public's interest, when in fact you're contributing to the public's ignorance.
But, just to claim that Obama's bowling is of more interest to the public than the administration's torture is mind-blowing.
Is Megan McCardle really an experienced journalist? Writing entertainment news is not journalism. Who cares how a candidate bowls when the top 5 or 6 people from the Justice and Defense Departments and the White House are being advised not to leave the country so as not to be arrested as war criminals? When CIA operatives are being encouraged to purchase liability insurance against the possibility of being sued for actions sanctioned by the war criminals? Can any serious citizen think that what any candidate ate in the Reading Terminal or Wilburs Chocolate measures up against war crimes? We need serious change. Our media has served us so poorly over the last several years and now we find out why. They aren't really journalists, only titillators and enterntainment providers.
Is Megan McCardle really an experienced journalist? Writing entertainment news is not journalism. Who cares how a candidate bowls when the top 5 or 6 people from the Justice and Defense Departments and the White House are being advised not to leave the country so as not to be arrested as war criminals? When CIA operatives are being encouraged to purchase liability insurance against the possibility of being sued for actions sanctioned by the war criminals? Can any serious citizen think that what any candidate ate in the Reading Terminal or Wilburs Chocolate measures up against war crimes? We need serious change. Our media has served us so poorly over the last several years and now we find out why. They aren't really journalists, only titillators and enterntainment providers.
ivan, Greenwald's "logic" dictates that McDonald's should focus on serving people what Greenwald thinks they should eat, instead of what its customers know they want to eat.
Ms. McCardle:
Thanks for affirming Mr. Greenwald's thesis with such a self-damning post.
as far as i'm concerned, this poster -steve - said it all:
I can't help but feel embarrassed for you, Megan. Glenn so outclasses you as a thinker and writer, that merely reading this post makes me cringe. Is this really what you want to defend? His response to this post has shut you down completely, which was entirely predictable. What's really puzzling is that you have no shame, and will continue this pathetic, dimwitted blog, impervious to pointed and valid criticisms. After all, it can't be the case that you are wrong headed, have poor judgment, or lack insight and perspective. That just isn't possible, so why not keep scribbling?
like other posters, i don't read this blog much at all. when it first started, i would drift over often, just to see if anything interesting was going on.
sadly, megan is such a dunce i simply don't waste my time anymore.
i do, however, read greenwald everyday, and only ventured over here again because he referenced this posting.
what is truly amusing to me is the fact that she gladly reveals her ignorance and appears to wear it as a badge of honor. for instance, the fact that she was, by her own admission, ignorant of alphonso jackson's identity is startling. any citizen -let alone a supposed journalist/blogger - should have been aware that he's been involved in all sorts of scandal for years. frankly, if i were in her position, i'd be embarrassed to acknowledge that level of ignorance. but as steve noted, she has no shame.
it is truly mindboggling that atlantic continues to publish this truly high school level garbage. i think this is the first time i've read one of these postings in a couple of months and i can only say that her thinking and reasoning and writing is as bad, as illogical as it was when i stopped reading this stuff.
In the final analysis, your final paragraph is a much harsher indictment, by smoking gun evidence, than anything Glenn Greenwald wrote about NEXIS or about you. Your industry was granted special rights and privileges by the people of this nation in the Constitution, on the basis of the need for your institution to enable informed decisions by the public. If you are failing in that task, your industry is gravely breaching the trust that the founders of this nation put in you. You become complicit in all that is done because of that breach, and you have little to show for why you didn't try harder. Torture and unnecessary war are two of the gravest crimes there are, bar none. You appear to believe that there is a need for a Fourth Estate that doesn't think they are important. The firefighters in Syracuse could face serious consequences for late arrivals, because people could have died. People have died because the press refused to inform. Should journalists be held to the standards of firefighters in Syracuse? Now that would be a story!
I too came here from Greenwald's site; a location which I visit almost daily and to which I have directed hundreds of others over the last year or so, starting from the old Unclaimed Territory days. I don't go there for Glenn's writing style but rather for his research, his passion, and his dogged pursuit to reclaim that for which America should stand.
Land of the brave. Home of the free.
IT hasn't felt like that around here for quite a while.
Reading Megan's response, as is often the case when more mainstrean journos "respond" to Glenn, only confirmed most of Glann's points about the media. Perhaps the problem these folks have - the honest ones at any rate - is an inability to perceive the muck in which they stand. Much like someone who has lived beside a gaseous swamp all their lives being confused as to why visitors complain about the smell.
The John Yoo and Mukasey stories should be front page headlines EVERY SINGLE DAMNED DAY until justice is done. They should be shouted from the roof tops. They strike to the soul of this country.
I wonder what Megan will write when the current administration suspends our upcoming elections on behalf of national security? And then invites Blackwater to "protect" our polling places?
How very ironic that what all of the survivalist types and Freemen sorts worried was happening under Clinton has come true under the GOP banner. Time for concerned citizens to be sure that they do exercise their second amendment rights.
"You can lead a consumer to stories of vital national importance..."
"journalists should cover the more serious stories..."
"every journalist in DC wants to write in-depth stories on foreign policy questions..."
Yes, more of those things, please.
All of you using the excuse that reporters are just giving the people what they want despite it's being distracting and bad for them in general clearly don't objectively read Greenwald. He has linked to many polls which consistently show that people DON'T want Britney and Lohan and more Britney. The negatives in the polls on the press are there. Look around.
My feeling is that there should at least be SOME news outlets that are nonprofit organizations. Why anyone would trust a for-profit corporation for their news is beyond me. Especially when the CEOs and upper managers of these corporations are so politically active.
We can get our news from a ton of sources now and no one seems to really scoop anyone anymore which simply makes the job of media outlets now to act as news filters, not providers. Their job now is to choose which news is most important and which gets ignored. Sure, some people respond to crap but there are A LOT of people unhappy with the nonsense and those of you making excuses for the press are completely behind the curve.
As usual.
Brian, I did read the memo, and I think your reading of it is seriously flawed because you apparently don't understand the way treaties become binding or the legal jargon Yoo employs.
"The United States understands that, in order to constitute torture an act must be specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering ..."
This is a statement that Bush I made to the Senate, which was included in the instrument of ratification as a reservation. Bush I's words, not Yoo's. Furthermore, reservations are central to the iterpretation of the treaty under US law; Yoo has to interpret these words because they define what the treaty really does mean in the US.
In other words if your intent is to torture someone for the sake of torturing someone, that's illegal. But if you are torturing someone for information well that's fine..."it made crystal clear that the intent requirement for torture was specific intent."
I see nothing whatsoever in the reservation to support this interpretation.
"Specific intent" is a term of art in the common law; it is distinguished from "general intent." Most crimes are "general intent," but a few, such as assault, rape, and the common law property crimes, are "specific intent." As a practical matter, the main differences are that voluntary intoxication and any mistake of fact are good defenses to SI crimes, but for GI, voluntary intoxication is not a defense and mistakes of fact must be "reasonable."
In other words, you must have the specific intent to cause pain as opposed to general intent, recklessnes, or negligence (other possible states of mind for crimes); your reason for specifically intending to cause pain doesn't enter the analysis. Neither the reservation nor Yoo's interpretation excuses torture as a way to get information.
In any case, even if your reading were correct, it wouldn't be Yoo's fault; the meaning of the treaty is shaped by the reservation, so he has no more choice but to accept and explicate it than I have when a client asks me about the Lanham Act.
All I see in this memo is boilerplate statements of international law and an entirely reasonable interpretation of the reservation. There is no "authorizing torture" or any such thing; torture is illegal under US law and international convention; the only thing that this memo says is that both of those sources of law use the same standards. That might be incorrect, but it's nothing like its being characterized here.
I have determined that there is at least one more Yoo memo, from March 2003 (my link is to August 2002). I will try to find it and have a glance if the baby doesn't wake up. It may be the one which actually authorizes/approves/whatever torture. But I hope everyone here will forgive me if I don't accept the NYT's or bloggers' account of it, given how some people have been overreacting to the utterly benign Aug. 1, 2002 memo I linked to.
Luckily he didn't actually say that.
When someone has to resort to blatant lying it's pretty clear they've lost.
Cripes, the damn thing is 81 pages. For the truly dedicated, read Yoo's actual torture memo. The summary looks harmless enough, but the ACLU pulled some ugly-looking quotes, so maybe there's actually a fire somewhere amid all this smoke.
I don't have time to read the whole thing today, or likely in the near future. If anyone can give me a page or two that has proof of the assertions against Yoo, I'd be much obliged.
Ms. McCardle: "Start with Barack Obama. Americans care more about him than John Yoo because, well, John Yoo isn't running for president.
1. Your implication is that more Americans care about Barack Obama's bowling score than about John Yoo's torture memo. How would you know that? This is the perfect example of media arrogance. If YOU write about it, Americans care about it, huh?
2. That more Americans care about Barack Obama than John Yoo does not mean they do not care about John Yoo.
Ms. McArdle: "Indeed, if one in ten Americans had even heard of John Yoo, I would be shocked, because most people don't care about minor government functionaries, no matter how pivotal their role may be in screwing up the world."
This is brilliant reasoning. The media doesn't write about something because Americans haven't heard about it. Huh? Where the hell are they gonna hear about it if not in the media?
This is a country of know-nothing, don't-care idiots. The media reflects this reality.
This is not because journalists are insulated from their readers. It is because readers buy more papers with headlines about Jamie Lynn Spears than they do with headlines about Alphonso Jackson or John Yoo, since as I think I just mentioned, they have never heard of either person. You can lead a consumer to stories of vital national importance, but you cannot make him care. You can just make him pass over your paper in favor of the Enquirer.
Which is to say, it's because journalists are insulated from their readers.
MM, have you read the torture memo? Please provide us with your analysis if you have. Otherwise, maybe you should go to work for People Magazine.
MM,
Clearly you hit a sore point with GG's minions. They had to come over here with sophomoric, ignorant comments. You've completely blown GG's argument (and stupidity) out of the water.
(I wonder if there are any sock puppets around these comments?)
There was a time Megan when I considered you the voice of reason. I have changed my mind.
Now I think you are the voice of Reason.
When someone has to resort to blatant lying it's pretty clear they've lost.
By that criteria Greenwald was lost a long, long time ago.
I believe American should tortune terrorists.
In fact, why do it ourselves? Why not outsource torture to allied nations that actually DO know how to torture effectively?
you should be ashamed of yourself, ms. mcardle.
Regarding Dan Drezner’s comments:
1) Re: "Comparing NEXIS searches of events where the media cycle has yet to play out with events where the media cycle has played out is a really disingenuous way of making one's point"
Is it your contention, then, that the torture memo, Fourth Amendment, and Mukasey stories will have received a LOT more coverage by the end of their respective news cycles?
2) Re: "There are more press mentions of an event when the target of the media inquiry actually responds to the press. To my knowledge, John Yoo has said nothing since the terror memo was leaked published, and the Bush administration has clammed up as well. Barack Obama, on the other hand, clearly did respond to the Jeremiah Wright business, leading to multiple news cycles about that issue"
Do you believe, then, that the newsworthiness of a topic is determined only by whether the subject of that topic responds to it? How do you respond to the idea that investigative reporting includes uncovering facts that no one will reveal, much less comment on?
3) Re: "Shockingly, the press appears to be more interested in events that determine the future (i.e., who will be the next president?) than in events that look back at the past. [Isn't that a slanted way of contrasting these events?-ed. Compared to Greenwald's slant? No, not really.]"
Are you of the opinion then that these stories do not and will not affect future policies and acts of the American government? Is it your belief that allowing events such as these to occur unchallenged will not encourage officials in future to try (and succeed) to get away with future acts of their nature?
And are not the events you state determine the future (the examples given include Obama's bowling) ALSO a "look back at the past", only not as far back?
4) RE: "Glenn Greenwald might be a good blogger/collumnist, but he's not that great at social science."
Name-calling is hardly an argument, sir. His credentials as a social scientist are irrelevant to the argument at hand. To coin a phrase, an idiot who says the sky is blue is not wrong. A non-scientist who states a scientific, verifiable fact is not wrong, regardless of his credentials.
Your arguments are meaningless, sir. You have failed to present any substantial argument refuting his central tenet, that the press should be presenting information to the public germane to a candidate's judgment on policies that will affect the electorate, rather than information germane to a candidate's judgment on personal grooming or leisure activities, which will NOT affect the electorate.
Regarding Megan McArdle’s comments:
1) Re: “Start with Barack Obama. Americans care more about him than John Yoo because, well, John Yoo isn't running for president. Indeed, if one in ten Americans had even heard of John Yoo, I would be shocked, because most people don't care about minor government functionaries, no matter how pivotal their role may be in screwing up the world.”
Is it your opinion, then that only the actions of a president’s that are screwing things up are important? Or that screw-ups not caused directly by a president are not newsworthy?
2) Re: “You can lead a consumer to stories of vital national importance, but you cannot make him care. You can just make him pass over your paper in favor of the Enquirer.”
Is it your contention then that we are all vapid, self-absorbed idiots?
3) Re: “It's all very well to say that journalists should cover the more serious stories, and bloggers like Glenn Greenwald, and maybe occasionally me, make such complaints all the time. But even really successful bloggers on things like economic and foreign policy have fewer daily readers than a struggling local paper in a moderately sized midwestern city. Now imagine those readers evenly distributed across a nation of 300 million, and then ask yourself why their concerns do not headline every paper.”
Is it your contention then that columnists should not try covering certain topics because obscure bloggers that try covering the same topic are not well known? If I, an unknown blogger, wrote on the Obama-Wright controversy, without getting any response, should major columnists take this as a sign that this story should be ignored?
Or is it your contention that each and every person interested in Mr. Greenwald’s serious stories are readers of his blog, and that no one other than his current audience are, or could be, interested in these stories?
4) Re: “Obviously, I think John Yoo's adventures are a matter of slightly greater national importance. (As indeed do our nation's media, who--aside from the Syracuse Post-Standard--ran virtually no coverage of the topic over the last month.)”
If the nation’s media really thought “John Yoo's adventures are a matter of slightly greater national importance”, they why did they not cover it? Are they not interested in items of greater national importance – which is at least part of Mr. Greenwald’s argument, I believe?
5) Re: “But voters can't do much about John Yoo now, other than choose a different type of president.”
Or petition their local congressmen and senators into forcing an investigation. It HAS been done.
6) Re: “Maybe they should do that by eagerly scanning Obama and Clinton and McCain's platforms--though I am at a loss to think how one might have divined a John Yoo from the anodyne folia of the Bush 2000 campaign.”
Perhaps if the media had focused on matters other than the “anodyne folia of the Bush 2000 campaign”, we MIGHT have divined a John Yoo. Perhaps if the national media were to begin focusing on matters other than the “anodyne folia of the McCain 2000 campaign”, we MIGHT divine a future John Yoo. Or even a future George W. Bush.
7) Re: “As far as anyone can tell, however, this is not how voters decide.”
Has anyone consulted exit polls? Has anyone conducted polls as to what issues the voters are interested in? Has anyone included “candidate’s personal hygiene and/or leisure activities” as one of the issues in these voter polls? If so, how did the issue rate?
Ms. McArdle, you said “Believe me, nearly every journalist in DC wants to write in-depth stories on foreign policy questions, and nearly every editor in the nation would dearly love to sell them. If there were a millions-deep wellspring of interest in the topic, some enterprising publication would already have tapped it dry.” Mr. Greenwald stated “these serious and accomplished political journalists are only focusing on these stupid and trivial matters because this is what the Regular Folk care about. They speak for the Regular People, and what the Regular People care about is not Iraq or the looming recession or health care or lobbyist control of our government or anything that would strain the brain of these reporters. What those nice little Regular Folk care about is whether Obama is Regular Folk just like them, whether he can bowl and wants to gorge himself with junk food.”
Doesn’t your statement vindicate his?
Americans have been torturing people since well before this country has been founded. From pilgrims dunking adulterous women to cops giving gangsters the once over to giving a nod and a wink towards prison rape. The reason why John Yoo isn't mentioned in the paper because torture is because what he wrote not news. It's been done and all the heart palpitations from pundits is just political gotcha.
I would think the suspension of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States would warrant a little interest, if not concern, on your part.
Well yeah, because that's never happened before! :P *cough* drug war *cough* *cough* elian gonzales *cough*
*cough* Branch Davidian compound *cough*
I had to stop at about comment number 50 due to the banal, sheltered defense of the comment was boring into my brain.
You are quite frankly wrong. I say that as an Obama supporter and as someone who reads Glenn from time to time despite the repetition that can set in and enjoys your little cult here a great deal.
While the shame aspect has already been beaten to death, the problem is you are also wrong on the monetary side. Newspapers are not going under for wont of more celebrity coverage. Much research has been done in this area, and the reason newspapers are struggling is that only relatively well-informed people EVER read them for more than the funnies and coupons. Very nearly all journalism research has concluded that the only papers succeeding are those that have bucked the trend of racing to the bottom and kept large reporting staffs producing quality press.
Whether online or in print, people hunger for news. What the Internet provides to most is not a place to track down millions of available opinions (see old joke regarding wide availability of same mirroring number excretory openings), it is that it provides people without a functioning press access to publications like the Washington Post- or better, access to the foreign press.
Despite your assertion, I count myself among the crowds that cannot stomach a single hour of CNN regardless of the hair of the anchor or shortness of the skirts. We are not alone and honestly- we have lots of money we would gladly spend on valuable information about the world around us. NPR makes a go of it, but even they are pandering to the administration lately to avoid more legal action from hacks.
Just as VC firms felt that anyone with a Harvard MBA must be able to spin yarn into Internet gold, so too do large numbers of business "leaders" of media empires believe they have the answers. Whether the Dot Com bust or the fall of the Roman Empire, human nature knows better.
Just because this is how it is, why should no one ask for it to be better? Oh wait, we already are. That is why circulation is down, and fully 80% of people asked think current political coverage is worthless. That's 8-0%!!!!
booksfoe, Exactly where we should go with this. John Sidney opposed Reagan's deployment of the Marines to Lebanon, saying something like, 'I don't beleive we can serve any useful purpose there.' 241 servicemen were susequently killed including 1 no doubt time serving obstetrician; and Pres. Reagan then moved our forces onto ship to "a more defensible position." I'm not sure about Somalia. He has not promoted primarily a military or police response to illegal immigration much to the consternation of many conseraitves; so yes, I think it is a mischaraterization to say that he has been for '9 of the last 5 wars' or that he is a 'warmonger.' What the label does is to take the 'Rules for Radicals' of Saul Alinsky and dehumanize the individual such that any point of view he may have is not audible. It was this that McCain objected to when the warm up speaker for McCain referred repeatedly to Barack Hussein Obama. It is American senatorial courtesy to let the other man be heard.
WithoutMerit,
By your criteria the NY Times stock must be headed to the stratosphere. It is not. They are laying off people. Where did they go wrong? Was it Walter Duranty? Or some more recent event?
\"Believe me, nearly every journalist in DC wants to write in-depth stories on foreign policy questions, and nearly every editor in the nation would dearly love to sell them."
McArdle is indeed an idiot, but is she useful?
Yoo's obscure "foreign policy," requiring in-depth analysis:
"Cassel: If the President deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?
Yoo: No treaty.
Cassel: Also no law by Congress. That is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo.
Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that."
That's pretty ambiguous, wonkish stuff. Tough to track. They'd love to write about it if they only could, believe me.
When someone has to resort to blatant lying it's pretty clear they've lost.
And what do you call hyperbole that's so extreme that it's tantamount to lying?
John Yoo is not a war criminal. Writing a paper on legal matters is not a war crime, no matter who it might influence.
It's literally come down to this: If you argue about the legal definition of torture and war crimes you're guilty of war crimes and torture. How are we even supposed to disagree with Glenn's assessment without being accused of the same?
HeavyJ, which law or treaty would you say prohibits that sort of action?
Some years ago, a man was arrested in Washington with a video camera on a stick, which he was using to look up women's skirts in public places. The WA Supreme Court let him go, because it turns out that sort of thing wasn't actually illegal. The legislature promptly passed a law forbidding it. That's the way it's supposed to work.
It is very common when discussing the law to confuse is with ought. There ought to be a law against torture. This is not the same as saying there is such a law. We all ought to condemn torture. That is not the same as saying a lawyer, asked if torture is illegal, commits a war crime by answering "no," when all of us wish the answer was "yes."
Rob Lyman, I have read all 81 pages, which have been available on line for a week. Your discussion of the matter might be relevant if you read the opinion.
I would love to read a coherent defense of Yoo's opinion that we are at war with an army of unlawful belligerents, who as are not entitled to any protection of law, but subject to whatever treatment the President of the United States chooses.
Glorious said-
"It's literally come down to this: If you argue about the legal definition of torture and war crimes you're guilty of war crimes and torture. How are we even supposed to disagree with Glenn's assessment without being accused of the same?"
according to Glenny and Andy S. you CAN'T disagree without being found GUILTY of war crimes. Now stop thinking and go back to bowing and scraping before the higher intelllect and morality of Glenny and Andy!!
Glorious said-
"It's literally come down to this: If you argue about the legal definition of torture and war crimes you're guilty of war crimes and torture. How are we even supposed to disagree with Glenn's assessment without being accused of the same?"
according to Glenny and Andy S. you CAN'T disagree without being found GUILTY of war crimes. Now stop thinking and go back to bowing and scraping before the higher intelllect and morality of Glenny and Andy!!
I have read all 81 pages
Can you do me a favor and point to a couple of specific ones you find objectionable from a legal (not moral) perspective? There seems to be a lot of anodyne boilerplate in there.
The correct number of stories that EVER need to be written about ANY politician's bowling is zero. The topic is both vapid and boring, which is why People Weekly doesn't waste headlines on Brad Pitt's bowling either.
The correct number of stories that EVER need to be written about ANY presidential candidate's patriotism is zero, barring some extremely unusual reason to challenge it (for example, had Nexis searches existed in the 1850s, "James Buchanan and patriotism" and "John Breckenridge and patriotism" might have quite reasonably spewed thousands of results).
The fact that us white people are willing to read/watch stories about scary black preachers coming to kill them all, does not change the fact that more stories about Jamie Lynn Spears, instead, would serve the public much better.
Also, stories about the Bush Administration are stories about the present, and indeed the near future; their pace of destruction has in no way slowed, and the acceptance of Yoo's views by Bush and Cheney -- famous people! -- is the reason the story matters.
Plus, since John McCain has spent the entire campaign pledging fealty to Bush's agenda, and his congressional record is pro-authoritarian in the extreme, stories about Yoo imply a lot about the McCain to come. And that, people might wish to know.
Finally: stories about Iraq sell books and magazines and rate well on TV. You can't blame the market for those stories' near-total disappearance ... and with a press corps whose reaction to "Hussein has nukes!", "Hussein caused 9/11!", and "Shiite Iran is the enemy of Iraq's elected Shiite government" has been "sure, okay", you can't seriously imagine the 3000-word analytical stories disappeared over their objections, either. Jeez.
I could be wrong, but I thought Glenn's point was that Yoo helped to develop a theory of law that was designed to go against the US's international treaty obligations. Hence the references to Nuremburg trials.
Can we find serious experts in the law who are willing to back up Yoo's interpretation of those treaties?
Marvelous. So The Atlantic now aspires to capture the Enquirer audience. Between this idiotic post and the recent story about paparazzi chasing Britney around I guess it's time to say R.I.P. to The Atlantic. After reading it for more than 20 years I don't see the point in continuing to subscribe if this is the sort of drivel I have to look forward to.
For a far better dissection of Ms. McArdle's twaddle than I could accomplish I refer you to http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/04/08/exceptionalism/index.html
Rob Lyman: this issue is being followed at Balkinization, and at Emptywheel on Firedoglake. Emptywheel points out that the Youngstown Steel case is not mentioned in the opinion. That would not happen in a real discussion of the relation between the powers of the legislative and executive branches.
I put up a diary which includes a discussion of one footnote that really annoyed me at here: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/4/6/132223/2659/60/491169
The conclusion that we are at war is early in the discussion, and the description of all al-Quaeda people as unlawful belligerents follows in the first few pages.
The conclusion that we are at war is early in the discussion, and the description of all al-Quaeda people as unlawful belligerents follows in the first few pages
I can see that these two propositions are controversial, but they are hardly so wildly out of whack that they deserve to be called war crimes.
I agree with you that the footnote was annoying if indeed it was really meant to argue that presidential war of indefinite duration and geographic scope is justified by a single terrorist attack.
Rob Lyman wrote: Mouse: have you changed names again?
There were three of us again last week: myself, one distant relative of the same name who followed one of the guest bloggers over, and one imposter or small crew thereof who left behind some mysterious FMM fingerprints.
At any rate, if THIS name gets magically duplicated, it won't leave room for coincidence, real or feigned. As such, should another feignter show up, my contacts in the mouse underworld will be forced to go destroy every bag of flour in the poor dupe's panty, and possibly crap in his silverware drawer.
if THIS name gets magically duplicated
I noticed they seem to have matched your punctuation change, which I thought was weird. But on the other hand, I guess it really surprises me that there isn't more ID fakery, since nothing can stop it other than careful stylistic analysis.
"Writing a paper on legal matters is not a war crime, no matter who it might influence."
I suggest you watch Judgment at Nuremberg (1961 great flick BTW) as nice historical reminder that those who put the stamp of legality to war crimes can indeed be guilty of war crimes.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055031/
BSD
Megan McArdle voted for George Bush twice. Bush authorized torture of captives. McArdle does not like to think about this, and wishes that the story would go away.
Meghan McArdle represents everything that has gone wrong with America since the 60's.
Good luck with that.
I've stumbled across this blog a few times - always because someone else pointed me to Ms. McArdle's stupidity.
I used to respect the Atlantic. Years ago.
Seems to me that all this press pandering to stories like dead girls in Aruba, Brittany Spear's flashing has not really helped their bottom line.
Maybe the MSM should stop being so defensive take a good hard look. They're becoming tabloids and the rest of us have better things to do than to read the WAPO version of trash fluff news. Besides, the Starr does it better.
Wow, Megan, a truly idiot post.
As if the story were all about "John Yoo". What crazed, reductionist spin. It's about the United States of America legalizing torture, dimwit. I think that's a bigger story than Barack Obama's bowling score. It's not about the past either. It's about our present policy. It's also about war crimes committed by the leading members of the present administration, including the President. Why on earth is that not a bigger story than what Barack Obama's preacher said last year in a sermon? This rationalization of your profession's utter abdication of responsibility is matched only by your own utter abdication of responsibility for this issue. And you call yourself a journalist. You should be ashamed to even pretend to be a part of that profession. Lap dog would be a better title.
I'm with OpenMinded, THIS is the level of work The Atlantic aspires towards - the National Enquirer? Greenwald accurately describes this woman as someone desperate to justify her war cheerleading by any means necessary. While this is perfectly understandable (though pathetic) what is not understandable is why The Atlantic would wish to give her a platform in which to throw up such embarassing work to assist her in this effort.
Face it. You were wrong. Not just a little, but spectacularly. You're just as wrong now. No, make that more wrong since your attempts to fig leaf your mendacity are at best mildly amusing and at worst deeply offensive to anyone with a reading comprehension beyond that of the Enquirer readers you so desperately want to reach.
History will not be kind to you Ms. McArdle.
it is almost painful to watch somebody get as rapidly and thoroughly disassembled as Megan was by Greenwald. Glenn's a crappy writer but he is a tremendously disciplined thinker. One way to measure a thinker is by what ground they choose to defend. My that measure, Megan does not do terribly well.
Ms. McArdle's post puts me in mind of the recent commentary suggesting that McCain manipulates journalists by letting them in on how he plays the game and thereby reinforcing their sense of knowing superiority. Greenwald obviously "doesn't know much about his profession," because if he did he wouldn't be so annoyingly serious and sincere. So what if a "minor functionary" like John Yoo wrote memos justifying torture? After all, he was just playing the game, too. I mean, jeez, he's a lawyer, isn't it his job to run interference for the real players? And what does it matter, now that he's not even a player anymore? What matters is who the players are today, and how well they're playing, and who's going to win. From that point of view, Obama's bowling matters way more than Yoo's legal advice.
What's amusing is that Ms. McArdle tries to demonstrate her knowingness by explaining all this to Greenwald, as if he didn't quite get it. All she really demonstrates is her own stupendous vanity.
We don't want to know. We are so glad you journalists have the courage not to tell us. Things are much better when all we have to think about is the funny looking man looking funny while he bowls.
and finally 3. A sizable chunk of the population agrees that the president should be allowed to have the power to decide whether or not to torture terrorists...
BladeDoc--sigh. Here we go again. The problem is when you say the President should have the power to torture "terrorists."
According to a report prepared by the International Red Cross, upwards of 70% of the people at Abu Ghraib were innocent. That's seven out of every ten, minimum.
According to my friend Joshua Casteel, who was an interrogator at Abu Ghraib, the real number of innocents was more than 90%.
Just because someone SAYS someone is a terrorist doesn't mean the person is actually a terrorist. It's not about torturing "terrorists." It's about torturing people who were innocent.
Can you *seriously* defend that? Can you?
There ought to be a law against torture. This is not the same as saying there is such a law.
Rob--the 7th Amendment--the one about "cruel and unusual punishment"--doesn't forbid torture? *That's* a new one.
holdfast: Mix in the fact that he almost completely avoids actual policy positions as part of his campaign.
Go to Obama's website, look at his platform. He's got a lot of policy there, and a lot of positions. You may not *like* his policy proposals. You may disagree with them to the extent that you cannot vote for the man. Fine. But please don't claim he doesn't have positions. They're publicly available. Particularly when compared with McCain's health care "plan," which is basically a bunch of meaningless bullet points.
Rob Lyman; don't you think the idea of a "war" between the United States and a group of "unlawful belligerents" is an oxymoron? Doesn't the word "war" connote a conflict between states?
Rob Lyman; don't you think the idea of a "war" between the United States and a group of "unlawful belligerents" is an oxymoron? Doesn't the word "war" connote a conflict between states?
I generally think it unwise to let semantics do quite that much work. Even if "war" has hiterto always meant exclusively "conflict between states," (a dubious proposition, BTW) I see nothing particularly difficult about imagining a war between stateless radicals and a state.
I've had a chance to skim the 81 pager, so if anyone cares, I can comment tomorrow.
Sad, both of you. Yoo subverts the constitution at the behest of the Bush/Cheney inner circle, crosses out the fourth Amendment, and yet you think Obama's minister is THE story? If that is your true belief , you are in the wrong profession. I want to scream when I hear village stenographers shill instead of reporting. The entire MSM is a disgrace.
Greenwald is right. The trivial have governed our election and news cycles. John Yoo's legal memo suggesting an omnipotent president who can torture children if he considers it necessary is a crime in itself. This is a major threat to American Democracy. A press that prefers Obama's alleged sissy bowling has totally failed to act as a check on government and is a tabloid medium that should have little protection under the law.
That Megan chose to defend the press in this instance speaks volumes to her lack of judgement. Truly pathetic.
BTW - I didn't know Megan's dad was named "Olaf."
[blockquote]If there were a millions-deep wellspring of interest in the topic, some enterprising publication would already have tapped it dry.[/blockquote]
This sounds like thinly veiled free market fundamentalism to me. Certainly, there can be nothing wrong with the for-profit mainstream media outlets, because they are finely tuned profit-making machines that respond perfectly to market forces. Therefore, if there is any notable lapse in coverage of important issues, it cannot be because of some dereliction of duty (at worst) or flawed editorial decisions (at best), but rather is simply and purely due to lack of market demand, public interest.
But how do you account for the observable fact that in order to care about something, people must have heard about it in the first place? Does that not mean the media bear some responsibility for putting out not just what they think people want to hear about, but what they should hear about as well?
I see that all the Gleenwald fans have stopped their fawning worship of the Sockpuppet King long enough to run over here and defend their Lord and Master's reputation.
Hint: Just because you're dazzled by Gleen's rambling prose doesn't mean that (1) he's actually correct, or (2) that everyone else feels that way.
But by all means, get it all off your chests... put us ignorant conservatives and libertarians in our place and then you can pat yourselves on the back and triumphantly return to the echo chamber.
That Gleen says what most of you were already thinking is a better indication of your disturbed state of mind than anything that I or anyone else can say.
And no, I don't care what you think.
"And no, I don't care what you think."
Rupublican "thinking" in a nutshell.
Thanks Dave in SoCal - you and Megan are obviously made for each other!
"And no, I don't care what you think."
Republican "thinking" in a nutshell.
Thanks Dave in SoCal - you and Megan are obviously made for each other!
What a marvelous case of inadvertent self-description in the case of Ms. McArdle. Her self-immolation is made even more enjoyable by her post's blithely ignorant demonstration of Greenwald's assessment.
A final note to the sadly over-matched Ms. McArdle: circular logic convinces only idiots.
Rob Lyman, you may cease your heart-rending bleatings about reading 81 pages of allegedly "anodyne boiler plate."
Here is John Yoo himself explaining in a nutshell that torture is acceptable.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz01hN9l-BM