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Israel-Palestine-Jordan
Longtime Palestinian official Hanan Ashrawi resigns
2020-12-10
[IsraelTimes] One of the most well-known spokespeople for the Paleostinian cause in the Western press, Ashrawi calls for reform in Paleostine Liberation Organization in her resignation letter.

Senior Paleostine Liberation Organization official Hanan Ashrawi
...age 74, the cultured, Christian Palestinian daughter of one of the founding members of the PLO took the polish and contacts accrued while acquiring a PhD in Medieval Lit. from U of Virginia — among other efforts she was a long-time girlfriend of television anchorman Peter Jennings — to advance the cause of Palestinian nationhood and soften the impact of various terror attacks on Israelis at home and abroad. Mrs. Ashwari was diagnosed with COVID-19 in October, which may have something to do with her apparently sudden decision...
announced on Wednesday that she had submitted her resignation from the pan-Paleostinian organization.
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China-Japan-Koreas
Australia PM reveals state-based cyber attack on Australia.
2020-06-19
[The Australian] Australia is under mass cyber-attack from a foreign state targeting all levels of government, industry and business with cyber experts claiming the source of the attack could only have come from China.

Scott Morrison this morning revealed that Australian organisations were actively being targeted by a “state-based cyber actor” but would not name the country believed to be behind the “malicious” cyber raid.

“What I can confirm, with confidence, based on the advice, the technical advice that we have received, is that this is the action of a state-based actor with significant capabilities,” the Prime Minister said.

“There aren’t too many state-based actors who have those capabilities.”

Australian Strategic Policy Institute executive director Peter Jennings told The Australian it was “very clear” that China was behind the cyber attack on Australia, and that Mr Morrison was calling Beijing out.

The Prime Minister said in Canberra: “This activity is targeting Australian organisations across a range of sectors, including all levels of Government, industry, political organisations, education, health, essential service providers and operators of other critical infrastructure.

“We know it is a sophisticated state-based cyber actor because of the scale and nature of the targeting and the trade craft used.”

Video at link.
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Home Front: WoT
Pac Fleet shrinks over past decade
2016-01-06
The U.S. Pacific Fleet is shrinking even as the U.S. and its allies are facing challenges posed by China's growing military power. U.S. Navy officials say the more advanced ships of today make up for the decline in numbers. But the Navy has also had to lengthen deployments and postpone maintenance to maintain its presence with fewer ships.

Peter Jennings, an expert at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute think tank, said the issue in peacetime is whether there are enough American vessels to reassure friends and allies.

"I think this is emerging as a serious long-term problem," he said.

The Pacific Fleet currently has 182 vessels, including combat ships like aircraft carriers as well as auxiliary and logistics vessels, said spokesman Cmdr. Clay Doss. That compares to 192 nearly two decades ago.

The Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy has more than 300 surface ships, submarines, amphibious ships and patrol craft, according to the Pentagon's Asia-Pacific Maritime Security Strategy report released in August.
The Chinese ships are generally less capable and older generation, though as the old saying goes, there's a certain quality to quantity...
This all comes as China has grown more aggressive in asserting claims to islands also claimed by U.S. allies, including the Philippines in the South China Sea and Japan in the East China Sea. Since December 2013, China has built what the U.S. estimates to be 3,000 acres of artificial islands in disputed areas of the South China Sea using sand dredged from the ocean floor.

Questions about whether the Pacific Fleet has enough resources are more of a reflection of regional anxieties than the Navy's actual capability, said its commander, Adm. Scott Swift.

"I'm very comfortable with the resources I have," Swift said.
He has to say that...
He pointed to the USS Benfold, a guided missile destroyer upgraded with new ballistic missile defenses, as well as three new stealth destroyers, the DDG-1000, in the pipeline, as examples.

One consequence of a smaller fleet has been more time at sea. Retired Adm. Zap Zlatoper, who commanded the Pacific Fleet in the 1990s, said deployments longer than six months made it harder for the Navy to retain sailors. Ships now deploy for an average of seven to nine months, though the Navy plans to lower this to seven.

Ship conditions have also suffered. The USS Essex left an exercise with Australia early in 2011 and skipped another with Thailand the following year because it developed mechanical problems after delaying maintenance to stay at sea.

Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington think tank, said these are signs the status quo is unsustainable. In a November report, Clark outlined alternatives: build more ships, though this would require money Congress may not give the Navy, or deploy less, though the Pentagon has been reluctant to accept less of an overseas presence.

The other choices: keep more ships at overseas bases where they would be closer to where they operate or mix up how ships deploy. One example would be to send fewer escorts with an aircraft carrier.
No carrier driver will accept that. The other choice not mentioned is to make fewer commitments and have our allies in the region take on more of the burden.
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-Short Attention Span Theater-
We await further developments
2014-10-27
This was written for Esquire magazine by Charles P. Pierce. Pierce is the guy who said back in 2004 that had Mary Jo Kopecne lived, she would have been 62 and Ted Kennedy would have worked tirelessly on her in her behalf to bring her comfort. At the time he said that, the audience didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
A lot has been made of the contrast between how the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation handled the events yesterday in Ottawa, and how our own cable news networks handle practically everything. In brief, the difference was roughly the difference between the morning edition of The Times Of London and a tornado siren. However, one of the more startling things about CBC's coverage has gone largely unnoticed.

When there stopped being news, the CBC News stopped covering the story and cut away to its regular daily programming. It happened so quickly that it caught me by surprise. One minute, there was anchordude Peter Mansbridge, who's now the guy I want at the desk when the Last Trumpet blows, telling us what we knew and (most important) what we didn't know. And the next, we were back to its being a Wednesday afternoon and "Today, in Alberta..."

Imagine that. There was no Political Powerhouse panel to explain how this might have an impact on the Harper government. There was no aging M.P. representing Yellowknife hollering that this never would have happened if they'd only have built the dang pipeline, and no young opposition M.P. speculating about how this never would have happened if they'd secured the border with Quebec the way he and his ghostwriter had suggested in his recent book. There were no former generals on the dodge, speculating sadly that the shootings may indicate "a new stage" in the war on terror. There was a deplorable lack of political opportunism, and a dreadful dearth of doomsaying. There was no fancy logo. No heroic music adapted from a movie trailer especially for the occasion. There was only Mansbridge, the calmest guy in the hemisphere, who went almost two hours without a break at one point, telling us what we knew and (more important) what we didn't know, adding some historical perspective from his long career, and occasionally tossing it to one of his colleagues, who would do the same. And then, when there clearly was no more news coming, they all signed off.

(According to his official bio, Mansbridge began his career as a radio reporter in Churchill, Manitoba, which is the place where they have the holding pen for polar bears outside of town. I've been there and I can tell you, this may account for Mansbridge's cool. Once you've become accustomed to seeing a polar bear and her cub breezily walking down a downtown alley in the middle of the day -- Churchill is dead on top of the migratory route that the bears use every year -- nothing else about anything anywhere will faze you.)
And yet, the late Peter Jennings of ABC got his panties in a wad after he heard Toby Keith's song, "Courtesy of the Red White and Blue". What a difference ten years make!
It used to be that, when there were no further developments, news operations waited until there were. That was when the country looked to the three major networks, and their anchors, for the news, and these were anchors who were trained as reporters, not as television stars. But then there was cable, and CNN, and then the flood of cable news outlets, and news became entertainment, and a big story became an instant miniseries, with special-effects and theme music, and the point became keeping the story on the air, somehow, even if it meant speculating about airliner-gulping black holes, or Ted Cruz's yammering about epidemiology. And, of course, there is another great difference.

The CBC is a Canadian crown corporation. This means it is publicly owned. It runs commercial announcements, but not many, and only to supplement the money from its federal funding. Peter Mansbridge was telling us the news, not selling us Cialis, and that makes all the difference.
Mark Steyn once quipped that the old Soviet functionaries would be much amazed at all the effort they went to to bring about a pliant stenographer corps by smashing presses, seizing manuscripts and jailing journalists. Obama and his pro government types don't have to do that.
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Home Front: Politix
Obama's empty intellect
2010-06-22
Richard Cohen, Washington Post
One of the great masters of liberal conventional wisdom, a card-carrying member of the herd of independent minds (and the guy who cuckolded Peter Jennings), takes a hard look at Obama and sees . . . well, here, let him tell you:
It can seem that at the heart of Barack Obama's foreign policy is no heart at all. It consists instead of a series of challenges -- of problems that need fixing, not wrongs that need to be righted. As Winston Churchill once said of a certain pudding, Obama's approach to foreign affairs lacks theme. So, it seems, does the man himself.

For instance, it's not clear that Obama is appalled by China's appalling human rights record. He seems hardly stirred about continued repression in Russia. He treats the Israelis and their various enemies as pests of equal moral standing. The president seems to stand foursquare for nothing much.

This, of course, is the Obama enigma: Who is this guy? What are his core beliefs?...
Now, while Mr. Cohen may be the perfect example of a standard-issue Mk.1 Mod 0 factory-spec conventional Washington liberal who parrots all the "right" thinking, he's actually on to something here (emphasis added):
Fortune has not smiled on Obama's presidency. His one uncontested attribute -- a shimmering intellect -- has become suspect.
I wouldn't call it "uncontested," but go on.
A world of smart guys has turned against us. Everyone at Goldman Sachs is smart, but they seem to have the amorality mocked by the songwriter Tom Lehrer in his sendup of the celebrated American rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, a former Nazi (" 'Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department,' says Wernher von Braun"). The oil industry is full of smart people, and so is the mortgage industry. Smart people seem to have brought us nothing but trouble. Smarts without values is dangerous -- threatening, scary, virtually un-American....
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Home Front: Politix
Dems Have Reawakened the Perotistas
2009-10-24
By Jonah Goldberg

One of the most macabre images I've ever heard described came in the aftermath of the Asian tsunami in 2004. Before the tidal wave crashed on shore, beachgoers stood around and idly gaped as the water drastically receded. Bewildered, they didn't realize they were looking at the prelude to a calamity.

The Democratic party looks more and more like those beachgoers every day, watching popular support recede, oblivious to the Perot tsunami coming our way.

In 1992, the incumbent president, George H. W. Bush, was a disappointment to his party's base and a pariah to the Democrats. Government seemed to have lost its grip. The deficit became a massive issue, a symbol of out-of-control government. The hangover of Cold War sacrifices, the S&L bailout, runaway crime, huge trade deficits, the long-term trend of manufacturing decline, and, of course, the recession contributed to the sense that America desperately needed to get its house in order.

Ross Perot, a quirky Texas billionaire, tapped into that anxiety perfectly. Western, pro-business, no-nonsense, pro-choice and pro-gun, culturally conservative but with little interest in culture-war issues, he managed to thread the needle between both parties. He also benefited enormously from the fact that his independent bid for the presidency was seen by the press as an indictment of both the incumbent Republican and the "Reagan deficits" that Democrats and the media had been denouncing for years. At one point, Perot led in the polls, and if he hadn't dropped out and then rejoined (or had he not been so Yosemite Sam-goofy), he might have done even better than his historic 19 percent of the popular vote.

It's still debated whether Perot cost Bush the election. But even if Clinton would have won regardless, Perot's candidacy had an underappreciated significance. He forced Clinton to double-down on his "New Democrat" appeals. Clinton had already fashioned himself as a "different kind of Democrat" who would "end welfare as we know it." But the Perotista revolt of "raging moderates" and "angry centrists" reinforced Clinton's rhetorical commitments and the voters' expectations.

Historian Richard Hofstadter identified the phenomenon decades earlier when he wrote of third parties in U.S. politics: "Their function has not been to win or govern but to agitate, educate, generate new ideas and supply the dynamic element in our political life."

He added: "Third parties are like bees: Once they have stung, they die." The Perotistas stung in 1992.

Once elected - with only 43 percent of the vote - Clinton seemed to betray his promises to govern from the center. His heavy-handed "Hillarycare" effort was exactly the sort of thing the Perotistas didn't want (never mind gays in the military and all that). The Democrats were shellacked in 1994, losing the Senate and the House to Newt Gingrich and his "Contract with America," which was a carefully calibrated appeal to centrism.

The liberal interpretation of this sea change has always been freighted with denial. The late ABC News anchor Peter Jennings said the election was a giant hissy fit: "Ask parents of any two-year-old and they can tell you about those temper tantrums. . . . The voters had a temper tantrum."

In part because Perot voters and sympathizers were disproportionately white and male, and because they expressed their dismay with Clinton by voting for the GOP, the Democrats and the media ginned up the "angry white male" theory of American politics. The same voters who were part of a "vital center" when attacking a Republican president were increasingly recast as dangerous minions of Rush Limbaugh and the forces of hate when they aligned with Republicans.

Fast-forward to today. The tea-party protesters are in large part the heirs of Perotism, and they are being subjected to the same insults. Liberal commentators are deaf to the tea partiers' disdain for both political parties, preferring to cast the protesters as a deranged band of birthers and racists or hired guns of a Republican "AstroTurf" campaign.

Meanwhile, as National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru has argued, the Democrats have convinced themselves that the moral of Clinton's failed health-care push is not that he was wrong to try, but that he was wrong not to cram it through against popular opposition.

President Obama promised a "new era of fiscal responsibility," but he's governing as if exploding the size of government is what Americans want, polls be damned. The Democrats' budget games and giveaways amount to poking the angry Perotista beast with a stick.

If the GOP can convincingly align with and exploit the growing Perotista discontent, it very well might ride to victory on a tsunami the Democrats can't even see.
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Home Front: Culture Wars
Lileks: Friday, September 11th
2009-09-11
...Within a few minutes of watching the first episodes, though, I was reminded of something else, something that had attached itself to the show. The mood of the Early Oughts. The show was shot in 2001, and hit the states the year after. It wasn’t that the show had anything to do with the mood of the Early Oughts – it seemed an example of an exhausted culture that had painted itself into a corner where irrelevance, bureaucracy, and impotence were the dominant tropes, but the tone of the show and its hovering unspoken criticism editorialized nicely against the smothering effect of life in the cubicle world. No, it was who I was when I watched it. What I felt. The fact that I was switching from the hot red feed of the TV news to a DVD, unplugging for a while from the incessant imperatives of the crawl, the words at the bottom of the screen that scraped the screen with the latest events. In those days I turned on the TV as soon as I got up, and read the crawl. I muted the TV during the day, but kept an eye on the crawl. When I finished an episode of the Office I switched back to the dish, and checked the crawl.

This lasted a few years. The internet took over, and I think I stopped watching TV news the day Saddam’s statue came down. In the most simplistic and emotional sense, it was a tonic chord that provided resolution. But every so often – every week, really – I remember the event in some odd echo of the emotions I felt on September 11. It might be the closing credit music of a BBC comedy, or an old movie about New York, or driving past a building designed by the architect of the WTC, or just standing in the spot where I stood when I saw the towers fall. Or more: for God’s sake, the Gallery of Regrettable Food’s publication date was 9/11; half the time I look at the book on the shelf I recall being in the shower, thinking of the interviews I had lined up, turning off the water and hearing Peter Jennings on the radio, wondering why they were replaying tape of the 91 attack on the towers. I remember what Natalie was doing – a happy toddler, she was digging through her box of toys and handing me a phone with a smile as bright as the best tomorrow you could imagine. I remember Jasper on his back, whining, unsure. I remember these things because I picked up my camera and filmed them, because this was a day unlike any other. Today I answered the phone in the same spot where I stood when I called my Washington bureau, told them I’d be rewriting the column – obviously – and wished them well. They were four blocks from the White House. Impossible not to imagine the Fail-Safe squeal on the other end of the line.

On the Hewitt show tonight I started talking about 9/11, and my mouth overran my head, because somewhere down there is a core of anger that hasn’t diminished a joule. This doesn’t mean anything, by itself – anger is an emotion that believes its justification is self-evident by its very existence. Passion is not an argument; rage is not a plan. But as the years go by I find myself as furious now as I was furious then – and no less unmanned by the sight of the planes and the plumes. Once a year I watch the thing I cobbled together from the footage I Tivo’d, and the day is bright and real and true again.

Or not. It’s all so far in the past, isn’t it? The ten-year-old you had to sit down and console and reassure is off to college. The President is retired – seems like he left two years ago. The wars grind on, but as far as the front pages are concerned, they’re like TV shows that lost their popularity but pull enough viewers to avoid cancellation. (The video store doesn’t even carry the DVD of the first two seasons anymore.) We’re used to the hole in the ground where the towers used to be, and if they announced they won’t rebuild, but will pave it over and use it for parking, people would shrug. We haven’t forgotten that the towers fell, but no one remembers what they planned to replace them with. The towers they planned looked empty in in the pictures – shiny, contorted, as if twisting away to avoid a blow.

Right after the towers fell, people who’d never liked them as architecture wanted them back just as they were. Get back up in the sky! But it hasn’t happened. Even if they build the replacement towers, there’s still a space in the sky where no one will ever stand again. We could stand there once. That we couldn’t stand there eight years ago was their fault. That we cannot stand there today is ours.
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Syria-Lebanon-Iran
UK, US must admit defeat in Iraq: says British general
2007-05-03
H/T The Corner Michael Rubin. This is from IRNA: Islamic Republic News Agency
The US and the UK must "admit defeat" in Iraq and stop fighting "a hopeless war," according to one of Britain's most distinguished generals.

General Sir Michael Rose also controversially suggested that the insurgents in Iraq were right to try to force US troops out of their country. "I don't excuse them for some of the terrible things they do, but I do understand why they are resisting," Rose told BBC's Newsnight programme.
"They just don't know any better. They aren't like us. We'd never do that."
"It is the soldiers who have been telling me from the frontline that the war they have been fighting is a hopeless war, that they cannot possibly win it," he revealed.
I'll bet they haven't said any such thing.
"The sooner we start talking politics and not military solutions, the sooner they will come home and their lives will be preserved," said the general, who was commander of UN forces in Bosnia and head of Britain's elite SAS force.
So goes the spirit of the Blitz, of Malaya, ...
He suggested that it was time for Britain to bring its troops home from Iraq and said that this meant the UK government would have to admit defeat.
Which he's salivating to do, since that would bring down Tony, who's leaving anyway.
Last month, Rose said that Prime Minister Tony Blair must be impeached over the Iraq war before he leaves office because of the catastrophe it has caused to the country's armed forces. "Iraq has been such a serious setback to Britain's standing in the world, Blair should be held accountable in Parliament. He cannot just walk away from this in a few weeks' time," he said in an interview with the Daily Mail.
Wonder why he hasn't appeared on The View? He and Rosie would get along quite well.
In his latest interview with Newsnight, the general drew similarities between the tactics of the Iraqi insurgents, who he warned would not give up, and the US War of Independence against the British over 200 years ago.
I'm just guessing that he doesn't understand the difference between al-Qaeda, an Anbar tribal chief, a Shi'a tribal chief, and a Sadrist. Just guessing.
"If I was an American, as I am an Englishman, as long as one Englishman remained on American native soil, I would never, never, never lay down my arms," he quoted former Prime Minister Lord Chatham saying at the time. "The British admitted defeat in North America and the
catastrophes that were predicted at the time never happened," Rose said.
Perhaps because the American rebels were different in a couple of ways from the Iraqi Sunni terrorists and Iranian-backed Sadrists? Could it possibly be that American rebels had expressed certain thoughts in the Declaration of Independence that are totally at odds with whatever al Qaeda and the Sadrists might believe? Anyone? Bueller?
He also said that the catastrophes predicted after the US withdrawal from Vietnam in the 1960s never happened and that the "same thing will occur after we leave Iraq."
Nope, nothing bad happened in Vietnam after we left. Except for the million boat people. And the half-million Vietnamese who were killed by the new regime. And the half-million Vietnamese tossed into concentration camps. Oh, and the Khmer Rouge. Something about 'killing fields' as I recall, but I'm sure the General must be right. He's a believer.
In other news about this General:
Published: April 24, 1995
In his third and strongest hourlong report from Bosnia, Peter Jennings takes aim at Lieut. Gen. Sir Michael Rose, the former commander of the United Nations forces in that battered land. The specific charge of "The Peacekeepers: How the United Nations Failed in Bosnia" is that having declared the towns of Gorazde and Bihac to be safe havens, the United Nations, represented in the field by General Rose, allowed the Serbian aggressors to get away with murder.

General Rose, in the critical view of relief workers and military officers, played down the Serbian attacks and responded feebly or not at all despite his ability to direct NATO air power against the aggressors. General Rose's explanation, under the tough questioning of Mr. Jennings, that the United Nations and NATO are on a peacekeeping mission not a war mission, seems weak and evasive, especially when his words are accompanied by scenes of besieged civilians under incessant attack.
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Home Front: Culture Wars
Another "Great Journalist" Exposed As War Fraud
2007-02-22
George W. Polk was honored as a truth-teller. A correspondent for CBS News, he was murdered in Greece in 1948. A coveted, respected award named after him, the George Polk Award, was established in 1949 and is given every year to journalists in numerous specialties. According to a statement on the official website, the winners have exemplified the unearthing of "myriad forms of scandal and deceit." They comprise a two-generation roll call of distinguished names in journalism: Christiane Amanpour, Homer Bigart, Walter Cronkite, Thomas Friedman, David Halberstam, Seymour Hersh, Peter Jennings, Ted Koppel, Bill Moyers, Edward R. Murrow, Daniel Schorr, I.F. Stone, and many others.

Polk cut a dashing figure as a newsman, but he also cut out the real story of his World War II service as a naval officer and replaced it with a huge fraud. He deserves to join the growing roster of American journalists whose dishonesty has gravely injured their profession.

Who killed Polk remains a mystery. His body, drugged, bound, and shot in the head at close range, washed up in Salonika Bay during the Greek civil war of the late 1940s. Journalists widely believed that he died in fearless pursuit of a story. Polk was brave, and he wasn't reticent about his exploits. As a newsman, he often regaled his family and fellow journalists with tales of his exploits as a World War II fighter pilot and ace.

The mystery of Polk's death inspired at least three books in the United States, as well as some

in Greece. In The Polk Conspiracy, journalist and human rights activist Kati Marton recounts how Polk told his family that he had been a fighter pilot who shot down 11 Japanese planes and earned a Purple Heart for shrapnel wounds. In The Salonika Bay Murder: Cold War Politics and the Polk Affair, Princeton University professor Edmund Keeley presents Polk as a Navy fighter pilot in the South Pacific, a twice-wounded recipient of a "presidential unit citation." Interestingly, Elias Vlanton and Zak Mettger's Who Killed George Polk? mentions only Polk's claims of flying bomber and reconnaissance missions, not the wounds or the planes shot down. Judging from the correspondence and tributes included in his personal papers, deposited at New York University Library, Polk's glorious war record helped him get--and keep--his reporter's job at CBS. When Polk's reporting in Greece was challenged, Larry LeSueur, a CBS anchorman, defended Polk as a "wartime Navy fighter pilot twice wounded over Guadalcanal." After Polk's death in May 1948, CBS's legendary reporter Edward R. Murrow eulogized him as a hero who had "flown both fighters and bombers for the Navy during the war, was wounded in the Solomons and decorated for bravery."

None of this was true. Official documents reflect no evidence that Polk flew fighters in combat, much less that he shot down any Japanese planes. In fact, they demonstrate he was not even a qualified Navy pilot. Likewise, these records contain no evidence he was wounded, or that his decorations support his combat flying claims. Polk's actual service was admirable, but his later stories burgeoned into a fantastic deception...

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Home Front: Politix
ELECTION 2006: From future star to falling star
2006-07-10
In July 2004, freshman Gov. Jennifer Granholm was in such demand for interviews at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, she even turned down star ABC News anchorman Peter Jennings. She was toasted as a bright new hope, chosen for a prime-time speech. Admirers were disappointed to learn she was born in Canada and therefore can never run for president. Two years later, Granholm's rising star has been yanked to Earth by a lagging Michigan economy. Polls show her virtually tied with Republican challenger Dick DeVos, whose unprecedented TV ad campaign so far has cost an estimated $7 million.

Meanwhile, Granholm holds her fire. Pundits say Granholm is in danger of becoming a one-term wonder.

If her celebrity has worn thin, her skills as a campaigner have not. The reelection of Michigan's first female governor will hinge on whether her charisma and power of persuasion can trump the public's deep anxiety over the state's economy. "I think we have very challenging circumstances in Michigan because of our automotive industry, and when you combine that with a very well-funded opponent, it makes a great opportunity to educate voters about our plan," Granholm said in Battle Creek last week, referring to her actions to lure new jobs to the state, upgrade education standards and put people to work repairing roads. "People in Michigan have to have an aggressive plan, and they know we didn't get here because they have a Democratic governor. We got here because of the automotive industry, because of unfair trade and old solutions that are not going to get us out."
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Home Front: Culture Wars
Dan Rather Leaves See-BS
2006-06-20
Dan Rather, the hard-charging anchorman who dominated CBS News for more than two decades but whose final months were clouded by incredibly bad judgment a discredited story on the president’s military service, is leaving CBS after 44 years, the network announced Tuesday.
Nah nah nah-nah, nah nah nah-nah, hey hey, goodbye!
The 74-year-old Rather has complained of being virtually forgotten at CBS Corp. since his exit as anchor last year, six months after the story on President Bush’s military service aired. He has said he is considering an offer to do a weekly show at the HDNet high-definition network. That network....hmm....what's the frequency, Kenneth?

“There will always be a part of Dan Rather at CBS News,” said Sean McManus, CBS News president. “He is truly a ‘reporter’s reporter,’ and he has helped to train several generations of broadcast journalists. His legacy cannot be replicated." No kidding.

Rather said that his departure before the end of his contract represented CBS’ acknowledgment, “after a protracted struggle, that they had not lived up to their obligation to allow me to do substantive work there.” Considering the beating the "Tiffany Network" took from your Bush Derangement Syndrome and sloppy verification, that's understandable...

“It isn’t in me to sit around doing nothing,” he said. “So I will do the work I love elsewhere, and I look forward to sharing details about that soon.” Oh, goody, can he tag team with Bill Moyers??

McManus, in an interview, would not discuss details of what CBS had offered Rather. He said it had become clear that CBS and Rather would not be able to agree on a role that satisfied both parties.

“It was obviously very difficult because I have enormous respect for what Dan has brought to CBS News and what he meant to CBS News, but I had to make the tough decision of what direction in which to go, and this is what I chose,” he said.

Rather, whose final CBS News report aired on “CBS Sunday Morning” last weekend, will be the subject of a prime-time special on his career next fall, CBS said. Aww, cheer up, Dan! You'll at least get to see your eulogy before you die...

The network also said it had made a contribution to Rather’s alma mater, Sam Houston State University. "Here's $5. We DO want a receipt!"

The Texan has worked at CBS News since 1962, covering stories ranging from the Kennedy assassination to the 2001 terrorist attacks. He was the “CBS Evening News” anchor who replaced Walter Cronkite in 1981 until signing off with the admonition “courage” on March 9, 2005.

Rather apparently hadn’t even seen the report questioning Bush’s Vietnam-era National Guard service before introducing it on the air in September 2004. When CBS News couldn’t substantiate the story following questions about its sources, Rather became a symbol of the incident even as he escaped official blame.

Since then, Rather’s on-air appearances have been infrequent. He contributed eight stories to “60 Minutes” this season, about half the airtime of most full-time correspondents there. His most recent “60 Minutes” story, a profile of Whole Foods Market, aired June 4.

In interviews last week, Rather made clear the professional divorce was imminent. Rather said CBS had offered him an office but no real assignments.

For more than two decades, Rather dominated broadcast news along with NBC’s Tom Brokaw and the late Peter Jennings of ABC. They were the faces seen every evening and whenever big news broke.

Rather always considered himself a reporter first, and the habit of news anchors to travel to the scenes of big stories is largely his legacy. His interview with Saddam Hussein in 2003 was the last given by the Iraqi leader before he was toppled.

With his intense on-air demeanor, Rather also had his detractors, and his broadcast was a distant third in the evening news ratings at the time he stepped down. CBS News’ ratings have rebounded under short-term successor Bob Schieffer; Katie Couric will take over the broadcast in September.
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Home Front: Politix
A Reporter's Duty (Wallace Lectures Jennings)
2005-11-09
Let us now sing the qualified praises of questioning patriotism. Sunday, Mike Wallace of “60 Minutes” fame appeared on Chris Wallace’s must-watch show, “Fox News Sunday.” Having the CBS liberal lion appear on the upstart Fox — particularly after Fox had so much fun with the “60 Minutes” memogate story — made it the journalistic equivalent of an exciting crossover episode. You know, like when “Happy Days” was continued on “Mork & Mindy.” The fact that Chris is the son of Mike made it simultaneously more and less interesting. The less interesting part was that the interview was fairly soft, and it probably wouldn’t have taken place had not the son wanted to help Dad move his new book. What made it more interesting was that Mike Wallace felt a bit more relaxed to speak freely. To wit: Chris asked Mike, “Do you understand why some people feel such disaffection for the mainstream media?” “Oh, yes,” Mike answered. “They think we’re wild-eyed commies, liberals. Yes?”

“That’s what they think. And how do you plead?”

“I think it’s damn foolishness,” Dad retorted, continuing, “look, you know as well as I, reporters are in the business because they want to be — first of all, they’re patriots just as much as any conservative. Even a liberal reporter is a patriot, wants the best for this country. And people — you know, your fair and balanced friends at Fox — don’t fully understand that.”

Well, not only is that more than a little condescending. It’s highly concentrated damn foolishness. What Wallace doesn’t fully understand is that lots of people have good reason to suspect that media Brahmins like him are less patriotic than the average Joe.

Now, before everybody gets their knickers in a twist, let me be clear. I’m not saying that journalists are unpatriotic. No. Not at all. They're just a bunch of wild-eyed commies. Commies can be patriotic, too, they just have a different vision of what's best for the country. Nor am I discrediting the argument that it is the hallmark of the true patriot to tell unpleasant or inconvenient truths. Chesterton was right when he declared: “My country right or wrong is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, ‘My mother, drunk or sober.’ ”

But what Mike Wallace and so many others seem to forget is that patriotism, like most any other trait, comes in varying quantities. Person A can be less nice than person B and still be perfectly nice. Joe can be more tolerant than Phil, but that doesn’t make Phil a bigot. And Mike can be less patriotic than whomever and not be a traitor or a “wild-eyed commie.” Indeed, many journalists seem to believe that a certain impatience for patriotic appeals is a hallmark of good journalism. And hyperbole is a great way to mock someone else's point of view.

One such journalist is Mike Wallace. In a famous PBS-televised seminar at Columbia University, the moderator imagined a hypothetical in which the late Peter Jennings was embedded with enemy troops in a Vietnam-like war. He then asked whether, if given the opportunity, he’d warn American troops they were about to be ambushed or whether he’d hang back and simply “roll tape” on the slaughter.

Jennings agonized. “I think,” he said after a long pause, “that I personally would do what I could to warn the Americans.” Mike Wallace was appalled. “I am astonished” that you would interfere, he said to Jennings. “You’re a reporter!” When asked if American reporters have a higher duty to their country or fellow Americans, Wallace replied, “No, you don’t have a higher duty. No. No. You’re a reporter.” This browbeating was enough to get Jennings to change his mind.

This is just one of countless examples of how patriotic waters run tepid in the elite media. In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, ABC’s David Westin told journalism students that he couldn’t take a position on whether the Pentagon was a legitimate target. Other journalists agonized about whether there was an inherent conflict between wearing a tiny American flag on their lapels and doing their jobs. In World War II, American journalists — including Walter Cronkite and the legendary Ernie Pyle — wore American military uniforms and saw no conflict.

Some of this has to do with the growing cosmopolitanism of American journalism. Elite reporters like Mike Wallace and the late Jennings think they are “citizens of the world.” Years ago, CNN banned the use of the word “foreigners” to describe, well, foreigners.

And some of this has to do with tendency to define good reporting as revealing or exaggerating America’s problems to the world. This is a needed and important trait in reporters, but like any trait, including patriotism, one can have too much of it, or too little.

DC Examiner columnist Jonah Goldberg is editor
at large at the National Review
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