Category Archives: Journalism

Update II: Tim Russert Dead At 58

When a relatively young–presumably healthy–person like Mr. Russert dies suddenly, it is a reminder of one’s own mortality.

Tim Russert seemed a genial, if unremarkable, gentleman, which is more than one can say about most other media personalities.

Update I: I must say I was never able to detect the telltales of an interesting mind in Mr. Russert, but as his friends eulogize him, I will say this: He was objective and I never made out his political preferences or biases.

In the arid journalistic landscape of today perhaps that is in itself remarkable.

I find the instant eulogizing media has launched into a little distasteful. It’s too soon, too loud, and too self-referential—each personality making sure his relationship vis-à-vis Russert is front-and-center.

The man is not yet in the ground. Some quiet grief seems in order–a time to ration speech for a change.

Update II: Russert did prepare extremely well for all his interviews. Again, that’s rare in journalism nowadays. He was also a devout Catholic and devoted father and son. What’s not to admire about that?

Here’s what I find ironic: Keith Olbermann has been leading the tribute to Tim on MSNBC. Although there are aspects of Olbermann’s show that are appreciated—his coverage of the war and the demise of civil liberties under Bush—”Countdown” is pure advocacy, not journalism. I read recently, moreover, that Russert was deeply disturbed about this development—the turn against journalistic objectivity MSNBC had taken with “Countdown.” If this is the case, how does letting the Obamacentric Olbermann lead the network’s extolment honor Russert and his mission?

‘Colorectal Crusader’ Couric Cries Foul

Ethics, General, Hillary Clinton, Journalism, Media

What never fails to amaze me about the anointed Idiocracy of America (Peggy Noonan comes to mind here) is that, no matter how evil and erroneous their way, they always get curtain calls; they retain their status as philosopher-kings. Or queens.

Colonic Crusader” Katie Couric said this at an award ceremony for her cherished self:

“However you feel about her politics, I feel that Sen. Clinton received some of the most unfair, hostile coverage I’ve ever seen.”

[Note the grating “I feel” locution]

Rewind to February this year:

Sly Katie recently interviewed Clinton while intoxicated—drunk with love for Obama. Couric’s below-the-belt barbs and blithe probes about Obama—but not the issues—made Hillary appear elevated by comparison. The Senator was courteous where Katie was cruel.

‘Someone told me your nickname in school was Miss Frigidaire. Is that true?’ Couric asked. ‘Only with some boys,’ Clinton said, laughing

The answer was quick, and, I must confess, classy. The question was base and bitchy. (It’s of a piece with another iconic ‘journalist’s’ cruelty—that of Barbara Walters. She prefaced an interview with Celine Dion by pronouncing: ‘you are not beautiful.’ Tears welled in Dion’s beautiful eyes.)

Excerpted from my “Militant Mama Obama.”

Update II: Mindless Monolith: Media Pick Obama

Barack Obama, Democrats, Elections 2008, Intellectualism, Journalism, Media

“I suspect most media cheered for Obama reflexively, rather than consciously—too stupid to ask themselves whether what they were doing was journalism or advocacy. A couple of older news guys, ABC’s Charles Gibson comes to mind, failed to take sides. Consequently, the pack pounced on him and on George Stephanopoulos for asking the senator some pointed questions. But good newsmen are a dying breed. Good newswomen are mostly dead already. By the time she died, the brilliant and brave Oriana Fallaci had long since been buried professionally by mediocrities like Barbara Walters of the ‘cutting edge’ anti-aging reportage and colonic crusader Katie Couric.”

“So how did a mindless monolith’s hunger for Hussein help the Obama momentum?”

Find out by reading “Mindless Monolith: Media Pick Obama.” The column leads the WND Commentary Page today.

Update I: A friend, who’s no fan of Katie Couric, thought my description of her as a “colonic crusader” should be patented. Fun aside, to be a “good” newsman today means taking up a disease and fighting against it. The triumph of sentimentality over reason. Couric’s thing is colon cancer, an awful illness, indubitably, but, consider Fallaci who’d been blown-up covering many a revolution–she never so much as discussed the breast cancer that killed her. I suspect that given the kind of mind she had, it didn’t much interest her. I too switch off most newscasts when they start on the kiddies, cures, and critters crap. Part of the takeover by women.

Update II (June 7): In reply to the reader from Lewrocwell.com, who asserts that I have singled out “comrade” Obama for criticism for some reason he simply cannot fathom:

I too cannot quite understand why readers assert baselessly, rather than argue based on facts. The reader has clearly not read “Ilana’s” scathing commentary on the other candidates. It’s on this site, for those willing to do a wee search—two mouse clicks away really.

Of course, it’s also a no-brainer that the most prominent candidate—the frontrunner—would garner more commentary than the rest. Is it not? Perhaps not to all. Genghis Bush got my undivided attention in years past.

Here’s some of the commentary Mr. Allen “missed”:

“The Hillary, Hussein, McCain Axis of Evil”

“Mitt’s Gone; Bill’s Back”

“Axis of Economic Idiocy”

“Lexicon Of Lies”

“Busybody Hillary’s Bhutto Blather”

And more; practically every column of mine, here’s another example, is peppered with derogatory comments about the candidates and their positions, or lack thereof, as applied to the issues discussed in the column. I guess people see what they want to see.

A different perspective on my rather matter-of-fact narration of the media’s crowning of Obama comes from a rather independent-minded gentlemen I’ve come to know—he happens to be Sean Hannity’s producer, although as much as he often likes what I have to say has not succeeded in getting me on the program:

“This is your typical iconoclastic clarity – some people fight PC, you remind me more of some Buffy who stakes it through the heart and then cuts its head off on the backslash.”

Updated: Iraq 5 Years On: CBC Ignores American Anti-War Right

Ann Coulter, Iraq, Journalism, Just War, Media, Ron Paul

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation commemorated the invasion of Iraq with an outstanding Fifth-Estate segment: “THE LIES THAT LED TO WAR: The Political, Diplomatic, and Media Spin that Convinced Americans to Invade Iraq.”

An important point made was that America is no closer to a reckoning that this “adventure” was a great wrong, if not an outright evil. Ann Coulter provided a strident example of this hubris. Tossing her magnificent mane, she mocked Canadians for not getting the goods on how good things were in Iraq. This was how democracies shaped up, Ann “argued.”

A disgrace really. Cruel too.

A question to the fine chroniclers of the war at the CBC: There is a small number of American reporters, pundits, and a few politicians that has always opposed this abominable invasion on the grounds that it violated natural rights, Just War Theory, the American Constitution, the comity of nations—and practically every single stricture familiar to babes on the playground.

(SEE “Just War for Dummies”
& “Unnatural Lawlessness”)

Rep. Ron Paul protested tirelessly; as did this writer (starting in September 2002 in an editorial for Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe And Mail) and her non-Beltway affiliated libertarian colleagues.

(SEE “Why So Many Americans Don’t Support Attacking Iraq,” except that there weren’t so many Americans, despite the titular hope the Globe and Mail expressed.)

Why does the CBC fail to mention our much-marginalized faction? Is it because we are, for the most, of the Old, classically liberal American Right?

Why keep featuring the fiendish Coulter, Malkin, and their Canadian copycat, one Rachel Marsden? [SEE “Lethal Weapons: Neocon Groupies“] Why not help consign them to the dustbin of punditry and look to the principled few (talented too) who stood for the soundest of philosophical principles?

We exist!

I grieved when the death toll in Iraq stood at 289—a lousy landmark I also happened to protest in an op-ed for the Canadian Globe And Mail. (SEE “Bush’s Warfare State”)

I continue to mourn now that it has climbed to 4000—yesterday. My grief at the trashing of Iraqi lives has been a constant in my writing over the last five years—in columns and blog entries alike. (The Archive is here)

Who chose to nominate the average suffering Iraqi as “Person of the Year”? Certainly not Time magazine.

(SEE “My Person of the Year: The Average Iraqi”)

Update (March 25): The Man From Texas and his simply stated, straightforward truth-telling:

“Five years into the invasion and occupation of Iraq, untold hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead; some two million Iraqis have fled the country as refugees; and the Iraqi Christian community – one of the oldest in the world – has been decimated more completely than even under the Ottoman occupation or the rule of Saddam Hussein.

On the US side, nearly four thousand Americans have lost their lives fighting in Iraq and many thousands more are horribly wounded. Our own senior military officers warn that our military is nearly broken by the strain of the Iraq occupation. The Veterans Administration is overwhelmed by the volume of disability claims from Iraq war veterans.

A study by Nobel Prize economist Joseph Stiglitz concludes that the cost of the war in Iraq could be at least $3 trillion. The economic consequences of our enormous expenditure in Iraq are beginning to make themselves known as we fall into recession and possibly worse…”