quillnews

Newspaper cartoons are funny, except when you're serious (part 2)

Recalling the recent ranting street theater in some quarters over a cartoon or two, here's two to ponder, left and here: US of Islam.  (HT:  LGF)  Food for thought on a whole lot of levels.  Of course the Dubai Ports story has been a stand in topic for the "elephant" in the room - the complete trashing of Islam as a respectable religion because of the internal war being waged by the Islamofascists.  The American people are reacting to actions of Islamic fanatics and are responding in a completely understandable way. The elites from DC may say it is all because of media manipulation, but give the people who live in this world some credit. (WP, LGF) Where are the voices of moderation and reform within Islam who can counter this public poison of violent intolerance?  Others of faith in the world community aren't stupid and will respond to mindless threats of religious violence.  Where are the voices of moderate Islam? (Update: An earlier QN rumination.) With outfits like CAIR as their public spokesmen, it is any wonder the voice of moderate Islam has been crowded out ofthe public square? (Pipes & Chadha in MEI on CAIR a must read).  Quillnews question:  Dubai Ports, Schmorts! The Judeo-Christian West is losing trust in the Arab Islamic world's ability to be civilized.  Is this loss of trust permanent? Are we witnessing the making of a historic tragedy? I'm serious.  Stay tuned... (Part 1)

Newspaper cartoons are funny, except when you’re serious

I’d like to think that I have some unique insights to add to the cartoon imbroglio, but I'm not sure I do.  It is all pretty simple to me.  Ordinarily I’m respectful of religious sensitivities.  My first lesson on Islamic sensitivies was a while ago – I think it was during publicity generated by Hollywood's making of (a no doubt over-the-top romantic Arabian Desert) epic about the birth of Islam – that Muslims had a unique take on images of the prophet. The movie makers had to be careful not to show any image of Mohammed.  Hmmm.  Kind of a tough rule when you're making a movie about Mohammed - even for Hollywood!   I never understood this particular preoccupying fixation myself. Images of The Almighty, Jesus, The Virgin Mary, the Holy Trinity and various saints and spirits have been enriching parts of my daily life from the get-go.  But hey, if believers in Mohammad say they want it that way, that’s cool.  What isn’t cool is any believer’s view that if some smart ass in the back of the room is disrespectful to this belief that the only acceptable response is that the offender should be killed.  Not cool.  The way disrespect of this type should be handled is one-on-one on the playground during recess in a brief and informal dust up that usually clarifies everybody’s feelings and attitudes. No biggie. As we all know, the world is full of smart ass weisenheimers, many of whom grow up to find employment in the print trades and who make their living saying, doing and printing outrageous things. This is life on earth. Get used to it. Usually cartoons are fun and cool. (Self-portrait of Jeff MacNelly, a Quillnews favorite, above.)  If you've got a problem with what is shown or said, write a heart felt letter to the editor and call the offender an idiot. And let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves about the nobility of the press in all this, because nobility and high-purpose, usually have absolutely nothing to do with the enterprise.  Mostly it’s all great fun. I mean some in the print trades will do noble things, but mostly the press behave like the human beings they are – imperfectly.  On this one, I’m giving all in the press a complete pass.  Just keep working guys.  As for the ranting street bone-heads, I don’t have much to add except to express my belief that the violent, intolerant, hateful, and downright stupid reaction by some rent-a-thugs to the cartoons in Denmark is not cool, not cool at all. 

Quillnews advice: Let’s remember to keep it simple. First point: most of these ranting young men wearing wraps around their heads and burning flags and promising death to the infidels are employed to make trouble by dictatorships (Iran, Syria, Egypt, et al), their opportunistic political operatives in foreign parts (Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, et al), and promised virgins upon death by those moronic no-work “Islamic clerics” whose only occupation seems to be to avoid personal hygiene and to take money from rich Muslims (Saudis, Iranian Mullahs, et al) for saying outrageous things.  Viewing the recent ginned-up street theater, the world’s established communities of government and commerce and respectable sociability will no doubt be making this point to their counter-parts in the Muslim communities: can't you get your guys to knock this sh*t off.  Besides, what is the deal with you guys?  Are your home communities this incapable of life on the planet earth with human beings?  Come on, get with it.  Send the stir-it-all-up morons to the unemployment line now where they belong. Tell these "Muslim leaders" and their followers to put down their religious texts for a while and study some engineering, some economics, some science, some world history and learn something useful for their future. Furthermore, make sure your kids take their studies in life-on-earth to heart. Which leads to my second point: This life-on-earth school will be very important because the success the Muslim community has in educating its young about how the world actually works, will determine how much life many of their young people get to experience. Because free people won’t tolerate intolerance.  If the believers want to impose their intolerance on free people, it’s going to mean a fight. And it’s a fight free people will win. No matter how long it takes, no matter the cost. Freedom is non-negotiable.  (Lifson, Kelly, NRO, WS, Levy) (Part 2)

Message to Big Media: it's over. Question for Free People: now what?

That the elite institutions of Big Media have lost hegemony over the public debate is beyond dispute. The evidence of this breakup over who decides what should be placed on the public's agenda for discussion and what ideas and positions on these issues were respectable is evident every day and has been gathering for years.  Ratings, earnings, ad revenues, circulation figures, classified inches, stock prices all indicate declines in the forture of the corporate communication enterprises; and this says nothing about the incompetence and bias that is increasingly evident every day in the journalistic output of these enterprises. The failure of the professional jouralists employed in the Mainstream Media to comprehend and communicate the community's peril in the Post Sept 11 World only crystalized the public's growing rejection of the practices and output of the broadcasting news networks, major daily newspapers, and weekly news magazines. Today innovations in technology, new business models, changing demographics and consumer preferences have allowed new media - among them, 24-7 cable and web news, talk radio explosion due to satellite radio and pod casting, web logs, and the emergence of pop entertainers (Dennis Miller, Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, Oprah et al) as preferrred political and social commentators and debate arbitrators - to occupy ever more influence on the course and content of the public debate. Quillnews has been hammering this theme since its inaugural posts in 2004. Much of the energy I have brought to this site has come from my belief that this change in our communication world will have profound consequences during the War on Islamofascism and created, in effect, a New Battlefield that we as free people have yet to recognize and understand. I believe that the communications world has been so altered by technology and commerce that free people must review their assumptions about what constitutes responsible and acceptable behavior by professional journalists and their corporate employers in today's environment. (Editor's aside: My commentary on these subjects are in catetories labeled Big Media's Meltdown, News & Media-ville, and The New Battlefield at left.) Excellent posts in recent days elsewhere are Roger Ailes essay in the WSJ about the top five books on the news media, and Hugh Hewitt's essay on Columbia Journalism School in the WS. Stay tuned...  (Update: Lifson in AT) (Update2: RCP blog) (Update 3: Jack Kelly of Irish Pennants has two excellent posts of the changing newspaper market and journalism profession.)

Changing PJ's to OSM (& back)...

...In a manner of speaking anyway. In spirit, I'm with Roger, Charles, Jill and the PJ gang Wednesday at the New York launch of Pajamas Media (and to be renamed OSM), though like most in this new herd of cyber cats, I'm somewhere else. In my case, the climes are of a decidedly ordinary and pleasant variety on the NE coast of Florida at a time share overlooking the Atlantic and enjoying the salt air and sounds of the November sea and watching birds riding the brisk winds.  Technology means I'm not far from news and net, and I've learned how to use the tools well enough to post this.  I've been at Quillnews posting for a year, and a loyal crew of readers keep coming back for more. Now Pajamas has agreed to let Quillnews come along for the net-ride they've had the vision to organize. (NRO, PJM, RLS) (Update: OSM) (Update2: Back to Pajamas!)

After Harriet and Scooter side shows: time to tune back to the main event

Quillnews thinks the drivers of Bush 43's bus can finally begin to put the devestation of hurrianes Katrina and Harriet in the rear view mirror and begin to focus Media-ville's magical mystery tour on a real-life story: the magnificent accomplishments and righteous necessity of The Post Sept 11 War, and the heroic sacrifices of volunteers defending freedom. 

You won't hear this line of reasoning much on the MSM, but that's what I believe is the important result of the decision to withdraw Harriet Miers nomination and the US grand jury's indictment of Cheney's chief of staff.  (Good arguments: Kristol, Hayes, Barone, Podhoretz, Barnes) It's hard to be releaved with an otherwise stand-up guy like Libby gets accused of crimes that could put him in the slammer for three decades; or when a decent lady lawyer from Dallas gets a Media-ville mugging she never deserved.  But in fact, such is the calculus of DC in the age Media-ville. The entire Joe Wilson, Yellowcake, Judy Miller-Victoria Flame story about how the prosecutors would prove the WH lied the US into war... Bizz.  That story line is kaput. The 2005 hurricane season that blew down the leadership of Bush 43 is coming to an end.  In fact, the MSM narratives that would have the last years of Bush 43's job be a kind of Michael Jackson trial need to be scrapped. Despite the fevered rhetoric and eager anticipation of yet another round of DC scandal mongering, Scooter's fate will be about whether he lied to the cops, not whether Bush 43 lied the US into war!  Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald gave anti-war zealots no help on using the Libby indictment as proof of anything about the run up to the war. 

Reporter Question: A lot of Americans, people who are opposed to the war, critics of the administration, have looked to your investigation with hope in some ways and might see this indictment as a vindication of their argument that the administration took the country to war on false premises. Does this indictment do that?

Fitzgerald Answer: This indictment is not about the war. This indictment's not about the propriety of the war. And people who believe fervently in the war effort, people who oppose it, people who have mixed feelings about it should not look to this indictment for any resolution of how they feel or any vindication of how they feel. This is simply an indictment that says, in a national security investigation about the compromise of a CIA officer's identity that may have taken place in the context of a very heated debate over the war, whether some person--a person, Mr. Libby--lied or not. The indictment will not seek to prove that the war was justified or unjustified. This is stripped of that debate, and this is focused on a narrow transaction. And I think anyone who's concerned about the war and has feelings for or against shouldn't look to this criminal process for any answers or resolution of that.

Fitzgerald's performance as special counsel - despite the eager spin of "gate" scandal fans - has been relentless but appropriate, as were his statements during his press conference Friday. In fact, Fitzgerald, a native of Flatbush, Brooklyn, who graduated from the Jesuit’s Regis H.S. before heading into the land of the high-end Waspy meritocracy at Amherst and Harvard, demonstrated he is a kind of Harp prince.  This aging alter boy is a Catholic mother’s dream as a son or son-in-law.  He’s still single, has the look of a bag of unstarched laundry, and the lean demeanour of a spud who could use a good meal. Fitzgerald showed the audience in Media-ville what a US lawman should look like and sound like: genuine, direct, credible and completely without guile.  What a terrific performance Friday.  If Hollywood ever wonders what the American people favor in its lawmen, Fitzgerald’s Celtic Dudley-Do-Right performance cast an iconic mold.  (DOJ, Bio)

More improtantly, partly as a result of Fitzgerald's sense of justice, the audience in Media-ville will be spared yet another 24-7 "gate" quagmire where DC's political class is split into waring camps on the nightly food-fights over what is essentially a carny side-show.  There will be no federal prosecutor who does the political bidding of anti-Bush 43 zealots in a courtroom. In fact, as the record will show: Wilson is still a showboat hype-artist, Saddam was still an evil menace, and the US decision to topple his regime was utterly justified and, if anything, came years too late. 

Before Katrina struck in late August, the Bush 43 team had been set to begin its "communication's" offensive in support of the Iraq war.  Now with the distractions of the last two months over, it's time to get back to the main thing.  VDH has a terrific essay on this.  Money quote: 

[It's] time to step up lecturing both the American people and the Iraqis on exactly what we are doing in the Sunni Triangle. We have been sleepwalking through the greatest revolutionary movement in the history of the Middle East, as the U.S. military is quietly empowering the once-despised Kurds and Shiites — and along with them women and the other formerly dispossessed of Iraq. In short, the U.S. Marine Corps has done more for global freedom and social justice in two years than has every U.N. peacekeeping mission since the inception of that now-corrupt organization. This is high-stakes — and idealistic — stuff. And the more we talk in such terms, the more the president can put the onus of cynical realism on the peace movement and the corrupt forces in the Middle East, who alike wish us to fail. Forget acrimony over weapons of mass destruction, platitudes about abstract democracy, and arguments over U.S. security strategies. Instead bluntly explain to the world how at this time and at this moment the U. S. is trying to bring equality and freedom to the unfree, in a manner rare in the history of civilization.

Why is Hitch the only guy with a clue?

All of Media-ville is focused on a DC Court House waiting for another special prosecutor to issue yet another set of indictments in yet another administration's "gate" scandle... Let's take a moment to consider a real scandal: the UN Oil for Food Program that Saddam manipulated through bribery to corrupt the UN Security Council and buy protection. (UN/AP, CH, NC, SPCI)  This break down in simple human decency and the world's security procedures is being given short shrift by the elite media who, apparently, believe they have more important things to do - print and air giddy specultion about the possible destruction of yet another US political crew for no good reason except for the gamesmenship of the enterprise.  One of the key Media-ville players who's been paying attention is Christopher Hitchens whose question about the MP George Galloway's perfidy (GB) and the extent of the corruption in the UN is worth repeating and considering. 

...what has been established is breathtaking enough. A member of the British Parliament was in receipt of serious money originating from a homicidal dictatorship. That money was supposed to have been used to ameliorate the suffering of Iraqis living under sanctions. It was instead diverted to the purposes of enriching Saddam's toadies and of helping them propagandize in favor of the regime whose crimes and aggressions had necessitated the sanctions and created the suffering in the first place. This is something more than mere "corruption." It is the cynical theft of food and medicine from the desperate to pay for the palaces of a psychopath. Taken together with the scandal surrounding Benon Sevan, the U.N. official responsible for "running" the program, and with the recent arrest of Ambassador Jean-Bernard Mérimée (France's former U.N. envoy) in Paris, and with other evidence about pointing to big bribes paid to French and Russian politicians like Charles Pasqua and Vladimir Zhirinovsky, what we are looking at is a well-organized Baathist attempt to buy or influence the member states of the U.N. Security Council. One wonders how high this investigation will reach and how much it will eventually explain. (Slate)

Quillnews questions: Are free people supposed to rely on the UN to ensure law, order and security in the world?  If not, have we got the right questions about US security being asked in Media-ville? 

12 Oct. '00 Plus 5 - The Cole Anniversary

The fifth anniversary of the jihadist attack on the USS Cole in Yemen gets virtually no mention in the MSM.  (Editor's aside: The exception is ace blog diva, Michelle Malkin, who marks the historic milestone. MM, JW) The lack of focus on the essentials is no surprise to the friends of a free press who have watched in dismay these past few years at bizarre editing judgments made by the social science cult that has captured the MSM editing desks. Take Bush 43's speech last week, which was not only an articulate explanation of the US war policy and strategy, it also marked an important shift in the rhetoric the commander-in-chief has chosen to use in the war. (QN) The word "Islam" entered the president's war lexicon -- but not in any irrational anti-religious sense - as our enemies would wish.  It is quite obvious that the US effort to take the fight to the enemy on his home turf was not only the proper response to Sept 11 and the challenge of Saddam. The US campaign also revealed the enemy's evil to all. The US has successfully used the dynamics of the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq to create facts on the ground in one of world's most oppressed, badly led and backward regions that proves to all that this war launched by the jihadists is a clear contest between tyranny and freedom. This transformation of the war has been due to the policy of the US led by Bush 43, whose leadership has proven to Muslims everywhere that the jihadists are enemies of Islam as well as modernism and freedom. The president's willingness to use the label Islamofascism and other such terms demonstrates our leader's confidence in the US war policy development. (Editor's aside: This is a very big deal QN)  (Editor's aside2: The otherwise excellent Houston Chronicle coverage is marred by its decision to feature on its special page on Iraq the "prisoner abuse" narrative that is a staple of the jihadists war propaganda. HC, HC2)

Check out the letter send by al-Zawahiri to al-Zarqawi. What an incredible document, and credit to the official media of government (DNI, Letter, Centcom) for making the text available and to the blogs for offering valuable analysis.  (FR, AB, RCP, MM)   Relying on the NYT, for example, you'd never know that in fact the war is being won on US terms.  Powerline correctly slams the NYT's Jehl on his absurd assertion (in the 3rd graph) that the letter's importance is that Zawahiri is telling Zarqawi that the American "occupation of Iraq" had provided Islamic militants with a historic opportunity to win popular support. Jehl, that is so dumb. But you know probably just what passes for military analysis with the delusional cult that dominates the thinking at the NYT. Take the editorials on Fri, Oct 7 after Bush 43's speech. The headlines on these two absurd editorials are: 1) Sounding Old Themes on Iraq, and 2) Doing the 9/11 Time Warp Again. How blind do these editors have to be to have such a completely wrong headed reading of these momentous events? (HT Blankley WT) In fact, the news from war is very encouraging. (Boot, Bay, QN). Moreover, the political deal cutting underway by the lovers of democracy in Iraq shows that Iraq's liberation by the US is leading to freedom, and that the jihadist enemy is losing. (PL, NBC, HC)  Quillnews prediction: the Oct 15 vote in favor of the new Iraq constitution will power rocket democracy initiatives throughout the region.  In looking back at the five years of trial and sacrifice since the USS Cole, what is happening in Iraq and the region is progress and it is also big news. The Oct 15 vote will also offer further proof that the high priests of public affairs interpretation in the MSM have competely blown the story of the age.  In fact, they will be forced to deal with the historical record that shows that the volunteers for freedom accomplished these historic changes advancing freedom and human rights in Iraq and the Middle East despite the carping of their know-it-all countrymen who served up their elitist contempt for the effort from secure and free confines which the sacrifices of the heroic volunteers guarantee.

Actors in Media-ville

The cover story of the current issue of the Weekly Standard hits Quillnews' sweet spot: the role of celebrity in our popular culture. Epstein has written a very good summary essay, and notes one of Quillnews' core texts for special mention: The Image by Daniel Boorstin.  I'd also urge readers studying this phenomenon to seek out Richard Schickel's Intimate Strangers: the Culture of Celebrity.  These two volumes are among the earliest to plumb for soundings about the nature of "actors" in our modern media culture, and how these celebrity players serve as stand-ins for characters in Media-ville's wider cultural narrative.  Both volumes were stimulated by the success of Joe Kennedy's "soap flakes" advertising campaign that helped his son win the top elected job in the US in 1960 and by so doing, transformed Media-ville standards from the venues of entertainment into a must-have skill for any aspiring pol. (WS) 

Why not call it treason?

It's a useful word with meaning, of course. So are the words: sedition, aid and comfort to the enemy, and traitors.  Such words aren't being used -- yet.  Why not?  Look at the statements and antics of the demonstrators who showed in DC and in other cities last Saturday.  The organizers, speakers and legions of red troopers were not "anti-war" or "peace demonstrators."  Not even close. These were pro-jihadist, anti-Israel, Communists, anti-Americans who want UBL and al Zarqawi to win. They want their country's enemies in the field seeking to succeed in their campaign to kill innocents and US troops.  Why the MSM insists of framing their public antics as acceptable speech in the American mainsteam is an open scandal. (MM, MM2, N, PL, Zombie)  Finally, Christopher Hitchens called the press on their perfidy. His article in Slate is on the money. (BSC)  I respect honest Quakers, pacifists, consciencious objectors and the non-violent prinicples of Ghandi and Rev. King. But putting this bunch of prancing political street perverts in their class is journalistic malpractice. (LGF) This gang of sociopathic nihilists want the enemies of freedom to win, and tyranny to reign over the unprotected innocent. They want America to lose the war to save civilization, and they want America's enemies to kill Americans. (WS, NRO, IDP)  I say: Stop coddling these traitors.  Lock 'em up. 

PS - My hero last Saturday was the off duty Marine who just came back from Iraq and on his own marched in front of the "demonstrators" in DC with the placard: "freedom is not free," forcing all to consider the issues at hand. (Pix, PL, PL2)  He drove the loonies nuts and gave 'em an ear full too.      

PS 2 - for Quillnews readers in Iraq and Afghanistan, remember these street clowns are allowed to make idiots of themselves and shame their names and families because of your worthy efforts and heroic sacrifices to defend the freedoms they seem so eager to give away.  But they are all part of a side-show carney act. Remember the "quiet majority" of Americans are organized too, support your work, and have no intention of giving in to the jihadist enemy. Never. (QN)  A savvy few decided to create a few Media-ville images with patriotic sentiments of their own.  (LAT) Check out your legions of organized supporters listed in the post at Mudville Gazette.   

Afghan election: no news there!

The somewhat dismissive coverage MSM gave to the Afghanistan election Sunday is a good thing.  By the standards of Media-ville the election had a relative lack of drama; MSM could afford to adopt a condescending tone that turn-out was lower than the first election. This second-tier treatment given to the entire Afghan reconstruction shows that good things are happening -- very good things. Despite the threats of Taliban dead-enders, there was a minimum of violence election day at the 6,270 polling stations, where 12.4 million Afghans were registered to vote in the first legislative election in that country in more than 30 years.  Turnout was just above 50 percent and lower than hoped, but hey... We'll take it. Some 10 per cent of the 5,800 candidates for the lower house and 32 provisional assemblies were women, who comprised 42 per cent of the registered voters and who are guaranteed 25 per cent of the seats!  Who says US-led wars of liberation don't work?  Money quote from the WSJ editorial: 

With the Taliban running Afghanistan (four years ago), and Pakistan intelligence helping them, an Islamist takeover in Islamabad was not out of the question. But now with the Taliban routed and Hamid Karzai governing in Kabul, the region is no longer an al Qaeda sanctuary. This is one battle in the war on terror that we're clearly winning.

Despite the low-intensity of MSM's treatment of the election, these stories are good: CQ, FR, BBC, BBC2, HC, HC2.  The Afghans are going to need good government. Whoever wins in this new democratic process will have to contend with Afghanistan's persistent dope trade. WT  (Update: NYP Ralph Peters)