Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
When I was young I would religiously watch the Sunday morning news shows, especially NB
C’s Meet the Press. Beginning in 1947, MTP is the longest running show in television history. While the other networks had comparable shows, clearly MTP with its longevity was seen as the show of record.
“The show’s format consists of an extended one-on-one interview with the host and is sometimes followed by a roundtable discussion or one-on-two interview with figures in adversarial positions, either Congress members from opposite sides of the aisle or political commentators. The show expanded to 60 minutes starting with the September 20, 1992 broadcast” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meet_the_Press#Moderators
Face the Nation, premiering in 1954 is considered to be the other Sunday morning News show of record. FTN’s format is:
“The moderator interviews newsmakers on the latest issues and delivers a short topical commentary at the end of the broadcast. The program broadcasts from Washington, D.C. Guests include government leaders, politicians, and international figures in the news. CBS News correspondents and other contributors engage the guests in a roundtable discussion focusing on current topics.”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_the_Nation
What all of these shows have in common is that they are repeatedly populated by the same people, whether politicians, journalists, economists or political operators. This link gives the background of the truth of Sunday morning “journalism”. http://mediamatters.org/search/index?qstring=Sunday+Morning+Talk+Shows&x=9&y=6 The casts rarely change and in all but the rarest of cases these guests make up what could be called our nation’s “Pundit Class”. They are seen as the “Serious People”, who lead America’s national debate on vital issues. I’ve been a “political junkie” since the age of ten. For many years I was misled into believing that these “Serious People” were really my intellectual betters when it came to public affairs and that political discussion must only exist within the ground rules of debate established by our “Pundit Class”. Beginning with the murder of JFK and in the ensuing disillusionment of the Sixties I’ve come to see that not only is this “Pundit Class” inherently corrupt, but only a rare few can barely be called intellectually informative. This group is in reality the paid propagandists of the elite 1% that rule this country and their main task is to limit the scope of our national debate.
In the last two weeks one of the most heard and most esteemed members of the Pundit Class, Fareed Zakaria, has been suspended from Time Magazine and CNN due to the discovery of plagiarism in one of his columns. Zacharia is also a Yale University Trustee and there is talk that his removal from that august position is under consideration. I’ve never particularly cared for Mr. Zakaria, but I was surprised by his plagiarism, more so by the fact he admitted it so readily and so abjectly. An article in the Huffington Post provided an explanation of Mr. Zakaria’s actions with a surprising explanation that I hadn’t expected and yet one that in retrospect makes perfect sense.
On 8/12/12 Eric Zeusse, an investigative historian, posted an article titled: “Fareed Zakaria Is Bitten by His Own Tale: How He Helped Create the System That Bit Him Back”. He began the article in this manner and in doing so exposed me to an idea that frankly hadn’t occurred to me.
“When Fareed Zakaria was suspended on Friday from Time and CNN, for plagiarism, this wasn’t merely justice, it was poetic justice: it rhymed. What it rhymed with was his own lifelong devotion to the global economic star system that he, as a born aristocrat in India, who has always been loyal to the aristocracy, inherited and has always helped to advance, at the expense of the public in every nation. He was suspended because, as a born aristocrat, who is a long-time member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, and many other of the global aristocracy’s primary organizations, he is so well-connected that his writing-commissions are more than any one person can possibly handle, and he consequently cannot possibly actually write all that is attributed to him. He certainly cannot research it all.”
In my naivete it I never thought of the possibility that someone like Mr. Zacharia might not write all, or even most of his material. I wasn’t aware of his aristocratic background, nor of his close connection to some of the secretive groups that shape global policy. I always just saw him as a “middle-of-the-road” pundit, with whom I disagreed on many things. As Mr. Zeusse goes on to explain:
“Like many “writing” stars, he has a staff perform much of the research and maybe even actual writing for him, and many in his situation are actually more editors than they are writers; but, regardless, he cannot let the public know that this is the way things are, because this is simply the way that the star system works in the “writing” fields, and because the public is supposed to think that these stars in the writing fields are writers, more than editors.
And, it’s a very profitable system for such stars. As Paul Starobin said, headlining “Money Talks,” in the March 2012 Columbia Journalism Review, Zakaria’s speaking fee is $75,000, and “he has been retained for speeches by numerous financial firms, including Baker Capital, Catterton Partners, Dreihaus Capital Management, ING, Merrill Lynch, Oak Investment Partners, Charles Schwab, and T. Rowe Price.”
So, he’s clearly a very busy man, with a considerable staff; he can’t possibly do everything himself.
But he needs to appear as if he does. He needs to present everything “he” does, as “his.”
The last two sentences above ring true and explain why Zakaria is so willing to perform mea culpa, take his suspensions and hope that this will blow over quickly. To admit the possible truth that someone writing for him had actually plagiarized would expose the fact that this “World Class Pundit and Author”, was merely a “front man” representing his privileged class. If this is true of Zakaria, who else of these “serious journalistic stars” is also doing the same thing and more importantly how are they shaping the political debate?
“Fareed Zakaria knows the way it works. So, he cannot afford to admit when he is being credited with the work of his employees. Far less damaging to him is to admit that he has done plagiarism himself, as he has admitted in this particular case — regardless whether it’s true.
If Zakaria didn’t actually do this plagiarism, could he very well announce to the world “I didn’t do it; I didn’t even research or write the article”? No. Romney and the Republicans say that the “job creators” at the top are the engine of the economy, and the aristocracy need to maintain this myth. It’s very important to them — that they are the stars, and that the people who might be the actual creators who work for them are not.
Zakaria wouldn’t want to burst the bubble atop which he is floating. To people in his situation, it’s a bubble of money, and it’s theirs. They don’t want to share it any more than they absolutely have to. (They despise labor unions for that very reason.) And their employees are very dependent upon them, so no one will talk about it — not the stars, not their workers.”
To make Eric Zeusse’s premise even more interesting we have this report on 8/16/12, “Fareed Zakaria Cleared By Time, CNN In Plagiarism Investigation”. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/16/fareed-zakaria-time-columns-review_n_1792081.html .
“We have completed a thorough review of each of Fareed Zakaria’s columns for TIME, and we are entirely satisfied that the language in question in his recent column was an unintentional error and an isolated incident for which he has apologized. We look forward to having Fareed’s thoughtful and important voice back in the magazine with his next column in the issue that comes out on September 7.”
Since Zakaria originally admitted he had made “A terrible mistake” it is heartening to see that his “mistake” was only an isolated incident. I think back to graduate schools papers I’ve written and wonder how I would have fared if I had “made a terrible mistake” in them through plagiarism. Would an investigation of my “isolated incident” and remorse have allowed me to continue in school? However, protecting Mr. Zakaria, one of the chosen, is not only important for his sake, but for the sake of these “News Entities” that rely so heavily on the “connected” pundit class to provide their“cogent” analysis of major issues.
How many other “Pundits” acting as the “serious” people are setting the parameters of the national debate through their appearances on Sunday Morning talk shows, News Channels, the PBS News Hour and it appears as paid guest speakers at supposedly meaningful conferences and conventions? The person who first came to mind as I read this article on Zakaria was Thomas Friedman. Friedman is a son of privilege who married into a billionaire family. He has been a champion of “Globalization”, which to me has always meant unbridled support for the multinational Corporatocracy. He also seems to me to be a very childish writer in that his use of analogies to draw global conclusions is inept to the point of comedy. During my illness my daughter bought me a copy of “Friedman’s “The World is Flat” and in reading it I was blown away by how flimsy a narrative it was for someone so respected as a pundit, who gets so much air time and respect as a serious commentator on global issues. As it was put in his Wikipedia Article:
“A number of critics have taken issue with Friedman’s views, as well as aspects of his writing style. Critics deride his penchant for excessive optimism, a consistently flawed analytical approach, and a habit of trotting out unexamined truisms to support his opinions.”
“Some critics have derided Friedman’s idiosyncratic prose style, with its tendency to use mixed metaphors and analogies”.
“Similarly, journalist Matt Taibbi has said of Friedman’s writing that, “Friedman came up with lines so hilarious you couldn’t make them up even if you were trying – and when you tried to actually picture the ‘illustrative’ figures of speech he offered to explain himself, what you often ended up with was pure physical comedy of the Buster Keaton/Three Stooges school, with whole nations and peoples slipping and falling on the misplaced banana peels of his literary endeavors.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Friedman
While I have no proof of it, I would speculate that Friedman too has people writing much of his stuff and that his journalism is more of the editorial kind. However, what is obvious and known about Friedman is that he is a pundit star, ranking with, or possibly above Zakaria in the firmament of “Serious People” who frame our national debate and dominate our national media. This is really nothing new in our country. In the past the “serious people” were the likes of Walter Lippman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Lippmann Scotty Reston, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Reston . These past pundits and “cold warriors”, share a commonality with Zakaria and Friedman, in that they all serve(d) the interests of the Corporate and Monied Elite that run this country from behind the scenes. Indeed, I’m sure that you the reader could expand this very small list of those who are deemed acceptable to lead the “serious” discussion of our national/international issues.
I assert that the entire Liberal versus Conservative debate in this country is but a smokescreen that distracts us from the one most vital issue. Our nation and indeed the world is and has been controlled by an Elite representing those with most money and power. Their first allegiance is to themselves, their class and to the belief that they alone are fit to rule us all. Call it what you will, but to me it is the continuation of feudalism in modern guise. Just as in feudalism there were “Courtiers” who gladly did the bidding of their “Royal Masters”, in order to enrich their own lives. Most of the “Courtiers” were either born to, or became part of the elite, while maintaining the pretense of speaking for the benefit of all humanity.
If we the people are ever to cast off the control of those who would leash us for their benefit, we must learn to think for ourselves and critically examine the opinions of those who are represented to us as “serious people”. Unfortunately, this remains a highly individual task because we are surrounded by experts, who in reality are propagandists purveying non-existent mythology to keep us in the thrall of the Elite. Disdain the pundits for their message is false. Become your own pundit and most especially view the world through an iconoclastic perspective. Despite their degrees, their travels, experiences and accolades, few are really that perceptive since they have been co-opted and anointed as members of a Priesthood of Power, blinding them to what real life for most of us is about.
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
Thanks Mike. Glad I read this post. It never occurred to me that this might happen on such a large scale. We all know that there are those who carry water for others but now I’ll think about whether a pundit actually owns stock in the well.
ElaineM,
You addressed the above comment to another person, but I will comment for my own reckoning—-as I usually do.
I hope you don’t object in principle to my presumption.
I do so only so as to broaden the POV on Zakarias, a person I long ago tired of.
I can have obviously no ground to deny Matt Taibbi his experiences and his conclusions on Zakarias and the piece “Why do they hate us”; and the effect he said Zakarias has had and that the piece has had.
I googled and finally got hold of the piece on Daily Beast. And reading the first long paragraph, my conclusion is that he does not point to these “envy” causes as the reason they hate us. On the contrary he ridicules such an idea for it envy was true, the billion muslims would be slaying us everywhere (my paraphrase).
He instead in the first sentence in the second paragraph put the blame, contingently, on religion.
I shall not go further. Only wish to express my
disappointment in Matt’s questionable interpretation or shall we say presentation of the grounds for his
disliking Zakarias. If I may say so: Don’t bend the facts to support your opinions.
For those who want to read Zakarias article it can be found here at Daily Beast’s archive of Newsweek articles.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2001/10/14/the-politics-of-rage-why-do-they-hate-us.html
Other persons have also reviewed it in more favorable light than Matt, but I thank you ElaineM and Matt for raising the qusstion of Sakarias real function and motivations.
The question remains: Who can we believe in. None, is my conclusion, except the one who reports from his daily life.
Mike,
Fareed Zakaria’s Manifesto
By MATT TAIBBI
Jun. 24 2009
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/06/24/fareed-zakarias-manifesto/
Excerpt:
Deep down we all have a Puritan belief that unless they suffer a good dose of pain, they will not truly repent. In fact, there has been much pain, especially in the financial industry, where tens of thousands of jobs, at all levels, have been lost. But fundamentally, markets are not about morality. They are large, complex systems, and if things get stable enough, they move on.
via Zakaria: A Capitalist Manifesto | Newsweek Business | Newsweek.com.
From a distance I’ve always vaguely admired the skills of Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria, who is maybe this country’s preeminent propagandist. Any writer who doesn’t admire what this guy does is probably not being honest with himself, because being the public face of conventional wisdom is an extremely difficult job — and as a man of letters Zakaria routinely succeeds, or pseudo-succeeds, at the most seemingly impossible literary tasks, making the sensational seem dull, the outrageous commonplace, and rendering horrifying absolutes ambigious and full of gray areas.
Wheras most writers grow up dreaming of using their talents to stir up the passions, to inflame and amuse and inspire, Zakaria shoots for the opposite effect, taking controversial and explosive topics and trying to help rattled readers somehow navigate their way through them to yawns, lower heart rates, and states of benign unconcern. He’s back at it again with a new piece about the financial crisis called “The Capitalist Manifesto,” which is one of the first serious attempts at restoring the battered image of global capitalism in the mainstream press.
This writer has done work like this before, using a big canvas to rework an uncooperative chunk of history in the wake of a crisis. Zakaria is probably best known for his post 9/11 “Why Do They Hate Us?” article, a sort of masterpiece of milquetoast propaganda that laid the intellectual foundation for a wide array of important War on Terror popular misconceptions, not the least of which being the whole “They hate us for our freedom” idea. One of Zakaria’s central arguments in that piece was that poor struggling Arabs were driven to envious violence by the endless pop-culture reminders of American affluence and progress. It was just too much to take, seeing all those cool blue jeans and all that great satellite TV.
In one exchange in that piece Zakaria talks with an elderly Arab intellectual who scoffs at Zakaria’s suggestion that Arab cities should try to be more like globalization-friendly capitals like Singapore, Seoul and Hong Kong. The old Arab protests that those cities are just cheap imitations of Houston and Dallas, and what great and ancient civilization would want that?
I thought the old Arab’s comment was funny, but Zakaria imbued it with serious significance. “This disillusionment with the West,” he wrote, “is at the heart of the Arab problem.” And while witty Arab potshots at tacky southern strip-mall meccas like Houston were significant enough to put high up in Newsweek’s seminal piece about the root causes of 9/11, things like America’s habitual toppling of sovereign Arab governments and installation of ruthless dictators like the Shah of Iran were left out more or less entirely (Zakaria managed to write a whole section on the Iranian revolution without even mentioning that the Shah come to power thanks to a CIA-backed overthrow of democratically-elected Mohammed Mosaddeq, whose crime was ejecting Western oil companies from Iran).
Elaine,
Thanks for the Taibbi stuff. News for me like most things here.
I think I understand Friedman’s play title. He is saying that you don’t know where you are or what’s up
until you ask some questions to see who answers and what is answered, and then can make decsions re checking in or moving on.
Grade D minus.
Zakaria is now like a ballplayer caught using steroids: they are all eventually reinstated, but they wear a “scarlet letter” forever.
And, critical thinking is less in play because most of those who go to college today do so to get job skills versus the old school approach of tackling a liberal arts education first; as for the those who do not further their education post high school, well, they don’t have time for “critical thinking,” just survival.
Good “critical thinking” skills were used in formulating this article, however.
More Matt Taibbi on Tom Friedman:
Flat N All That
Written by Matt Taibbi on January 14, 2009
http://nypress.com/flat-n-all-that/
Excerpt:
When some time ago a friend of mine told me that Thomas Friedman’s new book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, was going to be a kind of environmentalist clarion call against American consumerism, I almost died laughing.
Beautiful, I thought. Just when you begin to lose faith in America’s ability to fall for absolutely anything—just when you begin to think we Americans as a race might finally outgrow the lovable credulousness that leads us to fork over our credit card numbers to every half-baked TV pitchman hawking a magic dick-enlarging pill, or a way to make millions on the Internet while sitting at home and pounding doughnuts— along comes Thomas Friedman, porn-stached resident of a positively obscene 11,400 square foot suburban Maryland mega-monstro-mansion and husband to the heir of one of the largest shopping-mall chains in the world, reinventing himself as an oracle of anti-consumerist conservationism.
Where does a man who needs his own offshore drilling platform just to keep the east wing of his house heated get the balls to write a book chiding America for driving energy inefficient automobiles? Where does a guy whose family bulldozed 2.1 million square feet of pristine Hawaiian wilderness to put a Gap, an Old Navy, a Sears, an Abercrombie and even a motherfucking Foot Locker in paradise get off preaching to the rest of us about the need for a “Green Revolution”? Well, he’ll explain it all to you in 438 crisply written pages for just $27.95, $30.95 if you have the misfortune to be Canadian.
I’ve been unhealthily obsessed with Thomas Friedman for more than a decade now. For most of that time, I just thought he was funny. And admittedly, what I thought was funniest about him was the kind of stuff that only another writer would really care about—in particular his tortured use of the English language. Like George W. Bush with his Bushisms, Friedman came up with lines so hilarious you couldn’t make them up even if you were trying—and when you tried to actually picture the “illustrative” figures of speech he offered to explain himself, what you often ended up with was pure physical comedy of the Buster Keaton/Three Stooges school, with whole nations and peoples slipping and falling on the misplaced banana peels of his literary endeavors.
Remember Friedman’s take on Bush’s Iraq policy? “It’s OK to throw out your steering wheel,” he wrote, “as long as you remember you’re driving without one.” Picture that for a minute. Or how about Friedman’s analysis of America’s foreign policy outlook last May:
The first rule of holes is when you’re in one, stop digging.When you’re in three, bring a lot of shovels.”
First of all, how can any single person be in three holes at once? Secondly, what the fuck is he talking about? If you’re supposed to stop digging when you’re in one hole, why should you dig more in three? How does that even begin to make sense? It’s stuff like this that makes me wonder if the editors over at the New York Times editorial page spend their afternoons dropping acid or drinking rubbing alcohol. Sending a line like that into print is the journalism equivalent of a security guard at a nuke plant waving a pair of mullahs in explosive vests through the front gate. It should never, ever happen.
Even better was this gem from one of Friedman’s latest columns: “The fighting, death and destruction in Gaza is painful to watch. But it’s all too familiar. It’s the latest version of the longest-running play in the modern Middle East, which, if I were to give it a title, would be called: “Who owns this hotel? Can the Jews have a room? And shouldn’t we blow up the bar and replace it with a mosque?” There are many serious questions one could ask about this passage, but the one that leaped out at me was this: In the “title” of that long-running play, is it supposed to be the same person asking all three of those questions? If so, does that person suffer from multiple personality disorder?
Because in the first question, he is a neutral/ignorant observer of the Mideast drama; in the second he sympathizes with the Jews; in the third he’s a radical Muslim. Moreover, after you blow up the bar and replace it with a mosque, is the surrounding hotel still there? Why would anyone build a mosque in a half-blown-up hotel? Perhaps Friedman should have written the passage like this: “It’s the latest version of the longest-running play in the modern Middle East, which, if I were to give it a title, would be called: “Who owns this hotel? And why did a person suffering from multiple personality disorder build a mosque inside it after blowing up the bar and asking if there was a room for the Jews?
I love when Matt Taibbi writes articles and blog posts criticizing Tom Friedman and his writing. Here’s an example:
No Kidding: The Most Incoherent Tom Friedman Column Ever
By Matt Taibbi
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/no-kidding-the-most-incoherent-tom-friedman-column-ever-20120725
I realize this is not a statement anyone can make lightly, but: this morning’s column by Thomas Friedman, “Syria is Iraq,” is the single most incoherent thing he has ever written. It’s… well, breathtaking is the only word.
Others, like Glenn Greenwald, have already pointed out the column’s most obvious contradictions. But for those who missed it, here are two passages that were written, not as a joke, by the same human being in the same opinion column. Start with passage #1:
And, for me, the lesson of Iraq is quite simple: You can’t go from Saddam to Switzerland without getting stuck in Hobbes — a war of all against all — unless you have a well-armed external midwife, whom everyone on the ground both fears and trusts to manage the transition. In Iraq, that was America.
Got that? Here’s the second passage:
Because of both U.S. incompetence and the nature of Iraq, this U.S. intervention triggered a civil war in which all the parties in Iraq – Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds – tested the new balance of power, inflicting enormous casualties on each other and leading, tragically, to ethnic cleansing that rearranged the country into more homogeneous blocks of Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.
This pair of passages can be summed up in a Friedman-syllogism:
1. Syria will not become Switzerland unless it has the kind of help America gave to Iraq.
2. When America helped Iraq, it triggered a terrifying four-sided civil war that left the country reeling in blood-soaked, genocidal chaos and hopelessly partitioned along ethnic and religious lines – very much like Switzerland, where a diverse collection of ethnic groups speaking different languages live peacefully under democratic rule.
3. Therefore, when your wife needs help giving birth, she should hire a midwife who stands outside the door and carries an automatic weapon.
This column today is so crazy I have to think Friedman is kidding. The line about how everyone on the ground in Iraq trusts America is especially awesome. Of course! True, you can’t even open a Humvee door there to dump a pebble out of your shoe without getting your face shot off, but still, they trust us!
And yet the best thing of all is the rhetorical flourish at the end – a rare triple-figurative dismount, which he sticks with Nadia Comăneci-esque confidence:
Without an external midwife or a Syrian Mandela, the fires of conflict could burn for a long time.
God bless this man. There’s never been another like him!
Editor’s note: Thanks to Justin Elliott at TwitLonger, who notes that this is at least the ninth time that Friedman has written a column calling for an Arab Mandela — and at least the third time he has used the winning Arab-Mandela/midwife imagery combination.
Great job Mike! It is amazing how easy it is to become a “pundit” or serious person and get your face on the TV. I would add that we will never get critically thinking individuals if teachers are being maligned and forced to teach to the test. Also, These pundits don’t have to think critically because the journalists do not hold finding the truth as the most important aspect of their discussions and therefore the pundits are allowed to spew nonsense or discuss birther movements or outright lies as the truth. .
Fareed has been reinstated:
(NY Daily). The most memorable quote from one of Fareed’s books was “It is not that the U.S. is declining, it is just that the other nations are rising” (paraphrased).
He learned The Ways of Bernays quite quickly.
Thank you for this well written discussion. I have been thinking about this topic for quite sometime but your discussion has crystallized the issues. The Gregory incident ended my interest in MTP.
Mike/Bron,
You can add me to the list of those underwhelmed with “The World is Flat”. A prime example, much like Brett Easton Ellis’ “American Psycho”, that being a bestseller and getting published isn’t always about the quality of the work but rather who you know and how much money they are willing to spend on marketing.
“I read a few pages of the World is Flat and thought it was crap.”
Bron,
you see we do agree on some things. What surprised me so much about that book was how poorly it was written and how his conclusions were not only simplistic, but unproven. This was juxtaposed by the acclaim he received for it, its best seller status ad the broad acceptance of his weak premises by others in the pundit class.
“And leading that list has to be David Gregory, who went out of his way to continue the proud tradition of Meet the Press kissing the ass of shamed elected officials.”
Elaine,
Thank you for mentioning Gregory. I couldn’t believe that the role of moderator on MTP could get any worse after Russert died. Remember his questioning of Hillary Clinton during the Impeachment? But Gregory is a complete tool and his appellation as a “newsman” is completely undeserved.
However, I bet he lives very well in DC and in the end that is what is really important to him.
Thanks MikeS. Something else to be glad I missed.
Of course we have our pundits here, but no star circuit or remunerations of that class.
You have done a very well done and convincing job.
I’ve always looked for bare facts, giving up opinions of pundits when CNN went south in the Iraqi war. They had an honest correspondent in live reports from Baghdad, but canned him. He called them as he saw them.
Lastly, your description of Friedmans (or rather Wiki’s) was so compelling that I’m considering spplying to him for a diploma in creative writing, finding he is a master of my style.
Console yourselves that I don’t get paid for it.
Thanks Mike…… I think you have hit the nail on many heads…. How I learned that not all authors are the best writers is when I lived in Austin….. There was the world reclaimed author that utilized every gifted English and History major to write his novel about Texas…. These were not his words….. They were everyone else’s words that he took credit for…. The novel was Texas….. And he had written one about Alaska….. James Michener…….Never read it based upon that precept…..
I think everyone else’s posts here today are dead on…….
Mike Spindell:
that was an interesting piece. And your solution is correct. I read a few pages of the World is Flat and thought it was crap.
Do you remember the following story?
Mark Sanford emails expose how David Gregory plays the game
By John Amato
http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/mark-sanford-emails-expose-how-david-gr
Excerpt;
When the stories about South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s love of hiking and the ensuing revelations about line crossing and soul mates were first revealed, I think it’s safe to say that most people never saw it coming. But what hasn’t been a surprise is the resulting confirmation of how many in the media are willing to sell their journalistic souls for political access.
And leading that list has to be David Gregory, who went out of his way to continue the proud tradition of Meet the Press kissing the ass of shamed elected officials.
From his emails to Sanford’s office, where he begs for an interview:
Left you a message. Wanted you to hear directly from me that I want to have the Gov on Sunday on Meet The Press. I think it’s exactly the right forum to answer the questions about his trip as well as giving him a platform to discuss the economy/stimulus and the future of the party. You know he will get a fair shake from me and coming on MTP puts all of this to rest.
… So coming on Meet The Press allows you to frame the conversation how you really want to…and then move on. You can see (sic) you have done your interview and then move on. Consider it.
In the middle of the breaking scandal, Gregory not only offered to let Sanford guide the story, he was willing to give him a platform to change the subject. And then Gregory would “move on.”
Sunday morning talk television has become such a vast wasteland of intellectual incest that the inbreeding has taken over completely and real journalism has either gone somewhere else, or died for lack of oxygen.
Me too, Elaine. I bet I haven’t watched “Face the Nation” or similar shows in 20 years. And now, another episode of “Face the Station” with your host, Earth Force Commander Susan Ivanova. Today’s guest are the representatives of the Drazi Purple faction and the Drazi Green faction.
Mike,
“What all of these shows have in common is that they are repeatedly populated by the same people, whether politicians, journalists, economists or political operators.”
“…I’ve come to see that not only is this “Pundit Class” inherently corrupt, but only a rare few can barely be called intellectually informative.”
How right you are! I rarely watch the Sunday morning “news” shows these days for these very reasons.
Excellent job pointing to the importance of critical thinking as a crucial skill in the modern world as well as properly valuating the position of the “pundit class”, Mike. After all, the first two rules of successful evolution (as formulated with a friend over a night of serious conspicuous consumption) are “pay attention” and “think”.