The NY Times Drops The Mask
No longer offering even the pretense of non-partisanship, the New York Times under the stewardship of Bill Keller, Jill Abramson, and Gail Collins has become a virtual wing of the Democratic National Committee. Today’s editorial entitled President Bush’s Walkabout is remarkably venomous; indeed, I’m not sure I can recall an editorial from a major paper this openly hostile about a sitting president:
After President Bush’s disastrous visit to Latin America, it’s unnerving to realize that his presidency still has more than three years to run. An administration with no agenda and no competence would be hard enough to live with on the domestic front. But the rest of the world simply can’t afford an American government this bad for that long.
Read that last sentence again, and let the implications, ALL of the implications, sink in.
That’s nothing next to the contempt the Times feels for Cheney, though:
The place to begin is with Dick Cheney, the dark force behind many of the administration’s most disastrous policies, like the Iraq invasion and the stubborn resistance to energy conservation. Right now, the vice president is devoting himself to beating back Congressional legislation that would prohibit the torture of prisoners. This is truly a remarkable set of priorities: his former chief aide was indicted, Mr. Cheney’s back is against the wall, and he’s declared war on the Geneva Conventions.
The dark force? The Times wouldn’t dream of using the world ‘Muslim’ next to extremist, but they speak of the Vice President of the United States as if he is Satan himself.
How fast can a newspaper fall from the highest heights to the lowest depths? The self-destruction of the Times is a sight to behold…
UPDATE 3:15 p.m.: Academic Elephant has more, including an excellent comparison between the views of the Times and the Wall Street Journal…
The Latin America trip is disastrous because Brazil and Venezuala want to try the Socialist/Communist experiment again? As opposed to following the path of the most Democratic and economically successful South American country, Chile?
Does the Times really want to make the ridiculous argument that we should always and forever ban torture? Even in the “ticking bomb” scenario? What sort of decrepit morals lead to that kind of absolutism?
The only difference between this editorial and the rantings and ravings on KOS and DU is the absence of expletives.
They weren’t always great–they ignored the Holocaust while it was happening and featured articles by Walter Duranty, a paid Societ agent.
Let’s see…how’s that TimesSelect “Premium” service performing these days? Oh? Not so good, I guess.
mark said:
“indeed, I’m not sure I can recall an editorial from a major paper this openly hostile about a sitting president:”
did they call him(bush) a “damn fool”?
they (nyt) called lincoln a “damn fool” for fighting the “civil” war.
of course i was not around at the time.
my source was ken burns “the civil war” series.
A paper in freefall…
The Times has shown a .5% increase in readership of late. Of course, it also expanded its area of circulation by over 20% (which halved its earnings), so its stock price plunge is not exactly unexplainable.
Perhaps its latest editorial is simply a case of projection.
It is a sad time for our president and our country. We need to pray daily for him and our other leaders.
1) You might have mentioned that John Tierney’s op-ed piece today calls Hugo Chavez et. al. “idiots” and discusses how some countries in Latin America are repeating the mistakes of the past.
2) Banning torture is a “ridiculous argument?” That’s why the rest of the civilized world is against it? That’s why the Geneva conventions are “ridiculous?” How would you feel about an American soldier being tortured?
3) I think the editorial positions the Times took during the Civil War are a little irrelevant –
peter, I wouldn’t be able to mention John Tierney’s piece because of that wonderful development called ‘TimesSelect’ that dmac alluded to earlier…
In a decade or so, when passions over W’s tenure in the White House have cooled a little, I really hope someone does a study of the leftist hysteria we’re experiencing. It reminds me a little of the Red Scare in the Fifties, except that there actually were Communist spies in the country, and they actually were a threat. The NYT and its ideological allies seem to have whipped themselves up into a genuine frenzy over a threat that simply doesn’t exist.
Mark: well, geez, if you subscribed to the paper edition, you could get all of the op-ed writers and the crossword puzzle, too…
utron: in your opinion, do you feel that the “frenzy” directed at Bush is greater or lesser than the frenzy directed towards Bill Clinton?
peter, it’s just as well I don’t have access…I manage to obsess about the Times far too much as it is!…
Peter, I’ll say Bush wins this one (if winning is the word I want) for two reasons:
1) The attacks on Clinton centered more on corruption than ideology. Moreover, many of the substantive facts weren’t contested by Clinton’s defenders. The argument was over the importance of Clinton’s misdeeds. Bush, by contrast, is a moderate/conservative Texan who is so widely protrayed as an imbecile fascist that I’ve known people who were genuinely taken aback when I asked them to give me specifics to support either one of those points.
2) The more extreme charges against Clinton–drug smuggling through Mena, “Who killed Vince Foster?” and so forth–circulated among a pretty fringe-y element on the Right, and were thumpingly repudiated by most conservatives. Comparable anti-Bush paranoia is much, much more widely accepted. “Bush lied” is practically a truism; and did anyone on the Left call Cindy Sheehan on her suggestion that Al Qaeda didn’t really bring down the WTC?
Unless you’re James Carville or Lee Atwater, partisan politics in both parties has its uncomfortable elements. But the attacks on Bush strike me as more consistently and shrilly hysterical than the crap Clinton dealt with.
The Wall Street Journal put the results of the South Amercan trip into perspective. 29 to 5, South American governments supported the concept of free trade that Mr. Bush was advocating. 4 out 5, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uraguay merely wanted more progress on freeing agriculture from tarriffs than the developed world seems willing to do. In a one-on-one with Mr. de Lula of Brazil, Mr. Bush agreed but obstinate French opposition in the EU, is the problem, not the US.
More bylateral trade agreements with the willing will probably happen, while the FTAA is delayed. A proposed Free Trade Area of the Andes is possible.
As for the emerging Caudillo, Mr. Chavez is voting for plunging economic opportunity for his Venezuelan citizens, just as Mr. Castro did. Everyone forgets that Cuba had the highest per capita GDP at his ascession to power. It has plunged to where Cuban per capita GDP outranks only dismal Haiti. The only improvement in living standards is for a tight ologarchy weilding power in the name of the People’s republic of Cuba. With a net worth of over $8 billion USD, Castro seems to have done well too; Forbes lists his personall wealth squirred away in Swiss accounts make him one the world’s 400 wealthiest men.
Stupidity is its own reward. Cubans and Venezuelans are guinea pigs demonstrating that truisms.
As for Panama, I am delighted that the Panamanians are desirous of building new bigger locks and widening the canal where necessary to accomodate the world’s largest vessels. Even better, it appears that they have harnessed the Chinese peasant to pay the $10 Billion USD tab, rather than the US taxpayer. Hoorah! Hoorah !! Hoorah !!!
Just coincidentally, this will allow the US fleet to move its largest Carriers from Atlantic to Pacific much more easily. The Navy as said that it needed two more carriers, all else being equal, because the ships became too big for the Canal. Don’t forget that TR promoted the P_anama Canal on the basis that the savings in fleet size would go along way to paying for it.
And to think the Chinese peasants are buying us the equivalent of two additional Carrier Battle Groups. A CBG is typically a carrier, two Aegis crusers, three Aegis destroyers, and a few Spruance class ASW destroyers, as well as a few frigates, oilers and supply vessels; total cost about $25 billion dollars per CBG, not counting operational costs.
Mark: Great minds apparently do think alike…
http://elephantsinacademia.blogspot.com/2005/11/tale-of-two-papers.html
AE – excellent stuff…I’m appending the link in an update, as well…
I think the editorial positions the Times took during the Civil War are a little irrelevant –
i think you think the gettysburg address is a little bit irrelevant -_
Peter: the Bush Administration, or Dick Cheney if you prefer, is not advocating, as the Times editorial implies, the abandonment of our commitment to the Geneva Convention. Nor is the Administration advocating the wholesale employment of torture as an interrogation technique. The argument that torture is never morally permissible is ridiculous; the “ticking bomb” scenario is the simplest and most obvious example of, as some argue, the moral obligation to use torture in certain circumstances.
AE, your points on Tierney’s piece are well taken. I saw it this morning, but I didn’t really take it as following the line set by that hyperventilating editorial. Of course, in the context of the NYT’s editorial page, I didn’t pay as much attention to Tierney’s failure to give Bush credit where credit is due as I might have otherwise.
I didn’t know about the Tierney/MoDo connection, though. If somebody could assemble a chart or something tracking her various liaisons, that would be really helpful…
Utron: I agree Tierney’s piece wasn’t as offensive as “walkabout,” and I actually think it was written before the Panama and Brazil negotiations–but that’s his fault for not amending his “advice”, and the title “Idiots Abroad” is really inisidious. Sure he’s talking about Chavez and Maradona, but I fear he’s suggesting something else as well–after all, the original Innocents Abroad were American…
Dowd: She talks all about it in her foul memoir. Says it was like Casablanca when they wound up at the Times together (of all the gin joints in all the world…). Play it again, Maureen.
Just got back from my polling place (with a sticker to prove it) –
1) I agree with what you say, except I think the problem with Bush is competence as much as ideology. I don’t remember even the most rabid anti-Clintonite call him incompetent. I also think that Bush’s problems with the English language are also an issue. You may feel differently, but for me to watch him speak in broken cowboy English (e.g., last week: “I got a job to do”) is like hearing someone scratch their fingernails on a blackboard. So while the issue with Clinton was the importance of his misdeeds, the fury at Bush comes from a few different places.
2) While I don’t mean to conflate all anti-Clintonites with the rabid right, if I am not mistaken, it was Scaife and people like him who funded Paula Jones’s legal battle, which ultimately undid Clinton. So while the extremists were, well, on the extremes, they had substantial influence in the effort to destroy Clinton.
3) I don’t want to be pulled into the “Bush lied” thing, because lying involved motives and I don’t know his motives. However, abundant evidence exists to point to many instances where intelligence was incorrectly portrayed to Congress and the public. Let’s just say that things which were later found to be false were described as true. People died as a result. So while “Bush lied” may not be a truism, neither is it necessarily a falsity.
4) To Steves: I don’t understand how you can push to allow the CIA to torture, or to allow for other countries to do it through rendition, and also support the Geneva conventions. I’m not an expert on the conventions, but my understanding is that it prohibits torture in all circumstances. Moreover, whether the administration is advocating the “wholesale” employment of torture is not the issue – the issue is whether it should be allowed at all, not to what frequency. Finally, there is a strong case to be made that torture is wrong even when there is a ticking time bomb. The argument is that torture is an absolute evil and cannot be justified in any circumstance, even when it could potentially cause the greater good of saving lives. (To turn this argument around: some people feel that abortion is an absolute evil which can never be justified in any circumstance. Others feel the same way about torture. I’m not trying to equate torture with abortions – only to suggest that one man’s moral absolute is another’s “ridiculous argument.”)
Hold on now, peter – you mean the Paula Jones lawsuit that Clinton eventually settled? Not to drag out old arguments, but, um…he DID in fact lie under oath and settle that lawsuit…it wasn’t a paranoid right-wing fantasy…the facts are undisputed, it was only their importance that could be debated…
Agreed – my point is only that there were enough people willing to underwrite legal crusades to embarrass Clinton that they eventually prevailed – no dispute that Clinton lied under oath – only that it is, to my knowledge, unprecedented in American history for a well-funded fringe organization to sponsor efforts to expose the philandering of a President – FDR, JFK, Eisenhower, and many others had affairs, but there was never an orchestrated effort by political opponents to exploit this.
Okay…I’ll go along with that much….
Peter: on torture and the ticking-bomb scenario, I’m with Alan Dershowitz (oh how it pains me to write that).
My understanding of the Geneva Convention, limited as it is, is that non-signatories, such as illegal combatants (a category that includes terrorists, for various technical reasons) are not a protected group and, therefore, need not be afforded the protections of the Convention. Which is pretty much what the Administration is arguing – they didn’t sign it, they don’t follow it, and they don’t adhere to it’s requirements, thus they are not entitled to its benefits and protections.
Now, if you want to discuss the effectiveness of torture as an argument against its use… then I suspect we might find ourselves more in agreement than not.
I don’t know enough about torture to know whether or not it is effective, although one would intuitively doubt its efficacy because people will say anything to make the pain stop. If it is efficacious, it is probably useful as an implied threat (i.e., people may talk to avoid being tortured). However, even if it is proven to be useful, I believe that torture is wrong for several reasons.
First, we cannot demand that our soldiers be treated fairly if we abuse other nations’ soldiers. Secondly, there are unintended consequences – whatever we gained from abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib was far outweighed by the worldwide publicity it received (we are playing by Osama’s playbook here). Most importantly, perhaps, is that we lose our moral stature by the use of torture, and in doing so, we go a long way towards losing the war against terror. We will never be able to identify and kill all of the terrorists in the world, and we will never be able to protect our people and infrastructure from terrorist attacks. We will only win this war in the long run if we are steadfast in maintaining certain moral values, and chief among these is that the rule of law is applied in all instances. Otherwise, we may win battles, but we will lose wars.
In a thread a few weeks ago, I brought up the question posed in the Brothers Karamazov in the context of torture: if you could stop all suffering in the world by torturing a small baby to death, would you do it? The righteous son, Alyosha, said no. I believe that is the right answer.
peter, on an incidental note, I am re-reading the Brothers K currently – though I’ve read it before, it has been many years…
Mark, you’re a better man than me — I was at the bookstore recently and looked at those 800 pages, and thought, well, maybe some other time –
“The righteous son, Alyosha, said no. I believe that is the right answer.”
I remember this. I believe that neither answer to that question can be said to be the right one unequivocally.
Peter, more than Clinton’s “philandering” was at issue. Unless serial sexual predation upon subordinates is now just “philandering.”
Unlike many others out there, I actually think he was a halfway decent president, but there’s a very nasty side to him – not just pathologically ‘philanderous,’ but mean and vindictive …
I’m not the world’s biggest fan of Bush, either.
I don’t disagree, but I wonder how the rest of us would act if we were in Clinton’s shoes. I don’t have the Presidency, the fame, or the good looks to give me unlimited sexual access to women. (OK, maybe the looks). Let’s face it: if you are President, you can probably have sex with anyone you want without even having to ask nicely. This is not to say that all Presidents are serial philanderers – hey, Jimmy Carter only “lusted after women in his heart” – but we don’t know what it is like to literally be the master of the universe. This is not to excuse him – only to point out that, in my opinion, most mere mortals (especially the Type A people who would run for office) would, if they had the chance, probably have the same zipper problem that Clinton had –
Also, you can term it “sexual predation,” but it was consenting and between adults –
“Also, you can term it “sexual predation,” but it was consenting and between adults – ”
Did you miss the word “serial” in there? In the course of a lawsuit an attempt was made to establish Clinton had a history of boinking the staff, because that would’ve made Jones’ claims more credible. He knew this, surely, which is (part of the reason) why he lied.
But basically, I think we’re on the same page here. Clinton = a heck of a smart guy, hardly our best president, but definitely not our worst. Where he really dropped the ball is
(a) not being able to keep it in his pants during this important phase of his career (viz., being president)
(b) thinking he could lie his way through all that mess.
There’s no need to re-hash all of this (he says, having done just that). Enough in the news to talk about as it is.
How’d we get on this again? (scrolls up) Right – the issue of which is more intense and creepy, Clinton-hatred or Bush-hatred …
I’ll say this: Bush-hatred is way more intense and mainstreamized, if you dig – but Bush has given his opponents a lot more to work with than Clinton did. As he recedes into the historical rearview mirror, it’s going to be hard to remember what all the fuss was about over Clinton one way or the other, pro or con. Not so with Bush – I have an awful feeling we’re going to be arguing over this for the rest of our lives.
Agreed, except for the last sentence — I think there is an emerging consensus that Bush is pretty much a disaster, and there will be an ever-dwindling number of people willing to take the pro-Bush side of the argument –
peter, peter…I have no doubt there is a huge consensus on the left that Bush is a disaster, but believe me, there are still tens of millions who don’t subscribe to the Bush caused Katrina, misled the country into war, and ran over my dog view of history…if all George W. Bush accomplished (and it’s not all, but just for argument’s sake) was deposing the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, those victories alone earn him permanent gratitude…now if you throw in an Afghanistan and Iraq that, huge problems with insurgents and all, appear to be pretty firmly on the road to democracy, well, give me that much of a disaster with every president…
Well, OK, maybe I overstate my case — and of course Bush didn’t cause Katrina, it was the reaction to it (or lack of one) which got him in trouble — but give it another year or two, and I think he will be written off by all but a very few — this reminds me very much of Jimmy Carter circa 1978, when he was more or less laughed off the stage –
Peter, beware of confirmation bias.
Bush’s dad seemed like another Carter in January 1993. Now, not so much. Now maybe that’s due to comparison with his son – but also with Clinton.
Still too soon to know. 10 years from now, hopefully, we’ll know if you’re right.
Bush might be the Republican LBJ? whom the Democrats rehabilitated in last year’s convention (if not before). Or maybe we shouldn’t look to past presidents for comparison.
Whatever. Three-day weekend is almost upon us. Mark, peter, and everyone else – have a good one!