MayerBlog: The Web Log of
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B. F. D.
“Big fucking deal” is one of those vulgar phrases that uniquely express an idea that no other non-vulgar words can so effectively convey. Every week there are certain stories in the news – developments and/or controversies in the worlds of politics or popular culture – to which my reaction is “b.f.d.” – big fucking deal! – which is to say, sarcastically, that these stories are really no big deal at all, that their importance is greatly exaggerated by politicians or journalists in “Big Media.” The following are some current developments in politics and popular culture to which my response is, simply, “b.f.d.”:
n Birdshot-gate All last week, and even into the beginning of this week (as evidenced by the cover stories in both Time and Newsweek magazines), the “mainstream” news media obsessed over the story of Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shooting a fellow hunter while quail hunting on a ranch in Texas the previous weekend. The man who was accidentally shot, Harry Whittington, a 78-year-old lawyer left the hospital last week – after having been hit in the face, neck, and chest with bird shot, which induced a mild heart attack – and Whittington was the epitome of class and good grace, when he appeared before reporters. “Accidents do and will happen,” he said, expressing sympathy “for everything Vice President Cheney and his family have had to deal with.” Big Media was all over this story, like a flock of vultures devouring carrion (the dead meat in this case, they wishfully imagined, would be the V.P., whom most in the left-wing media despise). The object of their outrage? Not so much the shooting itself, but the delay in reporting it – and that, when it was reported, the story was “scooped” by a local Texas newspaper rather than, say, The New York Times or The Washington Post. The White House Press Corps behaved childishly, like a bunch of babies whose feelings were hurt by not being informed immediately about the shooting. (NBC’s David Gregory, who kept pushing White House spokesman Scott McClellan, especially behaved like an asshole.) Interestingly, many of the people who’ve been whining about how “secretive” the Bush administration is – and how this episode, even though it involved the V.P.’s private life, not any official actions of the government, somehow epitomizes that supposed secrecy – were the same people who, during the Clinton administration, kept whining that President Clinton’s “affair” with White House intern Monica Lewinsky (a euphemism for the oral sex acts she performed on him in a little room off the Oval Office itself) was a “private” matter (well, in a sense it was!) that should have been ignored, notwithstanding Mr. Clinton’s use of his public office to cover it up. Mr. Cheney, to his credit, took full responsibility for shooting Mr. Whittington. Cheney, who failed to see that Whittington was in range before he fired, said: “You can’t blame anybody else – I’m the guy who pulled the trigger and shot my friend.” He called it “one of the worst days of my life.” The local sheriff’s department closed its investigation of the matter, determining that the shooting was indeed a hunting accident. And, as noted, Mr. Whittington, thankfully, has recovered. That’s the end of the story – or at least it should have been. But Big Media couldn’t let it go. They were outraged, not only over the delay in getting the news, but also over the fact that when Vice President Cheney made his first public statements about the incident, he did so in an exclusive interview with – gasp! – Fox News Channel’s Brit Hume. Former Clinton aide Paul Begala, now a political analyst for CNN, hypocritically called Fox News “the house organ for the Republican Party” (I say “hypocritically” because the left-wing bias of Big Media is so pervasive that it’s obvious the other networks are, in effect, mouthpieces for the Democrats and that CNN, in particular, during the Clinton years was so biased in the administration’s favor that it earned the apt nickname “Clinton News Network.”) Notwithstanding such “spin,” Hume’s interview was objective; no one other than someone blinded by partisanship could justly accuse Hume of being “soft” on Cheney. Brent Bozell, head of Accuracy in Media, noted that Hume “asked all the right questions without grandstanding,” as other reporters would do. “When the White House press corps stops behaving like piranhas and hyenas and when they grow up, then maybe they can deserve some respect,” Bozell said. Although I frequently disagree with Bozell (whom I strongly criticized in my previous entry on the FCC, for he’s one of the champions of government censorship of “indecency”), on this issue, I’m in full agreement with him. The incident has inspired a clever bumper-sticker, a favorite among Republicans: “I’d rather go hunting with Dick Cheney than riding with Ted Kennedy.” Personally, I’d rather do neither.
n Port whining This week’s “big story” seems to be the furor over the news that Dubai Ports World, a company owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has won U.S. approval to control significant operations of six major American ports. A White House spokesman said the $6.8 billion deal (Dubai Port World's purchase of the operations from a British company) was scrutinized carefully by a federal board and that its decision was final. Nevertheless, members of Congress and local politicians from both major political parties – a truly bipartisan group of demagogues – have been shamelessly exploiting anti-Arab bigotry, hysteria, and paranoia, by grandstanding on this issue, attempting to use it to show they take “national security” more seriously than the Bush administration, by threatening to block the deal. (Meanwhile, the real motive of some of the members of Congress opposed to the deal – particularly, left-wing Democrats like Sen. Chuck Schumer or left-wing Republicans like Rep. Peter King – has been revealed, when the AFL-CIO issued a press release confirming that the longshoremen’s union is unhappy with the ports’ change in management. “National security” thus seems like a smokescreen for some politicians to continue pandering to their Big Labor constituency.) Although critics of the deal claim that UAE has been an inconsistent ally in the U.S. war on Islamic terrorism and that therefore the change in management at the ports might jeopardize security, the facts are otherwise. Independent Institute Senior Fellow Ivan Eland, director of the Center on Peace & Liberty, in his latest op-ed, argues that Dubai Port World's operations might actually reduce the likelihood of a terrorist attack involving a U.S. port: "Dubai has a worldwide presence, an extensive history of operating ports, and a reputation to uphold. If a terrorist incident occurred in one of its ports, the company would probably lose more business worldwide than a non-Arabic company would under the same circumstances." Eland concludes, persuasively, “The Bush administration was right to insist that no security threat emanated from a routine business purchase of a British firm by an Arab company. The politicians should quit posturing and move on to more important issues" (“Commercial Racial Profiling,” February 20). And, as economic analyst Zachary Karabell points out in an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal, “The real national security question is not who owns the ports, but how to ensure that they are safe and secure” (“Ports in a Storm,” Feb. 23). Finally, as everyone knows, it’s the longshoremen’s union – a bunch of all-American Big Labor thugs -- that really controls the ports, anyway. So, Bush is right in standing by the deal. But to threaten to veto any legislation attempting to block the deal – for this he’d use his veto for the first time in his presidency? That’s b.f.d., too. Perhaps the critics of the deal would be mollified if Dubai Port World’s purchase contract would be bought out by an American corporation – say, Halliburton?
n The Ms. Plame/Mrs. Wilson CIA “leak” scandal Of course, the biggest of the b.f.d.s – which is to say, the most stupid news story that never seems to go away – is the ongoing investigation into the alleged crime of the alleged “leak” of the identity of alleged CIA operative Valerie Plame, the wife of former Clinton administration ambassador Joe Wilson. This story is indeed the mother of b.f.d.s – one might say it’s “b.m.f.d.” To recap the salient facts (as I reported them in my previous entry, “Tricks and Treats,” Oct. 31): Vice President Cheney’s top aide, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, has resigned after being indicted on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. Libby’s indictment apparently is the culmination of a two-year investigation by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald into the case involving the “leak” to the news media of the identity of a CIA official, Valerie Plame, who was married to former ambassador Joe Wilson, a critic of the Iraq war. Significantly, the indictment against Libby alleges no crime involving the leak itself (under either the Intelligence Identities Protection Act or the 1917 Espionage Act); the person who leaked Mrs. Wilson’s name to conservative journalist Robert Novak (himself a critic of the Iraq war) remains unknown, although opponents of the Bush administration would dearly love to see Mr. Bush’s key political strategist, Karl Rove, indicted for that “crime.” It’s a legitimate question whether this alleged “leak” involved any wrongdoing at all. Just as with the prosecution of Martha Stewart – who was similarly charged with the “crime” of lying to federal agents, when the government was unable to prove any underlying offense of insider stock trading – this case sets an ominous precedent that ought to concern all Americans. As the Wall Street Journal noted in an editorial last fall, “The indictment itself contains no evidence of a conspiracy, and Mr. Libby has not been accused of trying to cover up some high crime or misdemeanor by the Bush administration. The indictment amounts to an allegation that one official lied about what he knew about an underlying `crime’ that wasn’t committed.” This prosecution involves, “at bottom, a policy dispute between an elected Administration and critics of the President’s approach to the war on terror, who included parts of the permanent bureaucracy of the State Department and CIA [Mr. and Mrs. Wilson]. . . . [This] indictment looks like a case of criminalizing politics” (“Obstruction for What?” Oct. 29-30). As I noted in my Oct. 31 entry, “Whoever blew the whistle on the Wilsons – whether Libby or Karl Rove, or someone else – ought to be commended, not prosecuted, for doing the nation a great service by exposing the political chicanery of Mr. and Mrs. Joe Wilson. The `leak’ in this case exposed the truth about Mr. Wilson, a critic of the Bush administration who was lying to the press about his trip to Niger to investigate whether the country sold uranium to Iraq for use in nuclear weapons – and also lying about why an Administration critic was sent on so politically sensitive a mission. (It turns out that Wilson was sent at the behest of his wife, Valerie Plame, whose work at the CIA under “non-official cover” apparently was not so secret in Washington.)” As the Journal observed in an editorial last summer, “If there’s any scandal at all here, it is that this entire episode has been allowed to waste so much government time and media attention, not to mention inspire a `special counsel’ probe” (“Karl Rove, Whistleblower,” July 5). And as Christopher Hitchens suggested in a thoughtful op-ed column in October, what the whole ridiculous episode really shows is the folly of U.S. “secrets” laws – “Why should [the CIA] be the only agency of the government that can invoke the law, broken or (as in this case) unbroken, to protect itself from leaks while protecting its own leakers?” – laws that ought never to have been passed in the first place and which ought to be voided as palpable violations of the First Amendment.
n Britney Spears’ lap Several weeks ago, a photograph from the tabloids – showing pop singer Britney Spears driving a car with her new baby in her lap – made it into the “mainstream” news. How horrible! Many people said: she’s not using the child car-seats now mandated by federal law! (Moreover, as a few commentators also perceptively noted, she’s endangering her child’s life should she suddenly stop the car and the air bag inflates.) As silly as this story was, what’s even sillier is having the U.S. government acting as a super-nanny mandating how parents ought to take care of their kids. Those of us over age 40 all grew up in a world without government-mandated child-safety seats, air bags (which have probably saved no more lives than they’ve cost – especially among infants, small children, or even small-framed adults who can sometimes be fatally injured when the bags suddenly inflate), or even seat belts. The safety of any parent’s child – even the children of celebrities like Spears – ought to be the concern only of the parent; not a nation of busy-bodies.
n Lost Found Out? Fans of the ABC television series Lost love to speculate about what the island mystery really means. I, for one, find the basic story of survival after a plane crash, coupled with the back stories on each of the survivors, to be sufficiently compelling drama, without all the sci-fi or mystical elements. But the entertainment reporters on USA Today recently spotted a “clue” that I also noticed in a recent episode: Locke leafing through An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Ambrose Bierce’s short story (a French film version of which was broadcast as a memorable Twilight Zone episode in 1964) about a Civil War-era man who thinks he has escaped from a hanging, only to find at the end that it was a momentary flash of imagination – the proverbial “life flashing before his eyes” – before his death (“Lost in translation,” USA Today’s “Lifeline” column, Feb. 15). Could that be the hidden premise behind the entire Lost series? (That it’s the final flashes of imagination in the minds of all the plane’s passengers before their deaths in the crash?) If so, then the writers/producers of Lost would seem to be going even further than the writers/producers of Dallas, who made one entire season (during which Bobby Ewing – Patrick Duffy’s character – had been killed) just a bad dream. When Bob Newhart did it to close his second series, it was funny – one of the all-time most unforgettable surprises in TV history (and a delicious parody of Dallas). But if Lost should end with a similar gimmick, I think some viewers might be somewhat pissed.
| Link to this Entry | Posted Thursday, February 23, 2006 | Copyright © David N. Mayer |
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