Joan Vennochi writes in today’s Boston Globe:
THE REAL NEWS of April played second fiddle to the presidential campaign, the pope’s visit to America, and the Texas polygamy case.
The death toll for the US military in Iraq hit 49 in April, making it the deadliest month since September, according to the Associated Press. Around Iraq, at least 1,080 Iraqi civilians and security personnel were killed last month, an average of 36 a day, according to the AP tally. While that’s down from March’s total of 1,269, or an average of 41 per day, those casualties certainly don’t add up to a stable Iraq.
It’s not as if there is no news from Iraq, you know. Bradley Brooks reports for the Associated Press:
The US military fired guided missiles into the heart of Baghdad’s teeming Sadr City slum yesterday, leveling a building 55 yards away from a hospital and wounding nearly two dozen people.
Separately, the military said late yesterday that four Marines were killed on Thursday by a roadside bomb in Anbar Province. No other details were released, and the names of the Marines were withheld pending notification of their families.
The strike in Sadr City, made from a ground launcher, took out a militant command-control center, the US military said. The center was in the heart of the 8-square-mile neighborhood that is home to about 2.5 million people. Iraqi officials said at least 23 people were wounded, none of them patients in the hospital.
See Juan Cole for more details.
Similarly, awhle back John McCain came out with a health care “plan” that was such a bad joke it ought to have got him laughed out of the presidential race. It might have, had the American people heard anything resembling substantive discussion of it from news media. (See also Steve Benen.)
Instead, we get 24/7 coverage of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. As Eugene Robinson said,
There’s something maddening about this presidential campaign. It has become irrelevant whether anything the candidates say actually makes sense. All that matters is how their words will “play” with voters who are presumed to be too stupid to realize that they’re the ones being played.
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright is no doubt (and regrettably) a big issue in the presidential campaign. But what we’ve seen over the past week is major media overkill — Jeremiah Wright all day and all night. It’s like watching the clips of a car wreck again and again.
We’ve plotted the trend lines of his relationship with Barack Obama over the past two decades. What did Obama know and when did he know it? We’ve forced Barack and Michelle Obama, two decent, hard-working, law-abiding, family-oriented Americans, to sit for humiliating television interviews, reminiscent of Bill and Hillary Clinton on “60 Minutes†at the height of the Gennifer Flowers scandal.
We’ve allowed the entire political process in what is perhaps the most important election in the U.S. since World War II to become thoroughly warped by the histrionics of a loony preacher from the South Side of Chicago.
There’s something wrong with us.
Frank Rich points out in his column today that the alleged craziness of anything the Rev. Wright said pales in comparison to the utterances of one Rev. John Hagee, whose affiliations with John McCain seem to be an issue only among us leftie bloggers.
Here Rich gets to the heart of the matter:
Mr. Hagee’s videos have never had the same circulation on television as Mr. Wright’s. A sonorous white preacher spouting venom just doesn’t have the telegenic zing of a theatrical black man.
Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell can blame America for the 9/11 attacks, and the Right blinks and yawns. Some obscure who-is-this-guy-again? college professor named Ward Chamberlain blames America for the 9/11 attacks, and the Right goes ballistic. Likewise, some redneck yahoos in Alabama get caught with an arsenal of explosives and weapons that included 130 grenades, an improvised rocket launcher and 2,500 rounds of ammunition, and it’s no big deal. But an exploding backpack in Las Vegas or, worse, the threat of homemade cherry bombs in Michigan causes Righties to beocme unglued if they suspect the perpetrator might be Muslim.
It’s all about fear. Righties base their political choices on what they fear. At the same time, they are drawn to what they fear; they obsess over what they fear. Because they are afraid of angry black men, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is a big deal to them. He excites them because he vindicates them.
On the whole, the Left doesn’t react the same way to right-wing craziness. That’s partly because there’s so much of it, of course. We hear about a Republican politician associating with an extremist religious whackjob, and we think, What else is new? And news media, which has bought into the narrative that “religion” is something the Right holds a patent on, doesn’t ask questions about the religiosity of the Right. It’s only a “story” when it’s about the Left.
Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign continues to degrade everything liberalism stands for by sucking up to the Right. But I’ll have to save that for another post.
Actually, his name was Ward Churchill, I think, and he symbolized every college professor in America according to Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly.
Old jowls Hagee is one sick pup. I watched his biblical prophecy series on TBN shortly after the Invasion of Iraq and he managed to fit George Bush into the interpretation of Daniel’s dream as God’s warrior champion hearkening the advent of the restoration of Israel with the God of Abraham, and the return of Christ. I was shocked to see how his audience sat gaping in awe and agreement as he plied his bullshit to endorse the Invasion of Iraq as part of a divine plan. And I was even more shocked by his exalting Bush as being pre-ordained of God to invade Iraq for the fulfillment of prophecy. Unadulterated bullshit that only a moron could swallow!
One bittersweet form of entertainment in the series was to watch Hagee get fired up with the holy ghost…he starts jiggling his fat ass in some sort of a holy ghost jig, and then bellows out from behind his flapping jowls a repetition of “Glory to the Lamb, Glory to the Lamb, Hallelujah”.
What a dangerous bag of shit he is. A menace to humanity!
Swami – You have a strong stomach to watch Hagee. Barbara also sifts the crap from the right and fends off rabid replies, which is worse. Barbara – you said it well. Logic has taken a holiday by people on the right and left. The gas tax proposal is a gimmick, and McCain & Clinton know it. The numbers show it; any dim wit who can do 3rd grade math can figure it out.
The Rev Wright thing is getting me irritated. While it’s interesting, it should not be considered important, unless Obama has named Wright as his running mate. If Obamas vetrinarian was a crackpot, it would not be significant, even if Obama had been taking his cat there for 20 years. People select a church for a lot of different reasons; for most Christians, fellowship is more important than the pastor.
Rudy is in trouble witht he Catholic church because he received the Eucharist while the pope was in town. Rudy has separated his religion from his politics to some degree; he supports a womans right to choose. Nobody asked Rudy to denounce the Pope and repudiate the entire Catholic church. Makes you wonder .
Generally, I do not approve of dirty politics, If the Republicans try to use PACs not diractly associated with McCain to run Wrights rheroric, theres should be Dem PACS ready to run Hagee loony quotes with McCain’s apprciation for Hagee’s blessing. And if the Republicans want to stick to issues, so should we.
Off topic, but I see on HuffPo that the Clinton camp is considering “The Nuclear Option” of forcing the seating of the Michigan and Florida delegations on the “logic” that you can’t disenfranchise all those voters.
The fact that the primary elections themselves were not fair because all did not participate, apparently means nothing to them. Hillary = Bush Lite in this regard.
If they do this, and she wins the nomination, I will not vote. I can’t in good conscience pull a lever for McCain, and I can’t vote for Clinton if she gets there through tricks and fraud.
The media is in disarray. Segmented into hundreds if not thousands of microsegments, there is no outlet that maintains broad credibility across the geographical and sociopolitical spectrum. The 24 hour news cycle creates a void in need of filling, and it is done so with entertainment and distractions.
Even the progressive blogosphere has a lens through which light bends towards the choir converted. The citizenry are not served by the endless scribbling and documenting about the outrageous crimes of this administration. We are ankle deep in smoking guns, yet their power is absolute because Cheney learned the one lesson of Watergate — own the DoJ and all action will be blocked.
What many of us in the center-left want is a “Woodstein” WaPo moment circa 1973, the unearthed trail that leads to a discredited end. Yet editors and producers see their media in paradigm shift, and are more interested in self preservation and “balance” than any semblance of a Jeffersonian concept of the press.
It is an ultimate gamble of the Congressional leadership to bank on the elections to right the ship of state, a spineless response to a national catastrophe of epic proportions. There remains enormous untapped power in the 1st branch, and the refusal to do anything substantial is a disgrace.
So the scribes write on, and jaws flap away, documenting the moment, sure that they matter. Sy Hersh disclosed the plan to hit Iran two years ago. It’s going to happen anyway. The press, from all the pandering and propagandizing to praiseworthy criminal disclosures is increasingly meaningless because Congressional inaction allows these psychopathic morons to continue to lead us off a cliff.
Dave, comment 4 – it’s an interesting question: how bad does Hillary have to smell before she loses my vote? As much as I dislike her (mild at present, but getting worse by the week), she has to be better than a third term of neoconservative rule in the guise bomb-bomb-Iran McCain. Definite hold your nose time at the polls, at least for me.
After reading Swami’s description of a Hagee performance, it occurs to me that religion is less the opiate of the masses and more some people’s PCP.