Krauthammer Weighs In On Fort Hood
I would be remiss if I did not post Charles Krauthammer's thoughts on the Fort Hood terrorist attack last week.
Chuck points out that the only people having a tough time describing Major Nidal Hasan as a Muslim jihadist are members of the media.
But, of course, if the shooter is named Nidal Hasan, whom National Public Radio reported had been trying to proselytize doctors and patients, then something must be found. Presto! Secondary post-traumatic stress disorder, a handy invention to allow one to ignore the obvious.
And the perfect moral finesse. Medicalizing mass murder not only exonerates. It turns the murderer into a victim, indeed a sympathetic one. After all, secondary PTSD, for those who believe in it (you won’t find it in DSM-IV-TR, psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual), is known as “compassion fatigue.” The poor man — pushed over the edge by an excess of sensitivity.
Have we totally lost our moral bearings? Nidal Hasan (allegedly) cold-bloodedly killed 13 innocent people. In such cases, political correctness is not just an abomination. It’s a danger, clear and present.
He continues, discussing the warning signs that Maj. Hasan clearly exhibited to his colleagues in Maryland before being shipped to Fort Hood:
Was anything done about this potential danger? Of course not. Who wants to be accused of Islamophobia and prejudice against a colleague’s religion?
One must not speak of such things. Not even now. Not even after we know that Hasan was in communication with a notorious Yemen-based jihad propagandist. As late as Tuesday, the New York Times was running a story on how returning soldiers at Fort Hood had a high level of violence.
What does such violence have to do with Hasan? He was not a returning soldier. And the soldiers who returned home and shot their wives or fellow soldiers didn’t cry “Allahu Akbar!” as they squeezed the trigger.
The delicacy about the religion in question — condescending, politically correct, and deadly — is nothing new. A week after the first (1993) World Trade Center attack, the same New York Times ran the following front-page headline about the arrest of one Mohammed Salameh: “Jersey City Man Is Charged in Bombing of Trade Center.”
Ah yes, those Jersey men — so resentful of New York, so prone to violence.
SNL Makes A Funny
I'll hand it to Saturday Night Live: They do make fun of everyone, all across the political spectrum. For something a little lighter. check out a recent spoof on the Obama administration' selective policy on who gets access to the president.
Then, to be fair, there was this gem mocking my peeps over at Fox News Channel.
Can we “jump” yet?
The politically correct insanity that is crippling this country knows no bounds. Within 24 hours of the terrorist attack on Fort Hood we knew that the suspect was named Nidal Malik Hasan, was a devout Muslim, spoke openly to his clients and colleagues alike about his radical Muslm views, had given copies of the Koran away to friends and neighbors the day before the murders took place, had been a member in social networking groups which extolled the virtues of suicide bombing, and, oh by the way, according to eye witness reports, had screamed "Allahu Akbar!" (God is Great!) before and during his rampage on the innocent victims in Texas.
And with all of that evidence, every liberal in America, from President Obama to Anderson Cooper to Homeland Security Chief Janet Napalitano, insisted that no one "jump to any conclusions."
Really? Conclusions about what? Not that the man might have been motivated by his perverted view of Islam to slaughter fellow soldiers, right? Who would think such a thing?
Do you have any ketchup popsicles to sell me that might match my new white gloves?
But don't believe this sarcastic blogger that what happened at Fort Hood was most certainly terrorism. From ABC News:
U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News.
The military knew this man was insane, and yet let him continue to be the person soldiers came to for counseling after fighting in a war that Hasan hated (only slightly more than Code Pink and the anti-war Left in this country).
I'm gonna let Mark Steyn take this blog-post home with an excerpt from his latest, and I dare say brilliant, column:
When it emerged early Thursday afternoon that the shooter was Nidal Malik Hasan, there appeared shortly thereafter on Twitter a flurry of posts with the striking formulation: "Please judge Maj. Malik Nadal [sic] by his actions and not by his name."
Concerned tweeters can relax: There was never really any danger of that – and not just in the sense that the New York Times' first report on Maj. Hasan never mentioned the words "Muslim" or "Islam," or that ABC's Martha Raddatz's only observation on his name was that "as for the suspect, Nadal Hasan, as one officer's wife told me, 'I wish his name was Smith.'"
What a strange reaction. I suppose what she means is that, if his name were Smith, we could all retreat back into the same comforting illusions that allowed the bureaucracy to advance Nidal Malik Hasan to major and into the heart of Fort Hood while ignoring everything that mattered about the essence of this man.
Honestly, this might be one of the most important articles you ever read. Please finish Steyn's masterpiece right here.
John Stossel: No Longer Popular With The Mainstream Media
John Stossel is a brilliant and articulate libertarian, and while I do not agree with all of his positions (i.e. legalizing pot), he is a voice of sanity in a media world gone wild. Recently Mr. Stossel moved from ABC where he hosted 20/20 to the Fox News Business Network. Here in his most recent column Stossel shares his personal and professional journey from media darling to outcast.
An excerpt:
As a local TV reporter, I could find plenty of crooks. But once I got to the national stage -- "20/20" and "Good Morning America" -- it was hard to find comparable national scams. There were some: Enron, Bernie Madoff, etc. But they are rare. In a $14 trillion economy, you'd think there'd be more. But there aren't.
I figured out why: Market forces, even when hampered by government, keep scammers in check. Reputation matters. Word gets out. Good companies thrive, and bad ones atrophy. Regulation barely deters the cheaters, but competition does.
It made me want to learn more about free markets. I subscribed to Reason magazine and read Cato Institute research papers. Then Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek and Aaron Wildavsky.
My reporting changed. I started taking skeptical looks at government -- especially regulation. I did an ABC TV special, "Are We Scaring You to Death?" that said we TV reporters often make hysterical claims about chemicals, pollution and other relatively minor risks. Its good ratings -- 16 million viewers -- surprised my colleagues.
Suddenly, I wasn't so popular with them.
I stopped winning Emmys.
Read the rest of his column here.
Fox News Banned From Pay Czar Interview
It's fairly important to the story here that you take a moment and watch this:
From the mind of Charles Krauthammer we read the following:
The White House has declared war on Fox News. White House communications director Anita Dunn said that Fox is "opinion journalism masquerading as news." Patting rival networks on the head for their authenticity (read: docility), senior adviser David Axelrod declared Fox "not really a news station." And Chief of Staff Emanuel told (warned?) the other networks not to "be led (by) and following Fox."
Meaning? If Fox runs a story critical of the administration -- from exposing White House czar Van Jones as a loony 9/11 "truther" to exhaustively examining the mathematical chicanery and hidden loopholes in proposed health care legislation -- the other news organizations should think twice before following the lead.
The signal to corporations is equally clear: You might have dealings with a federal behemoth that not only disburses more than $3 trillion every year but is extending its reach ever deeper into private industry -- finance, autos, soon health care and energy. Think twice before you run an ad on Fox.
I do have to at least eat some crow and say that the other reporters from networks at loathsome as MSNBC did come to the defense of Fox News when the administration attempted to bar them from interviewing the "Pay Czar" Ken Feinberg.
Part of me wants to think that this whole thing, this "war" between Fox News and the White House, is nothing more than the staged brain-child of Fox News' Roger Ailes and David Axelrod. The two met in New York last month when the president was in town for the United Nations General Assembly. Not much attention was paid to the story at the time, but the pessimist in me says that these two strategic masterminds concocted the entire ordeal as a way to give both sides what they want: Fox News sees higher ratings, and the White House has a scapegoat (the Left's favorite scapegoat) to bash while continuing to work behind-the-scenes on health care.
But in such matters I suppose I defer to the experience and wisdom of someone like Chuck Krauthammer.
There's a principle at stake here. While government can and should debate and criticize opposition voices, the current White House goes beyond that. It wants to delegitimize any significant dissent. The objective is no secret. White House aides openly told Politico that they're engaged in a deliberate campaign to marginalize and ostracize recalcitrants, from Fox to health insurers to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
What do you think about this whole thing?
What in the world is going on in D.C.?
Take a peak a few of the recent stories coming out of Washington, and tell me if there are any common themes.
From The Hill we get this headline: "Democrats lock Republicans out of Committee Room".
Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.) locked Republicans out of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee room to keep them from meeting when Democrats aren’t present.
Towns’ action came after repeated public ridicule from the leading Republican on the committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), over Towns’s failure to launch an investigation into Countrywide Mortgage’s reported sweetheart deals to VIPs.
Nice.
Then there is the concerted effort by the highest office in the land to undermine and attack one single news network that never has more than about 3 million people watching.
The White House is calling on other news organizations to isolate and alienate Fox News as it sends out top advisers to rail against the cable channel as a Republican Party mouthpiece.
When asked about this insane, and ironically, Nixonian, plan to go after Fox News, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had this fascinating exchange with Jake Tapper (the only non-Fox News employee who has asked any questions about the executive office attempting to silence their critics):
Tapper: It’s escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations “not a news organization” and to tell the rest of us not to treat them like a news organization. Can you explain why it’s appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one –
(Crosstalk)
Gibbs: Jake, we render, we render an opinion based on some of their coverage and the fairness that, the fairness of that coverage.
Tapper: But that’s a pretty sweeping declaration that they are “not a news organization.” How are they any different from, say –
Gibbs: ABC -
Tapper: ABC. MSNBC. Univision. I mean how are they any different?
Gibbs: You and I should watch sometime around 9 o’clock tonight. Or 5 o’clock this afternoon.
Tapper: I’m not talking about their opinion programming or issues you have with certain reports. I’m talking about saying thousands of individuals who work for a media organization, do not work for a “news organization” -- why is that appropriate for the White House to say?
Gibbs: That’s our opinion.
If you've ever heard anything more foolish than a liberal Democrat's White House staff accusing Fox News of being the only network with a "perspective" or "agenda", I'd love to be made aware of it.
Oh, and don't forget this administration's deep and profound "respect" for business and the free market:
The uneasy relationship between the Obama White House and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has steadily eroded over the past several months, with the business group's opposition to health care and climate change legislation triggering an all-fronts backlash from the administration.
The administration is now trying to neutralize the Chamber by doing an end-run around the group and dealing directly with its members.
During remarks in early October, President Obama named and shamed the Chamber for opposing a consumer protection agency.
And the White House again criticized the group Tuesday, telling Fox News in an e-mail that the group's opposition to reform efforts gives the administration pause.
All this from the man who promised to be a "new kind" of leader, someone who could "clean up Washington." What the American people are quickly remembering is that politicians are politicians, no matter how badly we want them to be saviors or messiahs.
Secular-progressive liberals have a totalitarian instinct. Politicians in general have a totalitarian instinct.
What do you think you get when you create a hybrid of a secular-progressive liberal and a politician? Barack Obama. Nancy Pelosi. Harry Reid.
What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? -Thomas Jefferson
Olbermann’s Ratings: Bad
Here's a chart that will explain how badly MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann is tanking:
Tough break, guy. It's probably because of how subtle Olbermann is in his views. He should really open up, let his hair down, and tell us what he really thinks about people who disagree with his view of the world.
Where’s all the outrage over dead soldiers now?
The media seems to only be upset about military deaths when a Republican is in office. Byron York of the Washington Examiner reminds us just how insistent the press (and Left) was during President Bush's presidency that we not "hide" the caskets of returning deceased soldiers, and how disinterested they are in covering the story now. Wonder why that is...
So far this month, 38 American troops have been killed in Afghanistan. For all of 2009, the number is 220 -- more than any other single year and more than died in 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004 combined.
With casualties mounting, the debate over U.S. policy in Afghanistan is sharp and heated. The number of arrivals at Dover is increasing. But the journalists who once clamored to show the true human cost of war are nowhere to be found.
I am completely on board with the notion that reminding Americans of the very real costs of this war is a good thing, but does the media really care? Was the push to get permission to publish photos of the caskets politically-driven? I hope not, but it's hard to imagine that it wasn't.
President Obama’s media blitz
Sunday was an Obama-centric day of television programming. The president appeared on five different Sunday morning talk shows to peddle his brand of unpopular health care reform. This included an interview with the Spanish-speaking network Univision.
He of course avoided Fox News, proving yet again how confident he is in his vision for re-making America (and in his ability to bring people together with his rhetorical skills...unless they disagree and ask tough questions).
Tonight the Commander-in-Chief will spend a full hour with David Letterman on the Late Show on CBS.
Putting the president's seemingly never-ending publicity bonanza into perspective, the NY Post reported this today:
In the New York Times alone, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University, 405 stories on the Obama administration have appeared on the front page through mid-August of this year totaling 119,678 column inches. That's 9,973 column feet of Obama coverage on the Times front page alone.
This strategy has not worked thus far, and it is precisely because the president's ideas are bad and people don't like them. It's not about race or a personal distaste for the man himself...although at this rate, if they keep forcing him on us, he will wear out his welcome by the end of his first year in office.
Chris Matthews is bitter
The host of MSNBC's political talk show Hardball, Chris Matthews, is not happy with the state of American non-fiction literature. Apparently there are too many "Right-wingers" on the old NY Times Best-seller's List for Mr. Matthews' liking.
I guess we conservatives who buy this "crap" are really the suckers then. Thanks for warning us Hardball.
I thought the fact that so many people voted for Obama last November proved he was prolific? Do big numbers only matter when they support liberal ideology, Chris?
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