Quote:
|
Originally Posted by martinguerre
it's not watergate.
it's just sleezy. planting a friendly to disrupt journalists from asking tougher questions...it shows a contempt for the press. i happen to think it is imporant to know what's going on...
|
It shows a contempt for the American peoples' "right to know". These are
the same propagandists who brought us "campaign 2004", WMDs, and
the unnecessary and unjustified war in Iraq. They cleansed HEW websites of
safe sex information resources, and advocate the teaching of "intelligent
Design" alongside what was formerly known as the theory of evolution, but
is now modified by their affiliates into the new term "biological changes over time". Amusing if it wasn't so potentially damaging and revealing of their
obsessive ideology and pettyness. They make an earnest argument that
the earth is less than 10,000 years old, and that the Grand Canyon was
created during the flood that floated Noah's Ark. Stay tuned for more absurdity from the most corrupting and criminal White House in history.
Quote:
<a href="http://www.cumberlink.com/articles/2005/02/02/editorial/francis_volpe/volpe01.txt">http://www.cumberlink.com/articles/2005/02/02/editorial/francis_volpe/volpe01.txt</a>
<h3>It's a private personal matter</h3>
By Francis Volpe February 1, 2005
A while back I suggested reference books such as the thesaurus and the dictionary were good holiday gifts for Republicans.
Recent events have shown me that I was a bit naïve in this assessment. The GOP has its own version of these often-used tomes, and lately they've been demanding that journalists start using their definitions.
This is tough, since you can't walk into a bookstore and purchase the Republican Dictionary. Nevertheless, reporters who don't hew to the party's linguistic edicts are at risk of producing biased accounts, according to GOP spokesmen. And we just can't have that, now can we?
The current clash of linguistics, not surprisingly, is over Social Security. For decades now Republicans have peddled visions of totally or partially privatizing America's most popular federal program.
Their associated think tanks, like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Hoover Institute and many others, have advocated various proposals to redirect some or all of the Social Security tax away from the federal treasury.
Indeed, in the right-wing think-tank world, you don't have to paw through their archives for long before you encounter similar proposals for all sorts of existing government programs. Abolish ‘em all, and companies in the private sector will do the work cheaper.
For decades, this theory of limiting the reach of government has been called privatization. Not surprisingly, as the president has begun pressing his Social Security proposal, it has been variously described in news accounts and scholarly papers as privatization or partial privatization, creating private retirement accounts for citizens.
Detect the bias yet? The Republicans sure have. "Privatization" and "private accounts" are now dirty words in their lexicon, right up there with "WMDs," "Barbara Boxer" and that thing U2 singer Bono once said at the Golden Globes, never mind that it's the same thing the vice president said to Sen. Patrick Leahy last year.
They're so sensitive about it that Bush actually lectured a Washington Post reporter during a recent interview. When the reporter used the word "privatization," Bush said, "You mean the personal savings accounts?"
The president went on to scold the reporter about his choice of words: "We don't want to be editorializing, at least in the questions."
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12570-2005Jan15?language=printer">http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A12570-2005Jan15?language=printer</a>
The reporter, no doubt astounded to be corrected by Bush on proper word usage, shot back, "You used ‘partial privatization' yourself last year, sir... three times in one sentence."
Indeed, you can surf around the Internet and find Republicans calling the Social Security plan "privatization" with impunity all the way up to the last few months. Journalist Josh Marshall of the Talking Points Memo blog has compiled numerous instances, including a quote where conservative commentator Robert Novak called it "privatization." A few months later, Novak started calling privatization "a Democratic word."
And how did privatization become a Democratic word, you might ask? Through polling.
This may come as a shock to those of you who believed President Bush when he claimed he doesn't follow polls. If there are any folks out there who still believe that, please get in touch with me after the president's Social Security is enacted. I'd love the opportunity to invest your nest egg in a combination of dot-com startups and tulip growers. For a fee, of course.
Anyway, it seems that when the GOP and its think-tank brigade started polling Americans about their attitudes toward Social Security, "privatizing Social Security" and "setting up private accounts" were rejected out of hand.
When the poll takers started calling them "personal accounts," however, they started reaping positive reactions, despite the fact that the proposal hadn't changed — only the name.
So "personal accounts" it is, says the GOP, and you're a tool of the Democrats if you call them anything else. Never mind that you can go to the Cato Institute's website and find numerous references to Social Security privatization. I'm including one with this column for your convenience.
The Heritage Foundation site seems to have scrubbed any recent references, but I did find one or two going back a few years.
I'm glad we caught these unintentional slights to the GOP, since changing the description of a ridiculous idea is all it takes to turn it into pure genius.
But I'm concerned we in the media may be committing other slights. So with the little bit of space I have left, I will feature a few other Republican definitions to help the media avoid bias.
• Democrat: 1. A member of the Democrat Party. (Republicans are using this juvenile formulation now because they don't want to convey that there's anything democratic about the Democratic Party.) 2. If a current officeholder, synonym for traitor. 3. If dead, as in FDR, Truman or JFK, a great American who agrees with everything today's Republicans stand for.
• Election fraud: Evil when committed in Ukraine, unconscionable when alleged in Washington state, the will of the people when committed in Florida.
• Advice and consent: The constitutional requirement of the Senate to rubber-stamp the president's appointments to federal office without debate.
As soon as I think of others, I'll share them with you.
|
How can Bush be so obsessively precise about a reporter's use of seemingly interchangeable words, yet exhibit such imprecise judgment in the selection
of information that brought him to the decision to order an unnecessary and umjustified invasion of another country, that has arguably killed or wounded more than 100,000 people and cost an initial estimate of $200 billion, and yet still be supported and taken seriously by 50 million or more American adults?