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Another Great Moment in American Journalism

L.A. Times Bans 'Resistance Fighters' in Iraq News
Wed November 05, 2003 09:21 PM ET

By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Los Angeles Times has ordered its reporters to stop describing anti-American forces in Iraq as "resistance fighters," saying the term romanticizes them and evokes World War II-era heroism.

The ban was issued by Melissa McCoy, a Times assistant managing editor, who told the staff in an e-mail circulated on Monday night that the phrase conveyed unintended meaning and asked them to instead use the terms "insurgents" or "guerrillas."

McCoy told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday that the memo followed a discussion among top editors at the paper and was not sparked by reader complaints. The memo first surfaced on the Web site L.A. Observed.

"(Times Managing Editor) Dean Baquet and I both individually had the same reaction when we saw the term used in the newspaper," McCoy said. "Both of us felt the phrase evoked a certain feeling, that there was a certain romanticism or heroism to the resistance."

McCoy said she considered "resistance fighters" an accurate description of Iraqis battling American troops, but it also evoked World War II -- specifically the French Resistance or Jews who fought against Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto.

"Really, it was something that just stopped us when we saw it, and it was really about the way most Americans have come to view the words," McCoy said.

See full story at Reuters

posted by John 9:33 PM

What I Like About the South

Southern man
better keep your head
Don't forget
what your good book said
Southern change
gonna come at last
Now your crosses
are burning fast
Southern man
Southern Man (Neil Young)

I'm going down to the Dew Drop Inn
See if I can drink enough
There ain't much to country living
Sweat, piss, jizz and blood
"Sweet Home Alabama"
Play that dead band's song
Turn those speakers up full blast
Play it all night long
Play It All Night Long (Warren Zevon)

We talk real funny down here
We drink too much and we laugh too loud
We're too dumb to make it in no Northern town
And we're keepin' the niggers down

We got no-necked oilmen from Texas
And good ol' boys from Tennessee
And college men from LSU
Went in dumb - come out dumb too
Hustlin' 'round Atlanta in their alligator shoes
Gettin' drunk every weekend at the barbecues
And they're keepin' the niggers down
Rednecks (Randy Newman)

Hey, don't send me nasty notes. I was born and grew up with this ignorant crap. I got over it.

posted by Jerry Bowles 6:50 PM

Other Than That, Mrs. Lincoln...

Some common sense from the right:

The Bush administration and its political allies continue a propaganda barrage against the news media, accusing journalists of overemphasizing the negative in Iraq. That criticism comes close to embracing a Peter Pan strategy: the notion that everything in Iraq will be fine if we just think happy thoughts...

...Administration officials have a point when they argue that reconstruction is progressing. Some progress has been made in reconstruction. But though the United States may be opening new schools, it's likely that some of the older members of the student body may be guerrilla fighters in their off hours. Washington and its Iraqi allies may patch together remnants of the infrastructure, but insurgents can blow up almost anything at their leisure...

...The administration and its allies may focus on transitory achievements and downplay the importance of the security issue all they wish. Their actions, though, are reminiscent of the grim joke: "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was your evening?" Security is central. Without it, all of the other accomplishments mean little. Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, November 6, 2003

posted by Jerry Bowles 3:54 PM

Aks the experts

“Governor Dean was trying to reach out to disenfranchised voters in the South, but he needs to be more careful…I don‘t think this is serious, but it has put a little bit of a dent in his front runner status…” NM Governor Bill Richardson

Now that “the apology” is official, its fair to say that the flap over the Confederate flag vote was taken way out of context by the bought-and-paid-for media. Everybody who played follow the leader should take time out to read Tom Wolfe’s classic “Mau-Mauing The Flak Catchers” and then say a few acts of contrition. If Dean had said NASCAR, maybe it would have gone down a little sweeter, after all, it’s only all about Apartheid on Wheels. And, don’t forget, the NASCAR folks have been taking Jesse Jackson to the bank for quite some time.

Amidst all the media clutter, it’s troubling when an oblate OxyPete shill like New Mexico governor Richardson jumps in to play 6 on 1 against the D-train. One more bully for the ambush snowball attack on the way home from school. Hit the kid with the Confederate flag on his lunchbox. And this from a governor who is just waiting for the opportunity to appoint himself to the US Senate when “St. Pete” Domenici sits himself down for health reasons.

“Milquetoast Joe” Lieberman fronting points for the Likudniks and the DLC. “Dour John” Kerry still groping for an identity. John “the senator from Riyadh” Edwards who slithered out of a scandal after the Saudis tried to help him hang some paper on a new home. Their carefully crafted made-for-TV images have more to do with attracting the corporate slush money that is the methadone of the American political system than with reaching out to the voters. They don’t want to work the crowd. That’s too labor intensive. They want to be videotaped for five seconds working the crowd and then move on to the next photo-op.

Bill Richardson knows a lot about disenfranchisement. His state has the lowest per-capita income in the nation. According to a study by the United Health Foundation, New Mexico has the second highest child poverty rate in the nation. It is 49th in support for public health care and over all ranks 42nd in the quality of health care services delivered. You'd think Gobernador Bill's old mentors at Tufts would have taught him better. It’s no wonder that the rich folks in Santa Fe call St. Vincent’s, the local hospital “St. Victims.”

Conventional wisdom suggests that Richardson is entitled to take potshots at Dean because of all the great press he receives as the Dems point man for Native Americans and Hispanics. Yet in New Mexico there is racial and cultural polarization. "Spanish blood" New Mexicans in the North hate the "Mexican blood" New Mexicans in the South and both groups hate the "Anglos" who colonized from the East. And then there's the time Richardson was Energy Secretary and flew down to Colombia and helped jack some big time oil producing land from the “natives” down there, land that was theirs by way of the Colombian constitution. Are those “natives” any different than the ones who live in New Mexico, who make “authentic Native American jewelry” out of turquoise imported from China? And are the Democrats who reload and put Confederate flag decals on the back of their pickup trucks down in Catron County, New Mexico, where Boss Bill Richardson rules the roost any different than the ones that Howard Dean suggested need to be included in the broad party coalition?

Memo to D-train... next time you talk with Jimmy Carter, maybe you ought to ask him about his being the real Godfather of the "tilt to Iraq" policy, and maybe a little bit about Wes Clark's friend Jack Stephens, and Bill Clinton's pal from Indonesia, Moctar Riady, and your pal Bert Lance and BCCI. John Kerry won't be asking any questions, that's for sure. Let us know what you hear...

posted by Groom 7:09 AM

We have nothing to fear but fear of losing

Howard Dean has done something incredible. He has asked us, his supporters, to vote on whether or not the campaign should accept federal matching funds and the spending limits they impose. Here, my friends is democracy in action--democracy of a kind that will, I am sure, be seen as absolutely appalling by political "professionals" trapped in the memes of political campaigning conceived as a marketing exercise controlled from the top down.

I have voted yes and used the space provided on my electronic ballot to explain my decision as follows.

When one party rejects federal matching funds, they become a poison pill for the other. But the real reason we have to reject these funds is to challenge ourselves once again to pursue the Dean campaign's vision--to make democracy real again. Like Paul Wellstone said so well, it's time to ENERGIZE! MOBILIZE! ORGANIZE!

I end with the words I have used as a title, We have nothing to fear but the fear of losing.

To the campaigns that will bitch and moan and cry foul, I have only this to say: Stand aside and let real democracy reign.

posted by John 2:58 AM

One Wonderful Thing Today--Spoiled

I phoned San Diego. Both daughter (Navy helicopter pilot) and son-in-law (Marine F-18 jock) are home safe and sound. I wish I could share the relief I feel with all of the other parents who still have kids in or around Iraq. Knowing about all those whose kids will never come home or have come home badly wounded and been hidden out of sight like used kleenex makes my joy indecent.

posted by John 2:38 AM

Out of the Mouths of Major Liars

"I think that the proposition of going to Baghdad is also fallacious. I think if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, we would have to commit a lot of force because I do not believe he would wait in the Presidential Palace for us to arrive. I think we'd have had to hunt him down. And once we'd done that and we'd gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, then we'd have had to put another government in its place.

"What kind of government? Should it be a Sunni government or Shi'i government or a Kurdish government or Ba'athist regime? Or maybe we want to bring in some of the Islamic fundamentalists? How long would we have had to stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? What would happen to the government once U.S. forces withdrew? How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable?

"I think it is vitally important for a President to know when to use military force. I think it is also very important for him to know when not to commit U.S. military force. And it's my view that the President got it right both times, that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq."

-- SoD Dick Cheney, from 'The Gulf War, A First Assessment', Soref Symposium, Washington Institute, April, 1991

posted by John 2:37 AM

A House Divided

“A house divided against itself cannot stand,” Abraham Lincoln warned his colleagues at the Republican National Convention in 1858. It was a prophecy that was to come all too true with cataclysmic consequences as the nation descended into Civil War. Could such a destructive event happen here again? It’s a question I don’t recall ever hearing anyone ask. The vast majority of Americans, I suspect, think of themselves too evolved, too prosperous, too patriotic, too “Christian,” too self-satisfied, to even consider such a terrible possibility.

I hope they’re right. Simmering just under the mushroom cloud of denial and ennui emitted daily by a lethal combination of automobiles, malls, fast food joints, charge cards and bad TV, this is a country that is deeply and dangerously divided against itself. That troubling conclusion lies at the heart of the latest study of American political attitudes performed by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. The Bush administration’s response to 9/11 has only deepened the divide:

National unity was the initial response to the calamitous events of Sept. 11, 2001, but that spirit has dissolved amid rising political polarization and anger. In fact, a year before the presidential election, American voters are once again seeing things largely through a partisan prism. The GOP has made significant gains in party affiliation over the past four years, but this remains a country that is almost evenly divided politically, yet further apart than ever in its political values.

Pew’s longitudinal measures of basic political, economic and social values, which date back to 1987, show that political polarization is now as great as it was prior to the 1994 midterm elections that ended four decades of Democratic control in Congress. “But now, unlike then, Republicans and Democrats have become more intense in their political beliefs,” the Pew study reports.

From national security to the need for more business regulation to the importance of a strong social safety net, Democrats and Republicans are deeply divided. A large partisan gap remains on issues like abortion, homosexuality, and race. African Americans, who are overwhelmingly critical of the Bush administration, feel much more estranged from government than they did four years ago. This year's Pew survey found a wider gap in strong religious commitment between Republicans and Democrats than at any time over the 16-year period.

Americans can’t even seem to agree on whether they are better off today than four years ago:

Perhaps the most striking evidence of a growing partisan disparity is the extent to which Republicans, Democrats and independents now judge their personal financial situation differently. Republicans are at least as satisfied financially as they were four years ago, but Democratic personal contentment has declined significantly since 1999. Independents also have become more negative about their personal financial situation over the past four years, to the point where their economic views now mirror those of Democrats.

As the electorate has become more polarized in its political values, it has become more evenly divided in partisan affiliation. Throughout President Clinton's second term the Democrats held about a six-point advantage over the GOP among the general public. That held steady through the first nine months of Bush's first year in office. But since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Democratic advantage has vanished.

In Pew Center surveys conducted since the Iraq war earlier this year, 30% of Americans identify themselves as Republicans, 31% as Democrats and 39% as independents or other. When that combined sample is winnowed to registered voters, the partisan breakdown is just as narrow 33% Republican, 34% Democrat, 33% independent or other.

As I’ve written here before, America today is almost evenly divided between people who believe there are, or should be, certain immutable cultural standards of right and wrong that govern how all of us live, and those who believe that many issues are neither entirely right nor entirely wrong but depend upon circumstance. Both the absolutists and the moral relativists have already applied their particular logic to every political question and staked out an immovable position.

Recognizing the growing divide, most presidents from LBJ onward have made a conscious effort to strike a balance between the extremists in their parties and have governed from the center. This is not only good politics, it is an important and noble goal in a country as divided as this one. As George W. Bush said in his inaugural speech on January 21, 2001: “Our unity, our union, is the serious work of leaders and citizens in every generation. And this is my solemn pledge: I will work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity.”

My greatest fear has long been that a charismatic and insenstive political demagogue would emerge—having falsely disguised himself as a centrist--on the extreme end of the political spectrum who would attempt to use executive powers and the nation’s courts, police and military to enforce a vision of right and wrong that leaves half of the American public feeling cut out of the political process. That is a surefire recipe for revolution.

Actually, that’s not my greatest fear. My greatest fear is that it has already happened.

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:15 AM