The Splice Job

This is why I read blogs. They relentlessly set the record straight when mainstream news outlets will not.

A few months ago, the MSM and the blogosphere alike were frenzied over the story of the undercover pimp and whore team seemingly getting ill-conceived advice from ACORN on how to setup a brothel. The pimp was played by James O'Keefe, and the whore was played by Hannah Giles, and their infamous tapes were mostly horseshit -- highly doctored and overdubbed horseshit. In fact, O'Keefe had a history of out-of-context edits in his horseshit "documentaries."

But what made the story so sensational was the absurd 70's-era pimp costume. How could low-level ACORN employees be so gullible? Well, The Brad Blog has been uncovering the truth for the last few weeks: O'Keefe never dressed as a pimp in the offices of ACORN. He wore a dress shirt and khaki pants.

Everybody was duped including Congress which temporarily cut funding for ACORN.

Giles wants to call the pimp costume footage b-roll, but the pure fiction was promulgated over and over again for months by the mainstream news outlets and O'Keefe himself.

The result of these lies and video edits was a successful piece of propaganda to discredit and vilify a community organization that helps poor people by advocating for affordable housing, affordable healthcare, higher minimum wages, and better schools.

The New York Times has been particularly bull-headed in their refusal to retract their multiple erroneous reports on the subject. In a letter to a Brad Blog reader, Times' Sr. Editor Greg Brock wrote, "If there is a correction to be made, it seems it would start with Mr. O'Keefe himself. We believe him. Therefore there is nothing for us to correct."

Which leaves me pondering, who should get my coveted Porkpuller Prize for weakest effort in journalism? The New York Times? Or James O'Keefe for his blatant and unethical splice job?

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Fighting With Pigs

Media Matters reports that "during a segment in which Fox & Friends co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade labeled New York Times reporter Jacques Steinberg and editor Steven Reddicliffe "attack dogs," Fox News featured photos of Steinberg and Reddicliffe that appeared to have been digitally altered -- the journalists' teeth had been yellowed, their facial features exaggerated, and portions of Reddicliffe's hair moved further back on his head."

Fox News did not tell their viewers that the photos had been altered, nor have they offered any kind of comment on the incident so far.

The New York Times will not respond to the childish antics. Times Culture Editor Sam Sifton commented "It is fighting with a pig, everyone gets dirty and the pig likes it."

I thought Fox News couldn't be any more juvenile, but the funny thing about this is that critics have been saying for years that Fox distorts the news. Well, now here is literal proof. Their reporting is as accurate as these photos.

Another Attack

The New York Times recently investigated the Pentagon's Military Analysts Program and successfully sued the Department of Defense to gain access to 8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts and records describing years of private briefings, trips to Iraq and Guantánamo and an extensive Pentagon talking points operation. You can explore the documents yourself here.

One of the more noteworthy -- and, for me, infuriating -- discoveries is a December 12, 2006 clip of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggesting that America, having voted the Democrats back into both houses of Congress, could benefit from suffering another terrorist attack. You can listen to the hour long clip here, but this is one portion everybody should be talking about:

DELONG: Politically, what are the challenges because you're not going to have a lot of sympathetic ears up there.

RUMSFELD: That's what I was just going to say. This President's pretty much a victim of success. We haven't had an attack in five years. The perception of the threat is so low in this society that it's not surprising that the behavior pattern reflects a low threat assessment. The same thing's in Europe, there's a low threat perception. The correction for that, I suppose, is an attack. And when that happens, then everyone gets energized for another [inaudible] and it's a shame we don't have the maturity to recognize the seriousness of the threats...the lethality, the carnage, that can be imposed on our society is so real and so present and so serious that you'd think we'd be able to understand it, but as a society, the longer you get away from 9/11, the less...the less...

Yes, that's our former Defense Secretary fantasizing about another 9/11-style attack on the United States (the country he is suppose to be defending)... He's probably just upset because the American people have the temerity to ask for their civil rights back, the guts to vote for people who will represent their best interests, the balls to demand that the troops come home alive, and the wisdom to know torture is beneath American dignity.

Whatever the reason for Rumsfeld's disgusting antipathy towards the American people, some people think this slip-of-the-tongue is evidence of a 9/11 conspiracy theory.

Personally, I don't believe that 9/11 was a conspiracy of our own government to attack us. I'd like to believe they're not that smart. I'd like to believe that they can't keep secrets for long.

Then today I read an article in Radar Magazine about the secret government database code named "Main Core." The database contains a list of an estimated 8 million Americans, who, "often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived 'enemies of the state' almost instantaneously."

Radar Magazine describes the possible road map to martial law:

With the population gripped by fear and anger, authorities undertake unprecedented actions in the name of public safety. Officials at the Department of Homeland Security begin actively scrutinizing people who—for a tremendously broad set of reasons—have been flagged in Main Core as potential domestic threats. Some of these individuals might receive a letter or a phone call, others a request to register with local authorities. Still others might hear a knock on the door and find police or armed soldiers outside. In some instances, the authorities might just ask a few questions. Other suspects might be arrested and escorted to federal holding facilities, where they could be detained without counsel until the state of emergency is no longer in effect.

So now I understand Rumsfeld's craving for an attack. He wanted to test out his new toy! Of course, Rumsfeld has since resigned as Defense Secretary, but shouldn't somebody ask the current Presidential candidates if they will continue these domestic surveillance programs?

Stabbed in the Back!

The most powerful country with the most powerful army must have some powerful foes. These foes are so strong that their words or even their thoughts can endanger the war effort. This is the heart of the stabbed-in-the-back myth:

Advocate some momentarily popular but reckless policy. Deny culpability when that policy is exposed as disastrous. Blame the disaster on internal enemies who hate America. Repeat, always making sure to increase the number of internal enemies.

Yes, the enemies must be internal. This persecution-propaganda started in Germany after World War I, but soon became a tool of Republicans in the USA. The perfect example is the Vietnam War:

Vietnam was the sort of war Republicans had been clamoring to fight for two decades. A liberal administration had started it, with misplaced bravado, but it had been egged on—even dared—to take the plunge into full-scale war by prevailing right-wing dogma. When the war soured, Republicans first tried to blame not the failed premise of the domino theory or the flawed diplomacy of the Kennedy Administration or the near-universal American failure to recognize Vietnam's boundless desire for self-determination—no, it was the old fallbacks of appeasement, defeatism, and treachery in high places.

Once again, we were told that American troops were not being “allowed” to win, if they could not mine Haiphong harbor, or flatten Hanoi, or reduce all of North Vietnam to a parking lot. Yet Vietnam was a war with no real defeats on the ground. U.S. troops won every battle of any significance and inflicted exponentially greater casualties on the enemy than they suffered themselves. Even the great debacle of the war, the 1968 Tet offensive, ended with an overwhelming American military victory and the Viet Cong permanently expunged as an effective fighting force. It is difficult to claim betrayal when you do not lose a battle.

Despite successful battles, 21000 Americans were killed in Vietnam during Nixon's administration, and there were no Democrats to blame it on. Instead, blame was laid on bums, perverts, and spitting protesters.

To my readers, I'm not sure I even need to draw the parallels between The Vietnam War and The Iraq War -- The Harper's article linked above does it so well.

What I do find interesting, though, is how the stabbed-in-the-back myth relates to the recent New York Times article Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand. The article exposes how the Bush administration relied on military analysts, who often had investments in military contractors, to shape terrorism coverage from inside the mainstream media. Jon Stewart explains it with humor:



I realize that "managing the message" during wartime is not a new concept. However, this administration was in near hysterical frenzy at their approach to a "mindwar" -- using network TV and radio to “strengthen our national will to victory.” It was a psychological war against the American people. The analysts were looking back at Vietnam, blaming the failure on being "out Psyoped," and strategizing how to sell the war rather than how to win it.

Never blame foreign policy, bad intelligence, or lack of planning when you can blame the American people or at least a portion of them.

And now public discontent over the war in Iraq has reached a new peak. Why? Could it be that nobody is really paying attention to the "message-force multipliers"? Or maybe it's because many of the analysts eventually revolted. Maybe those geezers in the White House don't quite understand this whole blogging thing. The stabbed-in-the-back philosophy is as ingrained in the right-wing psyche as ever... but this stratagem is failing.