Hewitt couldn't wait until monday to unload on Carroll.
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This is really amazing: The editor of the Los Angeles Times branding Fox News as pseudo-journalism while asserting that the paper he leads is a repository of real journalism. Put aside the quackery of Scheer or the irrelevance of the editorial voice (see the post below), the robust line-up of news pages columnists every single one of whom is left or way left of center, the Times' photographer in the Church of the Nativity, the bizarre non-coverage of Gray Davis' money machine, the asleep at the wheel coverage of the electricity crisis or the decade-ago refusal to believe bankruptcy was coming to Orange County because it was a Republican candidate for office who took the paper work to the Times. Put aside the paper's refusal to cover a gathering of 40,000 supporters of Israel or the pacifist politics of its now retired television critic or any of hundreds of other example.
Rather, just recall the hit piece on Arnold days before the election which led to the cancellation of thousands of subscriptions. John Carroll evidently believes all those people are wrong, that his view of the world is right, and that his paper's default Pulitzer for covering the fires it failed wholly to predict some how give him license to act as a judge of other's work product.
John Carroll hates the market and the fact that Americans aren't buying his laughable self-importance or the apparent attempt to look the other way when his newsroom staff is assembled. There isn't 5% of Carroll's team of "journalists" that aren't reliably anti-Bush, pro-Kerry or Nader and predictable on every major issue of the day. He'll retire soon, and spend his days giving talks to fellow lefties dressed up as "objective journalists," wondering aloud why the country trusted Brit Hume and Rush and the Weekly Standard and not him and Jayson Blair and other fine "journalists" of the age. Does he really not know, or is he desperate to maintain appearances, like a fine old family living on the fumes of a fortune long squandered? Such families vanish quietly, as the Times is, from the circles of influence.
Carroll was lecturing during "ethics week" at the
University of Oregon, sponsoered by that university's
Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. Run
down the list of speakers at the event. Do you see the
name of even one participant who is known for having
challenged the leftward tilt of major media, one
conservative columnist or pundit, one academic who has any
record of criticism of the dominant culture of the elite
media or even a local blogger or two who act as watchdogs
on the local media elite? The answer is no, of course, for
even as self-criticism is obviously not Carroll's
strength, this conference isn't indulging any temptation
to assure even a tiny bit of dissent from the self-
congratulations.
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Ethics indeed. But only if ethics is understood to mean
supreme arrogance combined with indifference to reality.
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Posted at 8:10 AM
CALLING MICHAEL KINSLEY:
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The lead editorial in today's Los Angeles Times perfectly illustrates why that failed part of that failed paper is the most embarassing. Here's the penultimate paragraph from today's long dance with incoherence:
"This editorial page does not --yet-- join the growing calls for the Defense secretary's resignation."
I am among the first to appreciate the gift of humor that the Times scribblers give us here, but there is sadness mixed with the mirth. The opinion elites of the left are not only wholly out-of-touch with ordinary Americans, but they don't know it. Who, exactly, would be influenced by a decision --so weighty, so fraught with significance--- by the Los Angles Times editorialists to call for Rumsfeld's resignation? The polls show super-majorities supporting Rumsfeld, and there is no way that support is going to ebb over the priosner abuse scandal. In fact, look for the opposite to occur in the aftermath of Friday's failed attempt to use the hearings to cook Rumsfeld. (Nice work apologizing for the whack-job Mark Dayton over at Fraters, which actually apologized twice, Powerline, also a double apology, Captain's Quarters, and Shot-in-the-Dark.)
The arrogance behind this assumed significance on the part of obscure and untalented Times' writers is just awesome. Michael Ramirez has influence, yes, as do I with my audience and most pundits and bloggers with theirs. (Today's Ramirez cartoon is a classic.) But it is not the influence that implies the ability to make decisions for people, but of having in the case of Ramirez huge talent with which to make big point, or in my and the case of other pundits, having earned enough trust to point listeners/readers towards information that will be absorbed into their own decision-making.
I wish the Times had taken that all-important step of calling for Rumsfeld to resign. Talk about trees falling in forests with nobody to hear it.
Two other stories to entertain you this weekend. The Los Angles Times reports on continuing message incoherence from John Kerry, which combined with a crippling caution fully justifies Jay Leno's quip about Kerry's Spanish-language ads: That they prove Kerry can be boring in two languages.
The Boston Globe on the other hand tries to give a little love to Kerry by suggesting a corner's been turned. ("A Kerry message starts to break through.") Nice home-team call, but unpersuasive. What did John Kerry do or say this week to establish himself as a credible alternative to President Bush as a Commander-in-Chief? Make it easier on yourself: What did John Kerry do or say this week to make himself more likeable? How about: Do you recall seeing John Kerry at all this week?
Theresa called Dick Cheney "unpatriotic," I remember that, which seems to be just the sort of wild charge Democratic insiders worried she'd be making before long. So this week saw a crisis materialize from an unexpected source, the Administration mobilize to deal with it, the president take many opportunities to lead the country through it, the SecDef travel to the Hill to take many lumps and responsibility without being bullied by half-wits like Mark Dayton, and the country sees --again-- a war leadership that, if it supports the war, it admires. If you have any doubts about whether we are in a war, pick up the June issue of The Atlantic Monthly for an update on the terrorists of al Qaeda and their Pakistani spin-offs, or read the report from Chechnya this morning, or the warnings of dirty bombs to come on the front page of the Los Angeles Times.
The only serious questions now and in November remain about the war: Do you believe we are in one, and who is best equipped to lead it? Those who don't think we are in the middle of a life-or-death struggle will go for Kerry or Nader. The president will get the serious people.
And the Los Angeles Times editorial writers will have zero --yes, zero-- influence over the result. |
