Media Criticism
Terrorized by the media
Spare us the sky-is-falling hysteria. If anything, the failed bombing shows how little we need to fear al-Qaida
President Obama speaks about plans to thwart future terrorist attacks, on Jan. 5, at the White House. No one can say how America’s struggle with Islamic extremism will end, save that it won’t be resolved by having Matt Damon kill Osama bin Laden in single combat. And President Obama won’t yell “Get off my plane!” before tossing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to his death.
However this conflict ends, Bruce Willis will not be involved.
Most Americans understand that the long battle against al-Qaida and related terrorist groups has little in common with a Hollywood plot. Or at least I hope they do. Watching excitable media personalities and the Chicken Little wing of the Republican Party doing everything possible to turn the failed Christmas airline bombing in Detroit into a combination Super Bowl-size ratings bonanza and political opportunity, however, made me wonder: Can’t these jokers be serious about anything?
TV news broadcasters dote upon melodrama. The fact that would-be Nigerian terrorist Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab struck on Christmas Day, one of the slowest news days of the year, sent the media into overdrive. For CNN, Fox News and the rest, the catastrophe that blessedly didn’t happen spurred them to do what they do best: gather a terrific amount of information in a short time and inform us about what happened aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 — and, equally important, what didn’t, such as a coordinated attack by multiple terrorists.
(Was I the only one who wondered whether the heroism of Dutch tourist Jasper Schuringa, who threw himself on Abdulmutallab, preventing the bomb in his pants from detonating, got relatively short shrift because he wasn’t an American?)
Moreover, the rapidity with which the media had gathered crucial information about the would-be terrorist only underscored the magnitude of the intelligence failure. How, in the age of Google, can the Transportation Security Administration not have an instantly searchable database containing every suspect who has come to the attention of the CIA or FBI, much less one whose father warned U.S. embassy authorities about his son’s growing radicalism?
Obama has demanded an answer. Congress needs to make sure Americans get one, even if that means having to endure Sen. John McCain and Holy Joe Lieberman’s unique blend of smugness and solemnity for weeks at a time.
However, we could all do without the sky-is-falling hysteria. If anything, Abdulmutallab’s failed atrocity attempt demonstrates, once again, how little America as a nation actually has to fear from al-Qaida. Everyone reading this column is far more likely to die in an automobile accident or an influenza epidemic than at a terrorist’s hands.
Islamic extremists can’t invade the United States or cripple its armed forces, can’t heavily damage the nation’s infrastructure or productive capacity, can’t impair the nation’s functioning nor undermine its government. All they’re capable of — and the Flight 253 episode shows them not terribly good at that — are mass murder atrocities, the purpose of which is to terrify Americans into doing stupid things that sap our morale and damage ourselves.
Things like invading Iraq, resorting to using torture, abandoning the rule of law and demanding authoritarian solutions that provide a false sense of security to people quivering with media-amplified fear. Such as Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney’s demand on (where else?) Fox News that all Muslim men between ages 18 and 28 be strip-searched before boarding airplanes. Only the cravenly politically correct, he thinks, could object.
McInerney’s idea sounds appropriately tough-minded for the approximately five seconds needed to realize that Muslims come in all possible shapes, sizes and colors, but without labels. Maybe we should just strip-search everybody — ex-Pentagon officials first.
A Washington Post columnist demanded an immediate end to Obama’s vacation. On MSNBC, Chris Matthews worried what would happen if al-Qaida started dispatching bombers trained in martial arts. (Maybe we’ll need to deploy Matt Damon’s stunt double after all.) Scared witless, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd called for Obama to muster more after-the-fact excitement, lamenting the alleged disappearance (I am not making this up) of America’s “Bugs Bunny panache.” Really.
But the real telltale headline appeared in the Washington Post on Dec. 30: “Republicans see political opportunity in Obama response to failed airplane bomb.” Dick Cheney emerged from his bunker to claim it’s all the president’s fault. “We are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe,” he said. “Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office.”
Of course, he’s done so many times, but that’s not the point. Neoconservative columnist Charles Krauthammer also discerned semantic weakness in Obama’s using the term “extremists” where he’d prefer “jihadist.”
If not for the president’s craven refusal to pronounce the Magic Words, in precisely the right order, you see, al-Qaida would no longer exist.
© 2010, Gene Lyons. Distributed by United Feature Syndicate, Inc.
Arkansas Times columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000). You can e-mail Lyons at eugenelyons2@yahoo.com. More Gene Lyons.
A Washington Times plagiarist’s self-declared vindication
Arnaud de Borchgrave wants you to know that his very important friends don't think he did anything wrong
Arnaud de Borchgrave Arnaud de Borchgrave, the ridiculously named eminent former foreign correspondent and editor, has gotten into a spot of trouble recently for plagiarism. De Borchgrave’s columns for the Washington Times and the UPI wire service routinely and brazenly borrow passages from a variety of sources, as reported by Erik Wemple in the Washington Post and Mariah Blake here at Salon. The Times management knew there was a problem — Blake’s story quotes some very egregious examples of copy-and-paste abuse — but after suspending his column for a few months, he was back at work by late March. Once other news outlets reported his plagiarism, de Borchgrave took a “leave of absence” from the paper.
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Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.
Stop aiming for postpartum hot
Beyonce's lettuce diet is just the latest crazy move by a celebrity mom to get back into bikini shape
Beyonce (Credit: Reuters/Andrew Kelly) Dear New Celebrity Mom:
I understand your desire to get your famously hot body back. Even we mere mortals, who somehow managed to get impregnated despite never once making it to the Maxim 100, have gazed longingly at our pre-pregnancy pants, yearned to set our draw-stringed maternity clothes on fire, and gasped a “What the HELL?” when getting a load of our doughy postpartum selves in the mirror. And we never had to get in shape for a Victoria’s Secret show. We didn’t even coin the word “bootylicious” to describe our own assets.
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Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams.
Hustler’s denigrating S.E. Cupp “satire”
Larry Flynt hides behind free speech to degrade a conservative
It’s not as if one expects subtle political discourse from Hustler. But come on.
Larry Flynt’s venerable publishing enterprise has, throughout its history, championed freedom of expression in its own unique way. In 1984, Flynt famously went all the way to the Supreme Court over the right to run a parody ad of inexhaustible loon Jerry Falwell reminiscing about losing his virginity to his mother in an outhouse. Tasteless? Yes. An obvious lampooning of a public figure? Also yes. But when Hustler recently ran a photo of conservative writer S.E. Cupp Photoshopped to look like she was performing oral sex, that was something altogether different.
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Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams.
“Community” botches damage control
A leaked memo reveals Sony's social-media blunder -- and its belief that the cast and fans are easily herded
Joel McHale and Gillian Jacobs in "Community." It’s adorable the way Old Media keeps forgetting that we live in the age of transparency. Hey, Sony Pictures Television, your metaphoric fly is undone.
You’d think that after that ranting, complaining voice mail that “Community” star Chevy Chase left showrunner Dan Harmon went viral this spring they’d have learned. Or maybe after Harmon responded to his dismissal just last Friday by spilling his guts on Tumblr. You’d think the muckety-mucks would have figured out by now that the best you can do when there’s tension in your little creative family is to be forthright and creative about it.
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Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams.
Luke Russert, nepotist prince
Luke Russert is being groomed as a simulacrum of his father -- but without the inspiring rags-to-riches story
(Credit: Benjamin Wheelock) Tim Russert was not the unalloyed saint of tough journalism that his celebrators describe in posthumous tributes, but he was at least a classic American success story, of the sort that we still enjoy pretending is common: Blue-collar kid from Rust Belt town becomes enormously successful thanks largely to brains and hard work. The story of Luke Russert, alas, is a much more common one in American life: No-account kid of successful person has more success thrust upon him.
Pretty much immediately upon the death of his father, Luke Russert inexplicably had a full-time broadcasting job, supplanting his part-time broadcasting job co-hosting a satellite radio sports talk show with James Carville. (That was a real thing that actually existed. Can you imagine a human who would want to listen to that?)
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Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.
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