Brie Press

Mackubin Thomas Owens, writing of the anti-American press - by which is meant the American press - reminds us of a story we used to know: "The moderator of a panel ... offered a hypothetical scenario: In wartime, you are invited to accompany an enemy unit that says it will prove that an ally of the United States is committing atrocities. While accompanying the enemy patrol, you find yourself in the midst of preparations for an ambush that may very well cause the death of Americans. Do you try to warn the Americans?

"After hesitating, Jennings replied that he would try to warn the Americans. But Wallace responded that he would regard it as just another story and that he would not feel a 'higher duty' to warn the Americans. Col. Connell watched this exchange in what can only be described as a cold rage. When asked to comment, Col. Connell said of Wallace, 'I feel utter contempt. ... They’re not Americans. They’re just journalists.'"

Jennings and Wallace. That's half of the MSM Mount Rushmore. But whereas the Right wants its heroes to be carved from harder stuff, these figures are fashioned from butter ... or rather brie. Brie: a mold-ripened whitish French cheese with a soft pale yellow center. There's nothing really definite about it, is there. But to make the image accurate, it'd have to be some sort of toxic mold, that works its poison secretly, destroying houses and killing families. Yes, I think the analogy works.

I've discussed enough already in these pages my inchoate theories about disloyalty. Generally my self-expressions tend simply to exclamations of dismay and anger. Occasionally I depart from sarcasm and attempt something meaningful, but I'm sure my insight is not profound. I have a simple formula that answers questions regarding criminal behavior. Why do they do it? Because they give themselves permission to do it. Drive-by shootings, and home invasions, and raping old ladies and molesting children? Why? Because they convince themselves, these criminals, that in their world it is allowed. The victims deserve it, or they aren't human the way the perpetrator is, or it's revenge against the world, or some other rationalization. Even if they're honest enough to just admit that they're evil, they suppose somehow that being evil is right.

So what is it about the twisted pose of Mr. Wallace, that allows him through his untoward and uncharacteristic silence to be complicit in the deaths of American soldiers? He was a Navy officer in WW II, and he certainly would not have been silent had he known of some Japanese ambush. Something in the last 60 plus years has changed, then, in the mind or heart of Mr. Wallace. It's not simply the specific enemy we fight now, contrasted to the enemy of that distant day. The lives of US soldiers are not less valuable now than in the past, and the enemy of today is no more and no less precious in the sight of God than at any other time. Is it then that he is a journalist? He did after all frame his answer in that context, of "neutral" (read "amoral") observer.

I believe that is his rationalization - the permission he gives himself to do what normative American values would count as reprehensible and loathsome. Col. Connell spoke with the voice of the countless myriads of fallen patriots spanning every age and culture, who would if they had the power rise from their graves and fall as a single man upon Mr. Wallace, and work an outrage on him more primitive than words can describe. For Mr. Wallace has unmoored himself from the protection of the country he occupies, and he has the effrontery to suppose that his aloofness from the most fundamental of human loyalties is a kind of integrity. He imagines, somehow, that his powers of observation and his ability to annunciate his opinions elevate him above the obligations of a citizen. As if the principles embodied in the Constitution were more valuable than the lives those principles are meant to protect.

Col. Connell was more eloquent in his three words of conclusion than all my many paragraphs could ever be. They’re just journalists. There’s something in the term journalist, some subtlety of meaning, some implied alliance to the inhuman, some hint of an allegiance to the inimical and envious eyeing of our planet by Martian invaders … something so unspeakably unfaithful in the idea that one should forsake all human obligations simply so that one might repeat later what one has seen. It is beyond my capacity to characterize. It is a nonpereil, a sui generis, that stands only for what it is, and stands for nothing else.

Well, I’m going to lapse into inarticulate and repetitive rage if I continue. I’ll have to take a moment to collect myself. Maybe I’ll go stretch my legs. Maybe I’ll do the NY Times crossword puzzle. Maybe I’ll make myself a toasted brie sandwich and watch CNN. Maybe I’ll go assist in the ongoing alien invasion. Maybe I’ll go rape an old lady or molest a child. Who knows what I’ll do. Sometimes I get so tired of living by rules. Sometimes I just want to give myself permission to do whatever pops into my head. Sometimes I think I’m God.

J

Matters of Public Interest

Bill Keller's experiments with homosexuality when he was in college. We must know more about this. It would be very interesting. All the more interesting, if made public. We have a right to know. He is a public figure, and such conduct must have a bearing on his current decision-making processes.

Doyle McManus's use of narcotics and hallucinogens. Not only is it in violation of current law, but it reflects an on-going pattern of disregard for normative public behavior, and as such has a significant bearing on his current decision-making processes. We, the public, have an interest in this salient point as it touches on the character of a public figure.

Arthur Sulzberger's trips to Mexico, where he engages in sexual activity with underage girls. Underage by American standards. The age of consent in Mexico is of course 12 years old, so he may be in violation of no law, but the public is interested in such things, and we have a right to gratify our interest in the conduct of public figures. It is incumbent upon all journalists and publishers and editors to reveal secret matters in their personal lives, because secrets are interesting, and since they are jounalists etc. they are public figures, so the public has a right to know. And also an interest. We have a right to have our interests gratified. It's a right.

What? None of these things are true, in the particular? Well, I'll grant that. It just seems very likely - if not these precise things, then something else, of equally salacious interest. The journalistic standard is, after all, public interest. That is such a vague and broad standard, no? And of these important, public men - surely their secrets must be revealed? After all, the only lives that could be lost or ruined upon the revelation of such secrets, would be their own. How appropriate, that they themselves should bear the cost of their own conduct. They have demonstrated that they have no regard for government secrets, which when revealed most assuredly give aid and comfort to the enemies of every American. It would be sheer hypocrisy to say their personal secrets must be inviolate, while national programs, necessarily kept secret that they may be effective, are plastered across their front pages in banner headlines. After all, what is the standard by which they justify their sedition? Public interest.

I suppose there is an Islamist public. This must be the NY Times target readership. Even the NY Times must be loyal to something. What that may be can only be guessed at. It has nothing at all, manifestly, to do with patriotism. What a joke. What ideology animates them? Let's get the immortal monkeys started on the eternal typewriters, to come up with that answer. But the secret that must be kept is the names of the leakers, the oath-breakers who slobber into the journalists' pointed ears every matter that they conspire together to agree will hurt Bush. And incidentally America. But what is America? America be damned.

One puzzlement does befuddle me, though. Are the leakers likely to give all the facts, pro and con? Are they likely to be diligent and fairminded in the course of betraying their trusts? What is the system of checks and balances that will ensure the journalists get a complete picture, by which they might decide to reveal information that representationally elected officials - who are in possession of all the facts - have thought best be kept secret? Well, the standard after all is not national but public interest. So Keller informs us.

There still exists, technically, on the books, the Espionage Act and other even more germane statutes. There exists no journalistic exception. That would be madness. Why is it that the Daily Worker does not publish such secret information, while the Washington Post and the NY Times and the egregious LA Times do? Subtler minds than my own must plumb that mystery. But I suspect that if some fringe publication did expose such classified and secret information, the swiftness of their prosecution would leave the traitors spinning. Some traitors have too firm a foundation, it seems. There is no moral suasion or appeal to logic that would move them.

And of course these traitorous cowards have no sons, to be torn apart by IEDs. Or if they do, the boys are too busy getting their tongues pierced, to be bothered doing anything as retro as serving their nation. The very idea is laughable.

On the other hand, maybe we're not really at war. Maybe there are no secrets that need to be kept. It may all just be propaganda, and the only news worth reporting is Haditha and Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and oh I just can't wait for the next scandal that proves how bad and evil America is and how right our enemies are. Did I accidentally say enemies? My bad. We have no enemies. Not the Islamist terrorists, and not the New York Times, which is located in a city were two mighty and matchless towers still stand.



J

The Revealers

Question: How many revealers have been awarded Pulitzers for reporting US secrets?

Answer: Bush lied.

Irrational, you say? Um, yeah. But the spirit of Pulitzer lives on -- yellow (by which I mean cowardly) journalism, muckraking up controversy for its own sake, saying anything to muckrake in the extra penny that extra sale would bring.

So the latest Hero of the Revolution is Mary McCarthy -- formerly the special assistant to bill clinton and senior director of intelligence to his White House, formerly a Kerry partisan, recently a CIA apparatchik. Ms. McCarthy thought it expedient to leak classified material to a Washington Post revealer about secret CIA prisons in NATO countries. Not illegal torture camps (as an EU investigation has shown), not Black Holes of Calcutta, not Mexican prisons -- just secret. Um, formerly secret. And the revealers at the Post deemed it, somehow, adventagious to whatever it is they owe loyalty, to publish the fact of this secrecy, so that the world might stand in awe of … of, um, the Washington Post.

Two NY Times revealers also advanced their careers by sharing the highly sensitive secret that US intel agencies can and do intercept emails and phone calls between US citizens (and no doubt, um, immigrants) and Islamists. I can’t think of anything sarcastic enough to say about this ... did you ever dream such a thing could be possible? Oh, I know: those fuckers! True, that’s more abusive than sarcastic, but it conveys the sentiment.

Whistle-blowing is a public act. It calls attention to wrongful action. It is the act of a strong conscience. Whether it’s the rape-whistle that calls for help, or the referee’s whistle that calls a rule-violation, it is designed to stop malfeasance.

Ms. McCarthy’s blowing was not an act of conscience. Her job -- one of supreme trust -- involved an understanding of the fact and need of secrecy. Secret is not bad, in itself -- it is necessary, sometimes. It was not her place, to unilaterally decide what the greatest good might be in this case. Her position was one of subordination, and effectively one of military discipline -- since American soldiers will die because of her fat mouth and stupid brain. Act of conscience? No, rather, her act was a partisan ploy, a cowardly, skulking, secret betrayal of whatever integrity one might otherwise have imputed to her -- done for the sake of bringing disapprobation upon an Administration she works against.

As for the collaborators in the media, there are no words sufficient to convey the contempt they deserve. Traitor, treachery, seditious, saboteur -- these are only words and do not evoke the glee with which the actions of the revealers are met by the enemy. It would be impossible and unthinkable that anyone these scum would love might be in the military, and thus placed at even greater risk by their irresponsibility. We might only hope that they themselves suffer the pain they undoubtedly hope befalls our young men – as their actions ensure.

I’m starting a garage band. Wanna join? Fifth Columnists of the Fourth Estate. Groovy name, huh? Maybe we’ll get famous and rich.

J

"I'm denying as fast as I can!"

Tony Blankley, another practically-always-right guy, writes the following:

At the "University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill ... an Iranian Muslim student drove a jeep into a crowd of students.... [He] informed the police and the media that he was trying to kill the students to 'avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world.'" This is not considered a terrorist event. No, no, it is true, this specific Mohammed certainly seems to have no connection to Al Qaeda. None, that is, except the obvious.

"In Antwerp last month ... rioting Moroccan 'youths' went on a rampage destroying cars and beating up reporters, but the police were instructed not even to stop them or arrest them. According to an anonymous policeman, 'An ambulance was told to switch off its siren because that might provoke the Moroccans.'" Maybe noises in the night frighten them - so they set fires ... for the light, silly.

Last October throughout France, "hundreds of buildings were torched and tens of thousands of cars burned by Muslim 'youths' through weeks of rioting, while both the French government and most of the 'responsible' experts denied there was any radical Muslim component to the greatest urban violence to hit France since World War II. It was all to do with poverty and teenage angst and alienation." Ah, for the days when young people dealt with these stresses just by masturbating.

Perhaps you recall the Mohammed who a few years ago gunned down the El Al staff at LAX - only nine months later was it classified as a terrorist act. They finally solved the Mystery of the Super-Mysterious Motive by consulting Deep Thought, the giant computer from the future.

I am shocked, shocked to find there is bias in the media. But I shall continue to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Welcome to Phony War II.


J