George Rebane
It’s hard to put all this together. Dept of Ag staffer Ms Sherrod got unjustly condemned by the NAACP, and then fired by the White House after President Obama was briefed on the matter. Now after looking at NAACP’s full video, everyone rushed to back pedal, apologize, and then Obama ordered her to be rehired. Ag Secretary Vilsack spent some considerable time in front of reporters falling on his sword.
Meanwhile the leftwingers in chorus and perfect key blamed the whole thing on Fox News. If Reagan was identified as the ‘teflon President’, then I don’t think Dupont has yet invented the frictionless cover that can match what Obama has pulled over his administration.
Another revelation today was that Obama’s stimulus monies go to fund only projects that pay the workers union scale whether they belong to a union or not. This adds an automatic 20% to the taxpayers’ bill, and removes the competitive advantage of union-free companies. Somehow no one on the left is dunning their media for not reporting this. It was the White House's discredited Fox News who had to break this story. Remember Fox News, the outfit that other real news organizations were told to shun, and, apparently the news organization that the White House most listens to if they want to find out what’s really happening out there.
Piling on were the dirt bag members of ‘Journolist’ – the now-shuttered leftwing outfit of ‘opinion based journalists’ who conspired successfully through emails to divert the nation’s attention from Obama’s relationship with the Rev Wright by publishing arbitrary and scurrilous charges of racism against various Republicans. Tonight we also heard NPR’s Mara Liasson distinguish that group’s membership to also have ‘objective journalists’. But they leave it to us to puzzle out who is on first. Like with Climategate, someone ought to write a book.
All of this makes commentators like me on the internet remind everyone again that we are not journalists. Journalism has been a self-preening and unexamined fraternity for too long. The only 'profession' in still lower esteem in the public eye are politicians and the lawyers, cadres of whom are now stumbling over each other rushing to represent Ms Sherrod. Journalism’s few members who can still stand to look in the mirror should find a new word to describe what they do – calling yourself a journalist will no longer serve.
[22jul2010 update] Fred Barnes, of JournoList’s cited targets of opportunity, wrote a piece in the 22jul10 WSJ. His words bear on my recent posts on journalists and support assessments on what the profession has become. In a telling paragraph Barnes also covers racism, another recent topic on RR.
What was particularly pathetic about the scheme to smear Mr. Obama's critics was labeling them as racists. The accusation has been made so frequently in recent years, without evidence to back it up, that it has little effect. It's now the last refuge of liberal scoundrels.
He concludes that “it was sad to see what journalism, or at least a segment of it, had come to.”
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