Nightly Ramble Tuesday

Good evening Mr. And Mrs. America and to all the ships at sea, and welcome to the most intense nightly read anywhere on the web; The BitsBlog Nightly Ramble

• THE ULTIMATE INSULT? Apparently those who don’t like the tea party movement are getting desperate.  They’re breaking out the ultimate insult; calling it a Christian movement.
• McChrystal : Look; call and how you will, but the bottom line is that Obama canned McChrystal because he dared to tell the truth… that this administration and it’s mismanagement of the situation there is losing the war for us. And yes, I saw Bruce’s commentary. I disagree insofar as the reason for him canning McChrystal . Let’s not kid ourselves… Obama doesn’t give a DAMN about what Bruce calls our Constitutional tradition of civilian control of the military, except insofar as Obama felt he lost control of the narrative.
• CONTROLLING THE MEDIA: I mentioned, yesterday, Dave Wiegel.  Doctor Zero and I are on the same page as to why Wiegel got hired:
  

  Why would an unbiased newspaper be afraid to honestly report news that makes one side of a political debate look appealing, instead assigning a reporter to highlight fringe material to cast them in the most negative light possible?  Of course, they are biased, but it’s even worse than that.  They’re subjective. They pretend to be commentators, but they’re actually players in the game… just like everyone else.  Our fates are all controlled by the immense central government worshipped by the Post. They have a vested interest in ensuring its sustained growth, so they can make their fortune writing epic tales of its heroic deeds.

  He also goes to some length to explain why I have such disdain for so-called “moderates”:

  As I like to point out whenever someone like David Frum gushes over “moderates,” there is no meaningful way to be moderate when a carnivorous super-State is chowing down on huge portions of the private sector, while dismissing bedrock Constitutional rightswith an irritated wave of its hand.  You either resist the onslaught of the State with all your might, or bear passive witness to its expansion.

  At this moment in American history, there is no functional difference between a genuine “centrist” and Dave Weigel’s right-wing “ratf**kers.”  If you think you should be allowed to keep your own medical insurance, and see your own doctor, you’re taking an extreme partisan stance.  If you don’t think the government should be able to revoke the First Amendment or due process rights of private corporations at its convenience, you are a declared enemy of the State.

  For the same reason, journalists can only make the thinnest pretense of objectivity when covering the super-State.  Merely reporting honestly on its past and current activities would qualify a journalist for associate membership in the Ratf**ker Pack.

  Quite so. He goes on to argue that the protests of innocence of trying to manipulate the narrative can be found in smaller quantities on any stable floor.

  As my Green Room colleague Karl points out, some of Weigel’s most intellectually offensive emails concerned the kind of organized narrative manipulation that appears to have been the true purpose of JournoList all along.  In the immense political struggle now under way, there is no room on the sidelines.

  Mainstream media figures want to pose as friendly partners in an intelligent conversation, but the size and power of the government they cover makes it impossible to analyze dispassionately.  In their hearts, journalists really hate the idea of seeing that exciting mega-government torn down, or they believe it’s impossible to do so.  That’s why they see the new breed of aggressive, Tea Party-endorsed Republicans as either enemies or lunatics.  It doesn’t help that they’re well aware of ongoing statist efforts to control or subsidize the media.  Even those reporters who aren’t True Believers are reluctant to earn a spot on the enemies list of an eternally triumphant statist elite.

  The interesting part about this is, at least to me, the similarity between what’s happening with our press in this country and what happened in Germany in the twenties and thirties.  No one’s daring to use the word “totalitarian” yet.  But I fear that’s exactly where we’re headed at this point.  Time was when asking the uncomfortable questions was the job of the press.  These days asking uncomfortable questions, particularly with liberals in power, means the ending of one’s career.  I will say this again; the Washington P hired Wiegel for one reason: they knew he would produce biased writing.  Biased against conservatives.  What concerns me is that he is far from alone.