Look at this opening line by one of the very few liberals who write for a mainstream media magazine.
Jonathan Alter
Newsweek
05.05.2006
Raising the Bar on Losing a Job
“If CIA Director Porter Goss resigned because of a sex scandal, it will rock Washington, affect the midterm elections and give us all a lot to chew on for weeks or months.”
Now Alter goes on with the following, a direction that in some ways coincides but still differs with the direction I am heading:
“But long term, it will also indicate something of critical importance in understanding why President Bush will be viewed by history as a failed president: Apparently the only way to lose your job in the Bush Administration is by being disloyal (Paul O’Neill, Larry Lindsay) or by being a sleaze.
Being incompetent is not a problem.”
But my focus remains on his opening statement.
Substitute “it was determined that he made this country less safe during his tenure” for “of a sex scandal.”
Let’s re-make the lead to: “If CIA Director Porter Goss resigned because it was determined that he made this country less safe during his tenure, it will rock Washington, affect the midterm elections and give us all a lot to chew on for weeks or months.”
Isn’t the latter a more important assessment to determine? Actually, isn’t is the really THE critical measurement?
Sure, it wouldn’t contain the prurient quotient that we are all to some degree attracted to and no national news broadcast, newspaper or magazine would lead with such a claim but I ask again, what is truly more imperative? I am not dismissing the possibility of inappropriate sexual escapades–that should and will be investigated.
But sadly, yet conspicuously, surveying and then publishing the damage done by Porter Goss to the CIA and hence our national security, will never happen and, ay, there’s the rub.
Far too often, what is actual essential typically gets no play whatsoever on the visual or aural airwaves, and very, very little in print.
Reason: it doesn’t sell. It doesn’t lift corporate stock prices. Advertisers shy away. It’s difficult to portray, especially in a manner that will interest most.
Worst of all, if truth be told, Alter’s re-arranged headline would actually have to appear as: “If CIA Director Porter Goss resigned because it was determined that he made this country less safe during his tenure, it will NOT rock Washington, NOT affect the midterm elections and NOT give us all a lot to chew on for weeks or months.”
Sex sells. Security doesn’t. Inside and outside the Beltway.