The Left Wing of the Right Wing Line. The Left Wing of the Intelligence Community Line. Bet On That As Well.
I have thoroughly given up believing anything that appears in the NY Times. Not politics, not world affairs, not book, movie, film or music reviews….not even restaurant reviews or articles on food or wine. Nothing. None of it is trustworthy. An astounding amount of it is simply not true (See the topics “Judy Miller” and “Jayson Blair” for all that you might need on that subject.), and most of it isn’t even very good fiction or entertainment journalism when you come right down to it. It’s all about selling. Nothing more. Selling a massively consumerist lifestyle, selling Israel, selling a president. All the same. All inextricably intertwined. The Bloomberg Century in action, nothing more.
To some degree it appears that Booman has also given up on The Times.
Good on him!!!
In Booman’s recent piece Horrible Arguments he refers to Daniel Gordis’s February 8th Times Op-Ed piece A Friendship of Values, Not Convenience as “depressing, delusional, and misguided.”
Yup.
The article attempts to spin the recent events in Egypt into a plus for Israel by spewing AIPAC talking points like this:
But the threat of chaos, and even Islamist rule, might have a silver lining. It is all the more obvious that there is only one country in the region that has the same values as America: Israel. If America reacts to recent events by increasing its support for those who share its values, it could reassure a suddenly surrounded Israel and perhaps even move the peace process with the Palestinians forward.
Until now the central pillar of President Obama’s strategy for restarting peace talks has been to pressure Israel to cease building settlements. Settlements may or may not be wise, but where has the equivalent pressure on the Palestinians been?
Regardless of the plain fact that indeed Israel does “share the same values” as the U.S. if we consider those values to include the running blatantly economic imperialist games on large numbers of brownish people supported by massive military force, this piece is just one of a long line of pro-Israel spins that somehow mysteriously find their way into the prestigious Op-Ed pages of the this nation’s Good Grey Bag Lady.
The NY Times line is precisely, consciously and consistently identical to the line of the left wing of the right wing in the United States of Omertica. The Left Wing of the Intelligence Community/PermaGov Line. Bet on it.
That said…a quick skim of the day’s headlines on Google News is usually enough to smell which way the PermaGov’s charnel house wind is blowing. The Times works on a vector concept. It nudges the facts this way and that so as not to be blatantly, Foxworthily propagandistic. After all…its aim is to influence the upwardly mobile, the college educated and the upper middle class. They vote, y’know. In lockstep, pretty much. And they’re a buncha smarties compared to the Fox News target. Gotta be…subtle.
Read on for more.
Here is another Times article on “Egypt” by their resident conservative, Ross Douthat. He has apparently been tasked with selling Obama as a centrist. Mind you, this is not a particularly hard task…Douthat simply needs to move him leftward a little bit. Below are some samples from one of his most recent pushes.
On the campaign trail in 2008, Barack Obama played to two very different foreign policy constituencies. Often he presented himself as the tribune of the anti-war left — the only candidate who had opposed the invasion of Iraq from the beginning, the man who could be trusted to civilize the global war on terror, and the perfect figure to smooth the transition to a post-American world order. To more bipartisan audiences, though, he cast himself as a cold-eyed realist — the rightful heir to George H. W. Bush, if not Henry Kissinger, who would pursue America’s interests without pretending (as the younger President Bush often did) that they matched up perfectly with America’s democratic ideals.
This two-step worked during the election season because realists and left-wingers were united in their weariness with the Bush administration, and their distrust of John McCain. But to govern is to choose, and after two years in office we can say with some certainty where Barack Obama’s instincts really lie. From the war on terror to the current unrest in Egypt, his foreign policy has owed far more to conservative realpolitik than to any left-wing vision of international affairs.
—snip—
Obama’s response to the Egyptian crisis has crystallized his entire foreign policy vision. Switch on Rush Limbaugh or Fox News, and you would assume that there’s a terrible left-wing naïveté — or worse, a sneaking anticolonial sympathy for the Muslim Brotherhood — at work in the White House’s attempts to usher Hosni Mubarak out the door. But look closer, and it’s clear that the administration’s real goal has been to dispense with Mubarak while keeping the dictator’s military subordinates very much in charge. If the Obama White House has its way, any opening to democracy will be carefully stage-managed by an insider like Omar Suleiman, the former general and Egyptian intelligence chief who’s best known in Washington for his cooperation with the C.I.A.’s rendition program. This isn’t softheaded peacenik dithering. It’s cold-blooded realpolitik.
Cold-blooded, and probably correct. Obama might have done moreto champion human rights and democracy in Egypt before the current crisis broke out, by leavening his Kissinger impression with a touch of Reaganite idealism. But there isn’t much more the administration can do now, because there isn’t any evidence that the Egyptian protesters are ready to actually take power.
—snip—
This is absolutely brilliant propaganda. Obama is more and more likely to successfully run for a second term. The PermaGov does not want to hear from the Tea Party again. Bet on that as well. Any more far right inroads in the U.S. government and the PermaGov’s “Perma” part will begin to feel the hot, sour breath of extremists creeping up behind them and ruining the taste of their martinis. The so-called left? Ain’t no extremists. Just a bunch of people who want to preserve their upcoming pension plans and keep gas prices down enough to drive their kids to soccer practice in their 3 year old SUVs. Cast Obama as a centrist and git them votes!!!
Yup.
Coupled with the article referenced in Booman’s post?
Y’don’t have to be a weatherman t’know which way the wind’s a’blowin’.
Nope.
You just need a brain that can breathe without an artificial, mass media-operated respirator.
Yup.
NEWSTRIKE!!!
CULTURESTRIKE!!!
MEDIASTRIKE!!!
VAYA!!!
Bet on that, why don’tcha!!!
Later…
AG
