The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    jollyroger's picture

    Crank yankers calling press wankers

    By jollyroger on Sun, 01/08/2012 - 4:40pm |

    Crank yankers strike again.

    Does everybody remember the time "David H Koch" called Wisconsin Governor (for now) Scott Walker?

    You do?  Good.

    That makes you smarter than a New York Times bylined reporter (Eric Shmitt) who gives this date a concern troll performance extraordinaire.

     

    Under the ominous headline "Lull in Strikes by U.S. Drones Aids Militants in Pakistan" he lets us know the price we pay when we deny ourselves the right to inflict death from above.

    It is only on the second page of his apologia pro collateral damage that he gets to the "money shot": After having walked us through the worrisome implications of our (unwilling) restraints on arbitrary executions purportedly empowering the evil, ubiquitous, "insurgents", Shmitt turns to the topic of internal Taliban factional relations. 

    "In telephone interviews, some Pakistani militants said the purpose of the agreement was to settle internal differences among rival factions and improve the image of the Taliban, which has been tarnished because of the increasing use of kidnapping and the rise in civilian killings."

    After ten years of documented high level psyops directed at managing public opinion regarding the conduct of our Excellent Afghan Adventure, this putz takes at face value the identity of a voice on the other end of a telephone conversation and reports with a straight face the revealed internal thinking and confidential negotiations of top level Taliban!

    Or, anyway, he is willing  (for career reasons?) to suspend any warranted disbelief, and wants us to do the same.

    Wanker! 

    Comments

    This brings me, anyway, to the issue concerning how we know what we know!

    Not to get toooo very Rummy on this subject, I don't know if off the record sources really exist (recall the NYT idiot reporter).

    After speaking with troubled revolutionaries in....

    How am I supposed to know if the author spoke to anyone?

    Then the author can always say:

    Hey, I protect my sources!

    I do know that the Obama Administration is getting a lot of criticism from the left like Greenwald for these robot warriors. ha!

    Career reasons...As far as I am concerned that is tattooed on David Gregory's face and basically they all put that category of reasons on the top of their agendae.


    by Richard Day on Mon, 01/09/2012 - 10:15am

    I do know that the Obama Administration is getting a lot of criticism from the left like Greenwald for these robot warriors. ha!

     I am curious about your meaning when you say,"Ha". Do you mean ha ha ha, Obama deserves criticism? Maybe *ha* what a joke that Obama would be criticized? Maybe it's a *ha ha* that anyone would consider Greenwald is a legitimate person to do any criticizing? Maybe something completely different. 

     Like I said, just curious.


    by A Guy Called LULU on Mon, 01/09/2012 - 12:13pm

    I dont know. hahhahaha is happy hahaha

    Ha is usually, imagine that!

    We kill people as a nation. We are good at it. We cannot help ourselves.

    The media go nuts everytime our supreme leader assassinates someone.

    Greenwald and others simply attempt to point it out.

    We now have a new and revised bush Patriot Act.

    I got to admit though that Clinton was pretty good at keeping the peace. We got involved in one war attributable to Tito really and I do not think we lost one soldier.

    No, the ha was:

    IMAGINE THAT!


    by Richard Day on Mon, 01/09/2012 - 1:59pm

    And when you ask questions like that, I wonder if you are Glen Greenwald's older brother who thinks he needs to keep an eye out for people who might just might say a bad thing about his baby bro. Does the celebrity entity Greenwald really need loyal fans defending his name against any possible suggestion of a slur as if he a warrior god who must never be questioned? Ever think it might be better for him if people defended the individual ideas and points of his when they agree with him, rather than him as an entity?

    Sorry but it just reminds me a bit too much of Obama love in 2008, when there were hoardes looking to pounce on any blog that might just might be on the verge of raising a point of misease with one or two of the anointed one's views. Like any hint of lack of praise much less criticism was a tiny virus they had to stop in its tracks before it could spread.


    by artappraiser on Mon, 01/09/2012 - 2:25pm

    In this particular case the meaning of the word "ha", as DD used it, was ambiguous. I was curious. If it had turned out to be a dismissive putdown of Greenwald's criticism I might have come back and argued that it was uncalled for, but DD answered my question. [Thanks, DD] 

     

    Ever think it might be better for him if people defended the individual ideas and points of his when they agree with him, rather than him as an entity?

    I have often been impressed with your memory and your record keeping and search skills, or whatever, that you often display by linking to someone's previous comment to make a point. So, can you show a time when I have brought up Greenwald other than to use his well crafted arguments to demonstrate an idea that I agree with or think should at least be considered?
     I don't think he needs me to defend him or his views, he does an excellent job of that all by his lonesome, but the only way I have defended him is by repeating his views and defending those views. When his views are pertinent to the subject I have often quoted some of them and asked the person I was responding to if they disagreed. I have very seldom got an answer that was to the point. I have suggested that it was because they do not want to acknowledge that Obama is doing things they criticized Bush for doing, but I have never once, ever, used the phrase, "The Anointed One", to both deride Obama and his hard core supporters. If I ever do use that descriptor I would not object to someone asking me what I meant by saying that.


    by A Guy Called LULU on Mon, 01/09/2012 - 3:28pm

    It's kind of a variation on the "sources within the administration who required anonymity, etc etc" but at least there you have (allegedly) an actual known known (pace  Rummy), that is, the reporter purports accurately to have identified, if only to later obscure, some identity.

    To say "hey, I talked to some guy on the phone who called me (after all, they're not about to hand out a telephone number for Taliban Central) and said he was so and so, a mid level TB who (for what reason again??) was willing to dish on the internal divisions and coalitions amongst his buddies....so, of course, I believed him.

    As if there were no profit to the government side in spreading false rumors of dissention and raising false hopes of dissolution. (Lest we forget, Tokyo Rose...)


    by jollyroger on Mon, 01/09/2012 - 12:53pm

    You are right on Jolly.

    The entire game of journalism/punditry is just one big reality show.

    Winners and losers and also rans.

    Give me an audience, i will come up with something.

    At least with Osama, we got a video and comedy shows could put words in the mf's mouth!


    by Richard Day on Mon, 01/09/2012 - 2:07pm

    The Greenwald column you link to (about how careerist U.S. reporters happily whore themselves out to the Pentagon) is well worth a read, Jolly. Eric Schmitt's article is a fine example, and you were sharp to combine them in a post.

    But what are you babbling about with this "money shot" nonsense? That paragraph says nothing, adds nothing. It's only in the story at all (on the second page, as you note) because Schmitt, writing out of Washington, got the NYT to pay a stringer in Peshawar to phone some Talibanesque contacts for a little local color. The stringer basically got nothing to confirm the Pentagon version of events, but Schmitt ran the paragraph to show he made some attempt to get the other side of the story. He's just covering his ass for when the NYT beancounters question his expense account: "What's this $250 for phone interviews in Peshawar, Eric?" End of story. Don't you understand how journalism works?


    by acanuck on Mon, 01/09/2012 - 2:00pm

    And it's not like the revelation in the piece is that there are rivalries, jealousies and differences of opinion and strategy between different Pakistani and Afghan militant groups. The same shit goes on between the White House, State Department and Pentagon. It would be a real revelation if such differences didn't exist.


    by acanuck on Mon, 01/09/2012 - 2:06pm

    Now this is clarity in the extreme.

    Yeah, the reporter has to report to his corporate people--that is for sure.

    Like when Josh says:

    We attempted to receive a comment from the Speaker's office but received no call back.

    Of course that is the ass cover for everyone.


    by Richard Day on Mon, 01/09/2012 - 2:10pm

    . It would be a real revelation if such differences didn't exist.

    Just so, but the idea that some talib would  unburden himself to a NY times reporter and provide veridical details is a stretch.

    Also, I think the bit about taliban internal stresses is window dressing to puff up the main thrust of the piece which is, we gotta turn our guys loose to rain down death at will, or the "bad guys" (I can't believe they actually call them that, but they do...) will regroup (as if we had a prayer of permanently suppressing them).


    by jollyroger on Mon, 01/09/2012 - 2:18pm

    I used "money shot" with oblique irony, meaning it was the important paragraph for me.\

    Prolly could'a put it more artfully.


    by jollyroger on Mon, 01/09/2012 - 2:13pm

    I think the paragraph is significant for how little it says. I'm sure that if Schmitt's guy in Peshawar had got Haqqani himself on the line, dishing about rival leaders, that would have been the NYT headline. Instead, he got "some militants" -- presumably at least two -- talking vaguely about hammering out differences. That's out of a population of 170 million, perhaps one-third to half of whom sympathize with the Taliban. Thin gruel, as we say.

    You also have to read indirect quotes very carefully. This one talks about burnishing the Taliban's image

    which has been tarnished because of the increasing use of kidnapping and the rise in civilian killings.

    I'm not sure who's saying that -- "some militant", Schmitt, or the Peshawar stringer? That's one of the devious advantages of paraphrasing and avoiding quotation marks: you can fudge who said what. Put a little English on the ball.

    The problem with Schmitt's copy is not this innocuous "quote," however. It's that he's parroting the conventional Washington insider wisdom, being fed to him by a bunch of people who also aren't on the ground in Peshawar. And U.S. readers, once again, are both lapping it up and regurgitating it. It's a closed loop, and foreign-policy failure is built into the system. War with Iran? No big deal.


    by acanuck on Mon, 01/09/2012 - 3:25pm

    Schmitt ran the paragraph to show he made some attempt to get the other side of the story

    Well, really, in a back hand way a second side of the same story, since the big  message was supposed to be, if we don't let our boys loose, the bad guys prosper.  For extra credit, they are now hooking up, partly cause our previous pressure was so effective they had to bury the hatchet, and now they are uniting and we are tying our own hands...


    by jollyroger on Mon, 01/09/2012 - 3:16pm