A display of Power

As a display of power, Teresa Kerry's confrontation with Pittsburg reporter Colin McNickle was impressive. In a speech, Mrs. Kerry referred to the "creeping, un-Pennyslvanian, and sometimes un-American traits" in our politics. Asked by reporter Colin McNickle what she meant by "Un-American." she said. "I did not say that." and she continued to say "I did not say that. I did not say that." Then: "Why are you putting words in my mouth?" She then walked away and then almost a minute later, came back to the same reporter and started all over again, ending in the famous "Shove it!"

The fact is, she did say it. She lied. But, then, so did the mega-media when they focused on her "feisty" response rather than the facts. It is the power of our mega-media that they can obscure the truth, deflect criticism, or, project it at will, protect the favored and hound the opposition and obliterate the truth whenever it is inconvenient. (Toronto Star report includes text and her denial.) It is a surreal Big Brother world. It isn't new.

UPDATE: Nor am I unique in noticing it. Blogger JustOneMinute noticed.

It reminds me of what was most dispicable about the Clinton Administration. The President's perjury caught on tape, a weasely denial of the truth, under oath, to a court of law. The travel office employees fired to make way for Hollywood friends, the 500 FBI files handed over to a bartender, personnel records from the Pentagon released in violation of law. The final finger at his opponents, Clinton's pardons quickly forgotten, the issue never revived and the spector of Clinton addressing the 2004 Convention as if he was not a discredited and dishonored, impeached president. And there is Jimmy Carter soundly applauded, a president even diehard Democrats acknowledge was one of the worst in history.

So, too, there are distant images of Madeline Albright at that one-time only confrontation with the public where she looked like a deer in the headlights. She never again appeared before a less than friendly media audience. For sheer power, there is the death of 60 Americans in Waco. Kent State is a symbol of evil military power to the Democrats, but two people were killed and none of them were women, children and small babies. All conveniently forgotten by our mega-media as are the images of the Miami raid, complete with black, window-darkened SUV's and men in heavy armor and military weapons, knocking down witnesses, storming a small house to retrieve a small boy and confront him and his uncle in a closet. Erased. Gone. Forgotten. Does not compute in mega-media memory.

Blogs are not diaries. They are the means to inject truth and reality in the public arena. In a world where the publisher of the New York Times carries around a stuffed moose to represent truthtellin, it is necessary that someone do it.

Video clip.