Monday, May 30, 2005

French discontent

Renaud Fessaguet, writing in this Guardian savages the French way of life, from the political elite ("aging, arrogant and cynical") and French leaders who don't speak English ( "an ignorance which makes them unable to understand the buzz of the global world, forcing them to depend on secondhand information.") to French unions ( "stubborn"). Having said all that, he was, if you can believe it, for the EU constitution that would have effectively codified French input and influence in the European Union, inflicting the French mediocrity and political duplicity on the European Continent. He can be forgiven. He is a journalist and producer so intellectual integrity isn't a requirement of his profession. Nevertheless, he speaks volumes about the discontent in France.

He could well have been speaking of our own elites.
The dictatorship of diplomas, the system which demands a formal qualification for any job, which ignores raw talent, however extraordinary it might be, has produced a terrible paradox, empowering mediocrity and irresponsibility, a whole mentality overshadowing the schools, judiciary, media and, ultimately, our national life.
That's one article Jim Romensko won't be linking to.

Sunday, May 29, 2005

The joys of multiculturalism

We think of Amsterdam as that free-wheeling European city that is soft on drugs, filled with gays, open prostitution, soft-drug cafes, and multicultural benevolence. The picture is surely a gay travel brochure. The reality is somewhat different. Compare this (New York Times-owned) International Herald-Tribune travelogue with a few facts.
Amsterdam, a thriving port of 750,000 people, has always had a cultural and racial mix, but never at today's ratio: Almost half its residents are of non-Western descent, a majority of them Muslims.
Much of that is the emigration of a white middle class. Some 32% in one poll wanted to leave. It get's worse:
According to NIDI, more than 112,000 people left the Netherlands last year, compared with 90,000 who entered the country, prompting the research bureau to start studying emigration in January.
It's worrisome even to other countries.

It's a re-enactment of the profound pessimism found in Eastern Europe under communism. Except the Dutch can vote with their feet and are doing so.
Mark Steyn would be hard to beat as a writer and observer of human life, but Ian Richardson of the Calgary Sun (another Canadian) is just as insightful and his zingers are just as savory. As in this column, "Frivolous Generation joins the dork side."

Click on his name for a list of previous columns.

Saturday, May 28, 2005

Giving up credibility

Great essay by Victor Davis Hanson at the Washington Times. Time for reform by the mainstream media. He is a great thinker. Logical, linear, and imbued with the kind of honesty and integrity that we could only hope for in our MSM. Alas, however, I think he's missing the main reason why the MSM won't reform anytime soon.

In the vacuum following the destruction of the Democrat party in the 1960s, the MSM effectively took over the Democrat party. They are not reporting on politics in this country. They are shaping the debate, complete with witnesses and special interest groups, formed on the spot if need be, to further an agenda. It's EuroSocialism and every effort, every story, every election is aimed at promoting the idea. Huge bureaucracies mishandling billions (with a b) with highly paid politicians overseeing the transformation from a self-reliant society to one to parallel the European Union model where even the voter is considered too uninformed to be allowed an opinion, let alone a vote, on the important issues of the day. This is the Age of Elitism. From the universities, unreformed since the 1960s by collusion with the media and their ideological allies, to the nightly news, the agenda is remarkably consistent. A single message. It's not utopia. It's media meglomania. Big Brother born worldwide, pushing the envelope to demonstrate their superiority, the fact that they can do it.

It has come as something of a shock to them that this hegemony is now being challenged. But the fact is that reform is no where on the horizon. They can't. They are what they are: Big Brother wannabes who would be thrilled if half the population of the planet would just disappear and let them get on with their schemes and plans and their puppets like Kofi Annan and their morally bankrupt institutions like the Universities and the U.N. and the NGOs who clutter disasters like vultures, lured by the ripe scent of money and thrill of unaccountability. All under the unwatchful and not too benevolent eyes of the MSM.

No amount of self-congratulations, no endless awards, no feelings of victimhood can change the fact that the MSM is caught. They can either give up credibility or give up politics. Getting them out of politics isn't going to happen anytime soon. Like the old Soviet Union, they are not budging until they have destroyed every last hope of redeeming the enterprise. Never let it be said that they failed. It is the industry that lost; not them.

Least e-mailed story at New York Times, I bet

Tennesee State senator John Ford resigned after being arrested in an FBI sting against corruption. It's not the first brush with controversy in his 30-year career. "During his tenure in the state Senate, John Ford has lost paternity lawsuits, given a political job to a girlfriend, used campaign money[$15,000] for his daughter's wedding and been successfully sued for sexual harassment. " Beyond that is his involvement in the TennCare and the Senate Ethics Committee investigations. The man was virtually swimming in dirty money.

Then there's the two households. One with his pregant-by-him ex-wife and their three children and the other with his girlfriend and their two children, a third child with another woman. In 1996 he lost a sexual harassment case, the court ruled he was the father of her young daughter. In 1997 he pulled a shotgun on utility workers who had parked near his driveway. In 2001, his wife was charged with ramming her car into his girlfriend's residence.

There is, apparently, no end to the hypocrisy. Ford sponsored a law to give noncustodial parents relief from child support in his exact circumstances.

There's more here including a not-to-be-missed video. And that's just the beginning of corruption in Tennessee. And another reason not to vote Democrat. Oh, you didn't know he was Democrat? Maybe because the Washington Post story of his resignation failed to mention it at all, except for a side picture. The New York Times story of his resignation forgot it too. And never once mentioned his D designation here either, although they did for other suspects and noted "The indictments were a blow to Democrats in Memphis,.."
Don't you wish that American media was obliged by libel laws to issue such retractions and apologies?

EU Non

As the International Herald-Tribune worries about the death of the Socialist party in France (Non!!), we now know who opposes the EU constitution in France.
Opinion polls show that advocates and opponents of the constitution are neatly split along socioeconomic lines, with those in less well-off circumstances planning to vote against it.
Typical of the Left. The low-incomers are useful as long as they don't think too much on their own. Parapharasing Chirac: "You missed your chance to shut up."

Asia Times cites similar disaffection even while blaming Chirac.
The crucial mistake of the elites who devised European construction and integration was to largely isolate the political process from European citizens. This has led to a widespread popular perception that all that is left is the social Darwinism of the free market. The split between the ruling class and the masses couldn't be deeper. When Chirac said that by voting "non" France would be the "black sheep" of Europe, the masses enthusiastically agreed.
Of course, those pesky masses are ill-informed. The EU is the embodiment of the French ideal.
France gave the world the first - and most radical - democratic revolution in Europe; the Paris Commune; a compelling denunciation of anti-semitism (the Dreyfus case); the mother of all strikes (May 1968); and the foremost blueprint for enlightened secularism. Now it may be giving a democratic lesson on how to achieve the true European dream.
As the Paris Commune was a prelude, if not an example for, communism, you would think that anyone in this day and age would hardly invoke the image to bolster an argument for a democratic lesson. The masses, apparently, are useful only when they are manipulated.

Sexualizing children part 330876

In Denmark a female teacher illustrated a sex education class with a 5-10 minute episode from a pornographic film and handed out pictures from a porno magazine to her eighth-grade students. When parents complained, the school got tough.
The school's principal immediately reprimanded the teacher for showing the material - not for its explicit content, but because it could be considered a breach of copy rights. The teacher was subsequently removed from sexual education.
Parents feel the teacher should be fired, but that's probably taking morality too far. Doncha think?

God bless. God keep. Come home soon.

There are some stories that make you pause and reflect on the sacrifices men make in every generation.

On Memorial Day, God bless our troops. Keep them safe every day and return them to the happy arms of their families. We love you. Each and every one.

Friday, May 27, 2005

Slimeballs in New York

The International Herald-Tribune editorializes on the EU vote, starting out by blaming Chirac for the looked-for defeat of the EU Constitutional vote in the France. It's all his fault. Not, of course, the fault of the Constitution, itself "a worthy draft" by a "so diverse a group." In the end, however, the New York Times-owned IHT focusses on their real issue.
Certainly, the ordinary citizens of Europe should be given more say in the way they are governed. They can be forgiven for viewing the constitution, and treaties like it, as something cooked up between the bureaucrats in Brussels and European political leaders, who seem to consider the actual voters an annoying appendage that should be content with approving their work after it's done but not consulted in the actual decision-making.

But this is the constitution that is on the table, and as the time to vote approaches, we urge the French and the Dutch to take a moment to strip away all the local issues with which the EU constitution has been festooned, and to ponder whether a better EU is in their interest or not. We think it clearly is.
In other words, the voter is pretty much an annoying appendage but they ought to vote for it anyway because, well, the New York Times likes it.

The New York Times liked the Soviet Union in the midst of the Stalin purges and mass murders (merely breaking a few eggs), and they loved that old "Romantic Revolutionary" (and terrorist) Yasir Arafat, and they have a wonderful fondness for Fidel Castro, too, even while he still continues to jail dissidents for disagreeing with him.

Well, at least the New York Times is consistent.

BBC bias

Typical dishonesty of the BBC. The headline: US blocks extradition of 'bomber' The story: The U.S. refuses to extradite a Cuban-born terror suspect to Venezuela over a 1976 airline bombing. The facts: He was already acquitted twice in Venezuelan courts. That's TWICE, mind you.

How many times can you be tried for a crime? Depends. If you're a communist or a socialist, the trial itself is a showcase of righteousness. It is the spectacle of indignation that feeds anti-American sentiment. So, the answer is you can be tried dozens of times until the Left gets the results they want. And it really helps The Cause if you are a former CIA employee.

It also helps when friendly fellow travelers like the BBC manage to avoid the facts in almost every story about the suspect. (See his profile to the right of the article.) When you are a shill for the Left, though, you can't be too conversant with truth.

The Christians are coming!!!

Canadians might not mind corruption and envelopes of cash passed over a table, and they take pride in their belief in multiculturalism and the "Can't we all get along?" pacifism and reliance on the corrupt U.N., but now they've got new and - shudder- worse worries!
At least three riding associations in Nova Scotia, four in British Columbia, and one in suburban Toronto have nominated candidates with ties to groups like Focus on the Family, a Christian organization that opposes same-sex marriage.
As some 50% of polled Canadians are also against same-sex marriage, I guess the point is that they should not act on their beliefs and enter the political fray. Only diehard socialists like the Globe and Mail would disenfranchise so many voters, following, of course, the European Union contempt for voters.

A must read

If you only read one article today, this article on Amnesty International is a must.

Humor from the humorless BBC

There's a new campaign in Britain by doctors to eliminate, gasp, sharp, pointy knives in the kitchen to curb crime.
The researchers said there was no reason for long pointed knives to be publicly available at all.

They consulted 10 top chefs from around the UK, and found such knives have little practical value in the kitchen.

None of the chefs felt such knives were essential, since the point of a short blade was just as useful when a sharp end was needed.
I guess the story missed the annual April 1st edition. It's never too late for a good April Fool's joke. Oh, wait, the BBC, is an April Fool's joke.

Thursday, May 26, 2005

The stench in Canada has reached New York

The fable of morally superior Canada is punctured by Clifford Krauss in the New York Times at their International Herald-Tribune site.

The Toronto-Sun journo Thane Burnett was offended. And whiney. And not particularly clever but he defended his nation.

Monday, May 23, 2005

Media Bias- dutch style

I wondered if the media would remark about those 13 diplomats, observers, and journalists who were detained and deported by Cuba before a meeting of dissidents. Radio Netherlands not only failed to notice the explusions, it was full of praise for Fidel Castro, insisting that tolerating the meeting will "help improve the Cuban president's image with the European Union" that will be reconsidering the re-imposition of sanctions next month.

The EU Constitution campaign

It will be interesting to see how the Dutch vote on June 1st for the EU constitution after the Dutch government has invested a record EUR 3.5 million to the 'Yes" campaign in defiance of their own laws. By law, the government is limited to spending EUR 1 million and there is a requirement that half should be spent equally on both sides of an issue.

Sunday, May 22, 2005

I believe it

From Belmont Club this [bolding mine] great essay on the media and the Left.
The High Hand
Glenn Reynolds notes that the New York Times coverage of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan may not really be about prisoner abuse or even Afghanistan, but about maintaining the prestige of Newsweek. He calls it 'circling the wagons', the idea being to teach press critics an object lesson in how expensive it is to humiliate the mass media by catching them at sloppy reporting by flooding the zone with stories similar to the one which was discredited . That may or may not be the case, but it is nearly undeniable that the effect of the media's coverage of American misdeeds has been to make the slightest infraction against enemy combatants ruinously expensive."

And from the incomparably brilliant Mark Steyn:
In a way, both the U.S. media and those wacky rioters in the Afghan-Pakistani hinterlands are very similar, two highly parochial and monumentally self-absorbed tribes living in isolation from the rest of the world and prone to fanatical irrational indestructible beliefs -- not least the notion that you can flush a 950-page book down one of Al Gore's eco-crazed federally mandated low-flush toilets, a claim no editorial bigfoot thought to test for himself in Newsweek's executive washroom.

Watching the media circling the wagons around the beleaguered Isikoff this week, Martin Peretz of the New Republic described them as ''a profession that is complacent, self-righteous, and hopelessly in love with itself.'' The media are the message: But, hey, enough about the war, let's talk about me...

This disaster took a combination of factors. We can't do much about Muslim fanatics; we probably can't do much about our self-worshipping vanity media whose reflexive counter-tribalism has robbed it of all sense of perspective or proportion.
"Self-workshing vanity media" is a great description of the media that flaunts awards they give themselves as if they were deserved. They talk about Pulitzer prize winning as if that, and and a $5 bill could get you frappachino at Starbucks. It's long past the time that such awards meant anything to anyone except the self-obsessed media, probably because such "honors" as the Peabody award given this month to Dan Rather after he was forced to resign because of his perfidity and 60 Minutes Wednesday was cancelled because of lousy ratings. A honor for a loser. But, then a lot of these media self-awards have come down to that. Pep talks for the troops.

Saturday, May 21, 2005

This Toronto Star editorial is unintentially amusing as they castigate the Tories for forcing the Liberals to be so, ah, seedy.
The time has come to cool the fury in Parliament, to ease the pressure on Martin to resort to seedy vote buying, and to let him deliver on his many promises, including ethical promises. Martin has vowed, for example, to bring in tough, transparent rules for advertising contracts. While important steps have been taken, Gomery suggested this week more must be done. Martin should follow up.
They, of course, suggest that Harper accept a truce. In other words, quit already before you actually wake up Canadians not only to the corruption of the ruling Liberal party but the vacuousness of the Canadian media.

Cuban totalitarianism

Cuba took the Czech Foreign Minister from his hotel and marched him to an airplane and deported him and a German member of parliament for wanting to visit Cuban dissidents. The Czech Foreign Minister said the incident was "proof that there is a totalitarian regime in Cuba." Reuters reports that a handful of American and European diplomats attended a meeting with the dissidents but observers, including a reporter for an Italian newspaper, three Polish journalists, two former Spanish senators and a Spanish legislator were detained and "ejected" from Cuba. AFP reports that in addition to the 13 deportations, four Poles are believed to be in police custody. A google for New York Times and cuba and deport yielded no results. What a surprise.

Would you like to bet that no journalist organization will protest the action?

Keeping the riffraff out

The U.S. has refused a visa for Sinn Fein's Rita O'Hare. Sinn Fein is the political arm of the terrorist IRA. Described as a "lobbyist" for Sinn Fein and "Seinn Fein's representative to Washington," because of her past association with the IRA and having skipped bail she has to apply for a waiver for each visit to the US. The waiver has to include "a full itinerary, with details of all the places to be visited.Mr McGuinness said the reason for the denial of entry had been reportedly due to Ms O`Hare deviating from her agreed itinerary on a recent visit to the US."

Whose constitution is it, anyway? Just asking.

Doesn't this tell you a lot about the European socialist EU? They are worried about people actually voting on the EU constitution. Ja or Non to the EU constitution?
And despite having the backing of all the major political parties there is a growing danger that the constitution will be rejected when people let their voices be heard in the first-ever national referendum here on 1 June.
[bolding mine] Those damn people are so unreliable.
Fears are being raised that people will use the opportunity of the referendum to register their unease on unrelated issues such as the introduction of the euro - widely seen as having led to higher prices - the accession of Turkey to the EU and disquiet with the current government.
You dare to criticize us, you peasants!!! Or as one "No" voter explained, "The feeling of the people is that we want to say no to what exists to prove that we exist."

Friday, May 20, 2005

We've said this repeatedly. Ken Reich is a 39-year Los Angeles Times reporter who thinks John Carroll Should Be Held Responsible For Not Calling Terrorists Terrorists In The L.A. Times.
When Islamic fundamentalists launch attacks against tourists in Cairo, as happened twice yesterday, April 30, they are terrorists, not 'militants' as the Los Angeles Times called them this morning.

It is the editor of the Times, John Carroll, who is responsible for continuing this loathsome policy of refusing to name these enemies of the civilized world for what they are.
Yes, but if they actually called terrorists what they were, they couldn't empathize with enemies of the U.S. And their sympathies are clearly with the terrorists. (virtually the whole month articles.)

Nuclear? No, Restoration

Charles Krauthammer on the constitutional option.
Four years ago this week, President Bush nominated Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen to the federal bench. Four years later, she and six other appeals court nominees remain unconfirmed and unvoted upon because of Democratic filibusters.

This technique is defended by Democrats as traditional and rooted in history. What a fraud.
Why?
There has certainly never been a successful filibuster in the case of a judicial nominee who clearly had the approval of a majority of the Senate. And there has surely never been a campaign like the one undertaken by the Democrats since 2001 to systematically deny judicial appointment by means of the filibuster.

Two hundred years of tradition has been radically and unilaterally changed by the minority. Why? The reason is obvious. Democrats have not had a very good run recently in the popularly elected branches. Since choosing the wrong side of the culture wars of the 1960s, they have won only three of the past 10 presidential elections. A decade ago they lost control of the House for the first time in 40 years, and now have lost all the elected branches. They are in a panic that they will lose their one remaining ability to legislate -- through the courts.
And,
Democrats are calling Frist's maneuver an assault on the very essence of the Senate, a body distinguished by its insistence on tradition, custom and unwritten rules.

This claim is a comical inversion of the facts. One of the great traditions, customs and unwritten rules of the Senate is that you do not filibuster judicial nominees. You certainly do not filibuster judicial nominees who would otherwise win an up-or-down vote. And you surely do not filibuster judicial nominees in a systematic campaign to deny a president and a majority of the Senate their choice of judges. That is historically unprecedented.

The Democrats have unilaterally shattered one of the longest-running traditions in parliamentary history worldwide. They are not to be rewarded with a deal. They must either stop or be stopped by a simple change of Senate procedure that would do nothing more than take a 200-year-old unwritten rule and make it written.

What the Democrats have done is radical. What Frist is proposing is a restoration.
Yes.

Don't call it journalism

A great read from Jim Geraghty at National Review.Don't Call it Journalism:
Those of us who don't espouse the mainstream media conventional wisdom have a responsibility to set a better standard. Let them sink into their echo chamber, and write for the audience that prefers to believe the disproven lie to the uncomfortable truth. This would be the same readership that audaciously calls itself the -- reality-based communit -- and dismisses those who disagree as the easily-fooled rubes of -- Jesusland -- , then applauds the line, - only a Sith deals in absolutes.

We're writing for the audience that actually wants to know what's going on, that doesn't always assume that Pentagon officials are lying, that has a healthy skepticism of the word of a captured al-Qaeda terrorist, and that gives our guys in uniform the benefit of the doubt. (They've earned it.) When some of our guys foul up big-time, like Abu Ghraib, we want to know. But we don't want the gruesome abuse photos hyped into endlessly displayed news porn. We know it;s a horrible sight, but it's not quite as horrible as what we saw on an autumn Tuesday morning a few years ago.
and,
The Isikoff story – and the inevitable coming deluge of in-depth investigative journalism of additional tales of abuse from those utterly trustworthy al-Qaeda prisoners – are a return to the “good old days” of last spring. When Teddy Kennedy could compare the U.S. military’s handling of prisoners to Saddam’s torture chambers with a gleeful, hearty grin. When our guys on the front lines could be portrayed as sadistic, black-hearted villains. When the face of our guys wasn’t the stoic loyalty of a Pat Tillman, the pride and dedication of a Jeffrey Adams, or any other one of our heroes but the nauseating sneer of Lynndie England.

Boy, did those days feel good to the media.

Call that whatever you like. But don’t call it journalism.
Exactly.

Thursday, May 19, 2005

Despicable

From the Houston Chronicle this unbelievable story
District Attorney Ronnie Earle, who denies partisan motives for his investigation of a political group founded by Republican leader Tom DeLay, was the featured speaker last week at a Democratic fund-raiser where he spoke directly about the congressman.
Ronnie Earlie is an elected Democrat, but his judgement is really questionable. He helped generate $102,000 for a new PAC dedicated to taking control of the Texas state Legislature. Earle was a co-founder of the PAC along with Dallas lawyer Ed Ishmael, "a leader in the Howard Dean presidential campaign." Earle's remarks were equally inappropriate. "Earle likened DeLay to a bully and spoke about political corruption and the investigation involving DeLay, the House majority leader from Sugar Land, according to a transcript supplied by Earle."

Liberalism is so Third World

David Warren on the ditzy Belinda Stronach's desertion to the Liberals. He nails the problem.
In several Third World countries, efforts to democratize have been impeded by the easy corruption with which an unscrupulous party may buy off unscrupulous individuals across the chamber. This renders elections meaningless.
Indeed. The name Jim Jeffords comes to mind in American politics.

The thuggery revealed daily at the Gomery commission in Canada is echoed in the hoodlum politics of the Martin government, proving that Liberal corruption wasn't a Jean Chretien aberration. Colby Cash on the implications:
There can be no doubt about it now. If the Liberals win Thursday's confidence vote by virtue of Stronach's presence on the government benches, we will continue to have a government openly acknowledged to be illegal by most if not all of the major constitutional authorities in the country.
There is something familiar about the political chicanery of the Martin government and the Democrats fighting to deny votes on president Bush's judicial nominees. Listening to Chuck Schumer refer to the "Founding Fathers" and blatantly distorting the unheard-of filibuster in the confirmation process as a constitutional balance and check reminds you of how goonish the Left can be when they are challenged. In an editorial on April 11th, Paul Kujawsky a member of the California Democratic Party executive board, expressed the wish that the filibuster be eliminated.
By requiring a supermajority of 60 senators to cut off debate, the filibuster is anti-majoritarian and thus, by definition, undemocratic. The U.S. Constitution requires supermajorities in certain circumstances - for example, it takes a two-thirds Senate vote to ratify a treaty. But constitutionally, supermajorities have nothing to do with debating judicial nominations.
He advocates change in the Senate rules. "So kill it now. Full debate is essential. Unlimited debate is impractical. Endless debate wielded as a weapon is unjustifiable."

The genuine Left, however, is a minority even within the Democrat party so that they must resort to chicanery and villainous behavior to have their views prevail. The sad thing is that the Democrat party truly is becoming "a national party no more" , driven as it is by the Leftists in the media upholding those cringingly awful Leftists like Chuck Schumer and Barbara Boxer who will not be happy until the Democrat party ends up with a 22% of the vote of the electorate as the Liberal Democrats in England do. Martin is working on the same permanent minority status in Canada.

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Cal Thomas, Bob Beckel Bring 'Common Ground' to 'USA Today'

According to Editor & Publisher, USA Today is launching a new feature called "Common Ground" with Bob Beckel and Cal Thomas. What's interesting about the news item was the reference to Bob Beckel as "Liberal Democrat strategist." And E & P notes these additional qualifications:
Beckel -- who could not be reached for comment today -- is a former TMS columnist. He was also deputy assistant secretary of state in the Carter administration, and he helped manage Walter Mondale's 1984 presidential campaign.
All of which is important only if you remember that Bob Beckel guest hosted Larry King's show for years and that CNN did not tell viewers that he was he was a Democrat operative who came from a family of Democrat activists.

From his own site:
After a political baptism as a college student in Robert Kennedy’s 1968 campaign, a tour of duty in the Peace Corps and a successful stint heading up his own consulting firm, Bob joined the government in 1977. As the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Carter Administration, he steered the controversial Panama Canal Treaties through Congress. He moved to the White House to head the Administration’s effort to press Congress into passing the Mid East and SALT II Treaties.
Deploring "character assassination" in an interview with Buzzflash, Beckel applauds Buzzflash. "I see places like yours that are willing to take these a**holes on and write stories and do editorials about them that none of the mainstream press will do." He deplores character assassination but "I’ve got a guy working right now, a retired lawyer, who is going to track down where George Bush was during those months he said he was with the Air Force Reserves. This is all being done by contributions, and a chunk of that out of my own pocket." And then there is Tom DeLay. "We’re going after DeLay. We have people looking into his various money organizations. DeLay is about as forgiving as a cornered rattlesnake, and this boy needs to be cut down to size."

Beckel is also remembered for trying to persuade members of the electoral college to vote for Democrats, an action that cause two top staffers at the firm quit in protest and a good deal of embarassment for the Democrat party. Even the criminal extortion that Beckel refers to on his website is a less than honest depiction of the case, focusing as it did on how the Right used it to assault his character. Hard to do so when he was being extorted by a prostitute.
Our recollection was that Beckel was exposed in the liberal media for hiring a prostitute and then getting blackmailed to keep it quiet. The journal Campaigns & Elections described the incident this way: "Bob Beckel, manager of Walter Mondale's…1984 landslide presidential campaign loss, resigned from his consulting job…in the wake of a scandal involving a prostitute who allegedly tried to extort $50,000 from him. Beckel told Maryland's Montgomery County Police Department he had paid the Fairfax County, Virginia, woman $1,900 for sexual liaisons at his Maryland home in late June, and that days later he found a note on his car and a message on his answering machine demanding money and threatening to release evidence of the woman's visits to his family and the media…Three people from Alexandria, Fairfax County, and Washington, D.C. were arrested and charged with extortion and conspiracy to commit extortion."
The Smoking Gun has photographs and the salacious details. None of which is mentioned by USA Today or Editor & Publisher.

Nor do they link to any writing by Beckel. Like this particularly vicious article. But then Beckel specializes in advising "corporations, trade associations, and labor unions on communication strategy, consensus building, and public policy." With only a BA degree, he "served as an adjunct professor, teaching presidential politics at Georgetown University and the University of Maryland's graduate school of public affairs."

You can bet USA Today isn't going to tell you about Bob Bechel's sordid past or dispicable politics.

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

NEWSWEEK: PROTECTING KERRY, BUT NOT THE TROOPS

The exquisite sensitivity of Newsweek. From a reader at Michelle Malkin.

Hear no evil, speak no evil

Speaking of disconnect. The Globe and Mail are doing their part for Paul Martin. Conservative ads are panned as "attack ads" that are characterized as a "new round of Liberal-bashing." Deplorably, in the eyes of the leftwing Globe, the Conservatives are focusing on an election that paints the Liberals as "mired in corruption." What part of that isn't true?

When David Frum wrote "Now we are learning that the Liberal Party in Quebec was effectively run by organized crime bosses - and that when one Liberal leader objected, he was threatened with death." he wasn't kidding. After having covered the Gomery inquiry for months and following Chretien's jail-deserving performance in office, no one is in a better position to know how mired the Liberals are in corruption than the Globe and Mail. It's a remarkable performance of 'hear no evil, see no evil..." when it comes to the leftwing and wholly corrupt Liberals. A real Pravda performance.

The response of Martin to the ads? In a Bill Clinton chutzpah moment, he called for civility in Parliament.

Alternate Reality

The headline alone is Twilight Zone stuff: Rather accepts media award with nod to allies as Dan Rather accepted "broadcast journalism's most prestigious honor" for reporting the Abu Ghraib prison. The allies? The disgraced and fired Mary Mapes and Betsy West. Both lost their jobs for the discredited Air National Guard story based on transparently phoney memos that wouldn't convince a high school dropout. It was a case of untrue, but accurate. The award was undeserved but applauded by an out of touch media.

This line, however, was classic Rather.
Rather received extended applause after telling the crowd, 'Never give up, never back up, never give in while pursuing the dream of integrity filled journalism that matters.' "
Having Dan Rather talk about integrity is like asking Bill Clinton discuss fidelity in marriage. But the real laugh is that the "prestigious honor" - the Peabody- was also given to Jon Stewart of Comedy Central.

Talk about a disconnect from reality.

Monday, May 16, 2005

Media devisiveness

From the San Francisco Chronicle's Washington Bureau Chief, this damning indictment of the media.
Journalists thrive on conflict. The old journalism maxim that "man bites dog'' is a better story than "dog bites man'' overlooks an even more fundamental tenet of the craft: "Man pets dog'' is not a story at all.
Quoting Tom Rosentiel:
"What is lost here are the nuances,'' said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a nonpartisan group that studies media practices.

"There is genuine conflict here,'' Rosenstiel said. At the same time, "it's not unusual to see absurd overreaching -- in a desperate, craven attempt to keep the audience watching. Words like 'startling' and 'bone tingling,' or 'knock your socks off' have the effect of making TV news kind of numbing. It's the medium that's always crying wolf.''

Rather than a genuine mea culpa this is more of an excuse for flagrant media partisanship.

New York Slimes

As promised, reacting aggressively to criticism, the New York Times will charge for online Op-Ed, other content as of September.

Friday, May 13, 2005

Haiti to the north

David Frum neatly sums up Haiti to the North Canadian politics. Here

Not even Clinton was this crass

While in Sri Lanka on a Pity Tour, Paul Martin posed with:

A) Grieving relatives
B) Relief workers
C) Sri Lankan politicians
D) Zenon bottled water

If you guessed (D) you were right. But, then you probably knew that Zenon Environmental Group is one of those Maurice Strong companies and Canadian PM is one of the Maurice Strong politicians. Download the video. It's hilarious.

Wednesday, May 11, 2005

Newspaper circulation decline

Two things strike me about the recent newspaper circulation figures as pointed out by a 72-page Prudential Equity Group report. From a Dow Jones story.
Prudential also found the circulation figures for copies that aren't paid for by readers, such as newspapers distributed to hotel guests, jumped 34% for the audit period through Sept. 30, compared with the same period in 2003.
And this:
Longer term, Prudential expects a bigger shift by publishers away from circulation as a significant revenue stream. For the nine publishing companies that break out circulation revenue, circulation accounts for less than 19% of total revenue.
Think about that for a moment. It explains a lot about newspaper indifference to their declining readership as they pursue their political agenda. The model that most closely resembles the newspaper industry is the television industry where lack of viewers doesn't bother them in the least. Their revenue stream is advertising. Why advertisers continue to pay exhorbitant rates for fewer and fewer viewers or readers isn't hard to understand. There is no where else for them to go.

The report also noted the peculiar performance at the Los Angeles Times. [bolding mine]
In the below-average category, the L.A. Times experienced an overall circulation decline of 5.6%. Full-paid home delivery was down 10.8%, much worse than the 2.4% national average, the report said. Home-delivered copies through third party sales decreased "significantly," said the report.

The report noted a curious trend at the Times regarding other-paid circulation, calling the fluctuations and changes "peculiar." As one category drops another gains, with the rough total remaining constant. "A 158% increase in discounted copies also signals to us more trouble with circulation and selling at the cover price," the report said.
For those of us who know the Los Angeles Times, none of this is a surprise.

Thursday, May 05, 2005

Hearings are better than sex

The Gomery hearings in Canada are taking a toll.
Torstar Corporation, publisher of The Toronto Star, reported Wednesday an 8% decrease in profit during the first quarter, principally because of weakness in retail advertising and a decline in sales of its line of Harlequin romance novels.
Reality is stranger than fiction.

Another day, another reporter, ah, resigns

Another USA TODAY reporter resigns when caught in plagarism.

His Newseum profile. He still shows up on the USA Today K-12 Education Online page where he is asked,
Q: What do you think are the most important skills to have to be a good reporter?

A: Patience, empathy, intelligence, cheerfulness, modesty, street smarts, determination, courage and endurance, to name a few.
You would think truthfulnes would be in there somewhere. Maybe that's why USA Today liked him. It couldn't be because he was such a favorite of reporters and a frequent NBC, CNBC, and CNN guest and was a rabidly anti-Bush, anti-military, anti-war, anti-Pentagon punk.

Bye Granny

When health care is rationed. Bye, bye, granny. Which might be explained by this.
Increasingly, don't you read stories like this? Headline: Canadian held in Syria without consular access

His name? Maher Ahmed Zeidan. He's, uh, a typical Canadian with, ah, dual citizenship.

Or maybe not . Liberal MP Dan McTeague, Parliamentary Secretary for Canadians Abroad: "We are simply going on an assumption presented to us by a human rights organization that a Canadian has been detained. It is clear that Canadians with dual citizenship must understand that, when in Syria, their Canadian citizenship is not recognized."

Who knew, indeed?

If you need a laugh for the day, there is this survey by two Lousiana State University professors, both former reporters, who find, shazaam!!!!
According to the professors, journalists are significantly more ethical than the average adult and eclipsed only by seminarians, doctors, and medical students.
The ethical questions in the study? Renita Coleman in an interview on NPR explains.
There's six ethical situations that people are asked to solve, everything from should a man steal a drug for his wife, who will die without it, and the pharmacist, coldhearted as he is, won't give it to him, to you've been living next door to a model citizen for ten years, and then you find out that he's an escaped prisoner - should you turn him in? There's six of those. They're true dilemmas in the sense that there's no one right answer.
It's called situational ethics, lady, but, it has it's purpose that rapidly becomes clear.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: You didn't break this down according to religion?

RENITA COLEMAN: Religion correlates with high ethical reasoning, up to a point, and then, as people begin to be more religious, their ethical reasoning gets lower, so it's a curvilinear relationship. So, one of the findings is that relying too much on religious doctrine and rules can actually inhibit good quality ethical reasoning sometimes.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: That's fascinating.

RENITA COLEMAN: Yeah. And we're not the only ones who found that. There's been many studies that have been done that have come to the same conclusion.
I'll bet. Two former reporters validating their former professions interviewed by committed Leftists at NPR.

Complete study here. Pity they didn't list the questions. But page 9 shows the adults in general score was 40.00. The "significantly more ethical" journos? 48.68. That's some moral superiority even when two former journos wanna give em more credit and Editor & Publisher wants to rally the troops and the study is weighted so that the more education, the more 'ethical' they are. The only pit in the cherry for Coleman's logic is how Seminarians scored.

You knew something touted on NPR and in Editor & Publisher had to be complete crap.

Bad news even worse

Merrill Lynch analyst Lauren Rich Fine looked at the circulation decline at newspapers in the March 2005 ABC figures. Low and behold, she found that paid circulation (those who paid 50% or more for the paper -- real subscribers, if you will) declined even more than newspapers wanted you to know.

What this means is that the deeply discounted 25%-50%-paid category that 'soared 40.9%' are the 1-cent to 10-cent-a-copy type given away to hotels, schools, provided to advertisers for handouts to their target audience, etc. In other words, newspapers, to counter loss of subscribers, are giving away even more newspapers (up 40.9%) than before in an effort to hide their loss of readers. Advertisers are aware of this, Merrill Lynch can analyze it in minutes after the figures were released, newspapers know the facts. They just don't want their readers to be aware of their declining subscribership (and influence.) [Bolding and color mine.]


"Merrill Lynch has compiled a chart breaking out the 50%-or-greater circulation numbers for the latest Fas-Fax period, ending March 30, listing how much those numbers have grown or slipped in the past year. In nearly every case, the declines there exceed the newspapers' overall numbers, showing that the 'quality' category is still in retreat. In the sample of about 20 papers, the overall daily circulation sank only 2.4% but the 50%-or-greater category plunged 5.2%. Those losses were reduced because the 25%-to-50%-paid category soared 40.9% and other-paid grew 4.5%.

Here are the papers profiled by Merrill Lynch, followed by, first, the percentage gain or loss in over-50% daily circ and then the overall percentage for that paper in this period.


The Sacramento Bee +0.8 (+0.5)
Minneapolis Star Tribune -0.4 ( +0.3)
North County Times (Calif.) -0.4 ( -1.9)
St. Louis Post-Dispatch -0.8 (+1.2)
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel -1.4 (-0.8)
The Boston Globe -2.1 (-3.9)
The New York Times -2.2 (+0.2)
Wisconsin State Journal -2.3 (-1.6)
The Washington Post -3.8 (-2.7)
The Philadelphia Inquirer -3.9 (-3.0)
The Miami Herald -4.7 (-3.8)
Detroit Free Press -6.1 (-2.3)
Chicago Tribune -7.5 (-6.5)
Rocky Mountain News (Denver) -9.4 (-6.5)
USA Today -9.8 (+0.3)
The Wall Street Journal -9.9 ( -1.5)
Los Angeles Times -12.9 (-7.7)
New Haven (Conn.) Register -20.9 (-1.8)
In other words, the greater the difference between the first (percentage of gain or loss) and the overall percentage is the amount that newspaper is hedging with 'other paid' and deeply discounted giveaway papers.

The Wall Street Journal, unique among the papers analyzed, has a significant online subscriber base they are required to count as 'other paid and discounted subscriptions' even though the online is somewhat more abbreviated and the online subscription rate is as much as dead tree subscription rates at other papers.

Notice USA Today, though, and the New York Times, both touted in earlier stories as having bucked the trend with new subscribers. The Los Angeles Times is bleeding readers. What a surprise. /sarcasm off

Stockholders, however, may be getting wise to the scams. Wall Street certainly is. Besides the Merrill Lynch analysis, a Prudential Equity Group review of the figures shows the huge increase in 'other paid' circulation.
INCREASES
The Star-Ledger (Newark, N.J.) 83.7%
New York Post 60.4%
Charlotte Observer 40.4%
The San Diego Union-Tribune 33.3%
The Tennessean 32.3%
The News & Observer (Raleigh, N.C.) 31.3%
Fort Worth Star-Telegram 26.7%
The Wall Street Journal 25.7%
The Tampa Tribune 24.8%
Kansas City Star 23.5%
Denver Post 23.5%
Riverside Press-Enterprise 23.3%
The New York Daily News 21.3%
The New York Times 20.2%
The Seattle Times 20.1%

DECREASES
The Philadephia Daily News -50.3
The Arizona Republic -50.0
The Baltimore Sun -49.8
The Orlando Sentinel -46.2
The Philadelphia Inqurier -23.2%
The Rocky Mountain News (Denver) -19.7
Des Moines Register -13.6%
Asbury Park Press -9.8%
Atlanta Journal-Constitution -9.7
Definition of 'other paid' from ABC.

Tuesday, May 03, 2005

Winner: Unintentionally Telling Category

Mike Thomas from the Orlando Sentinel: "We like to think good journalism sells. But the Los Angeles Times has won 13 Pulitzer Prizes in the past five years, the best stretch in the newspaper's history. This year, daily circulation is down by about 5 percent."

Actually, Mike, the Los Angeles Times circ is down 6.5% weekdays and 7.9% on Sundays. So much for accuracy in media. (In fairness, Mike might not be stupid or a liar and actually inserted the actual circulation decline figures in his article, but an eager editor thought it just looked too bad for the newspaper industry image. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.) But as for good journalism, who says Pulitzer Prizes mean the articles were good journalism, good writing, or even truthful? They are the awards the media bestows on themselves. Obviously those people who dropped the Los Angeles Times didn't think they were deserved. They voted with their cancellations.

Newspaper circulation game

Bless Merrill Lynch and Prudential for a touch of reality in their assessment of the newspaper circulation decline figures. From Editor & Publisher:
Merrill also noted, however, that while overall industry declines were about 2% daily and 3% Sunday, slippage was much worse in so-called "quality" circulation that was 50% or better paid: down 5% daily and 7% on Sunday.
Translation: It is spin to suggest the decline was 2%. It's two-and-a-half times that at 5%. Sunday papers are even worse. Down 7% average. And those are average losses across the board for the industry.

The Disturbing Other Paid Category
Continuing:
Digging into the numbers, specifically in the other paid category. Merrill noted that while many newspaper companies during Q1 earnings calls indicated they are trying to cut back on third party and discount copies, the numbers so far tell a different story: "Our initial analysis of select newspapers shows that in many cases 'other paid' circulation" numbers were "seemingly in direct conflict with some company remarks."

Prudential put a pencil to the matter and found that the top 50 papers continued to rely on discounted copies -- where newspapers sold at 25% to 50% of the cover prices -- finding that this category increased 16.6%. And other paid circulation rose 10% from the March 2004 Fas-Fax.
As noted before, 'other paid circulation' refers to giveaway newspapers to hotels, company employees, and schools, and those papers deeply discounted (25%-50% off the cover price.) Overall, if you don't count the giveaways and advertiser-sponsored giveaways or the trash in the driveway giveaways or the free hotel newspaper or the 10-cent-a copy coffeeshop papers, the decline in circulation overall for the industry was not 2% daily and 3% Sunday, but as Merrill Lynch calculated "a decline of 5% daily and 7% on Sunday." Translation: newspapers that claim they are relying less on deep discounted papers are lying. People in the know, however, know it. Newspapers certainly do.

What does it mean?
How will it affect papers? Advertisers, of course, will pursue advertising rate reductions, those who pay based on circulation figures. Unless, of course, the newspaper is a monopoly market. "But Merrill isn’t quite sure what advertisers will make of the circ drops: “Certain advertisers buy on reach and readership rather than circulation so it is hard to gauge the impact on ad revenues." In other words, where else are they going to go?

Perspective
It's worth remembering that in 1977 the daily circulation of Pravda was 10,000,000 Izvestia reported 8,000,000. (Source: CBS News Almanac 1977, p 767.) Today: 263,650. In 1977, the New York News had 2,790,700 subscribers; New York Times had 1,415,515 in sales. The Los Angeles Times reported 1,227,377 in sales in a market population of 6,926,000, a market shared with the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner sales of (377,067.) (Same source as cited. All figures Audit Bureau of Circulations.) Today's Los Angeles Times? Without any 'other paid' circulation broken out, stands at 907,997.

The Bottom Line
If you were in business to sell newspapers and make a profit, the newspaper model certainly seems unpromising. If, however, you are in the business of power politics, the losses are a small price to pay to pay for an agenda, one increasingly and demonstrably not shared by the American public. And it's getting harder and harder for newspapers to deny it.

Delusions

You wonder if newspapers really believe this stuff or they think readers are so stupid that they will, or if they're just trying to convince themselves.

Unnamed (typical) industry officials blamed the National Do Not Call Registry for part of the decline in circulation. That, and a "shift in strategy among major newspapers away from using short-term promotions to acquire new readers," i.e. that unwanted litter in your driveway you never ordered and the Just-Before-Audit $4.00-For-Six-Months-Subscription promotions.

When was the last time you subscribed to a newspaper when they called you at dinnertime?? Probably never, but when did our media let facts get in the way of their delusions?

Canadian Globe & Mail displays their, ah, priorities. The conservatives are merely being difficult about, of all things, a fourth place scandal (ho hum), teens run amok for no reason they can think of, PETA, breast cancer for, er, humane measure, and an innane poll. Talk about relevance.

Good advice

Rex Murphy is one of those joys in journalism. A man who can think and write. And on the CBC he is a commentator who is the only reason not to sneer at that government-owned agit-prop machine.

His take on the current government crisis is brilliant.:
Ottawa today is all politics and no government, all partisanship and no purpose. The current spectacle is dissolving respect for parliaments and politics and going some way to dissolving respect for the country both are supposed to serve. Democracy is not a series of one-day deals cut for a spike in the polls or an evening newscast. Mr. Martin can short circuit all of this. His government is now nothing more than improvisation and an hourly calculation. He should resign. We should vote, and Gomery must continue.
Read it all. Archives of his CBC pieces can be found here.

Monday, May 02, 2005

BBC and Maurice Strong

Trust the BBC to be careless of facts when it suits them. In their story about Canadian Maurice Strong employing his stepdaughter in his U.N. office in violation of U.N. policies, they understate the size of the Oil-for-food program by about, oh, $64 billion.
There are several inquiries under way into the oil-for-food scandal, under which UN sanctions on Iraq were flouted and millions of dollars apparently diverted.
But this fact is REALLY, REALLY worrisome: "Mr Strong, who was closely involved with the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear programme..." as -- get this -- the Globe and Mail informs us -- "UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's envoy for North Korea."

Los Angeles Times Reports March Circulation

Up front I will admit being partisan. I hate the Los Angeles Times. After two Los Angeles Times-promoted race riots and decades of ignoring corruption in Los Angeles, they have managed to turn that city into a Third World morass, in much the same way as the Washington Post has empowered corruption in Washington, DC and the Chicago Tribune annoints gangsters to government in Chicago. So it is with some joy that I can read that the Los Angeles Times circulation figures are in: a decline of 6.5% on Mon-Saturday and a decline of a whopping 7.9% on Sunday. Compare that to the industry-wide 1.9% decline and you get the size of the disaster for the Tribune, owner of the Chicago Tribune (itself down 6.6%)

(This has got to help though. Steve Wasserman has resigned as editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review that has to be the laughingstock of the industry.)

Things are bad all over and are worse than the industry is admitting today. As the Denver Business Journal notes, the combined average paid circulation still includes copies paid for by advertisers or those distributed free to hotels.
The total average paid circulation includes copies of the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News purchased at a discount or given away free and are listed as "other paid circulation" in the March 2005 report. The number of copies that fall under this category rose to 71,649, up from 48,885 in March 2004 -- an increase of 46.6 percent. [ Bolding mine ]

The March 2005 report from the Audit Bureau does not itemize these copies, but according to previous reports they include discounted copies, copies paid for by third party sponsors or those distributed to schools as part of educational programs, to hotel guests, restaurants, airlines and delivered to specific neighborhoods.
Newspapers can also count those papers given free to employees as well.

It's a nice scam.

The way we want it to be

The Wall Street Journal looks at declining circulation at newspapers, without going into the controversal 2001 Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) decision to allow 'discounted' (i.e. give-away newspapers) that has resulted in this kind of dishonesty.
At the Tribune-owned Orlando Sentinel, those types of daily sales jumped 53% in two years, to nearly 38,000 copies a day. But advertisers were unenthusiastic, so the newspaper pulled back. Take hotel copies, Mr. Smith says: 'Are the people staying in those hotels actually going to shop with those advertisers?' The answer in many cases, he says, is no. In February, the Sentinel sent a letter to advertisers saying it was cutting many of the nearly 20,000 papers a day it sent to hotels.
That's quite a sizable figure when you consider that their circulation is stated as 248,492. Not surprisingly, padding their circulation figures with give-aways, even allowable by ABC rules, wasn't included in the the list of "major steps you have taken in the last four years to increase readership" given to the Readership Institute. Still, the give-away figure for hotels alone explains why the Orlando Sentinel, unlike the St. Petersburg Times, experienced no drop in circulation in the wake of the 2004 hurricanes.

Those were just the questionable, but legal, methods of inflating circulation. Then there were the deliberate frauds. Newspapers didn't volunteer information about their circulation frauds until advertisers started fighting back, demanding accountablity for their advertising buck. Would newspapers have admitted the circulation frauds it if they were not faced with a backlash, an alternative by advertisers, or a possibility of an alternative on the internet? Probably not. It also helped that a few brave advertisers decided to sue newspapers. For their efforts, Newsday decided they wouldn't carry the advertisers who were suing them, a decision they have since changed. But, primarily, I think it is because the Justice Department would back criminal investigations which explains this ad:
The Orlando Sentinel Endorsed John Kerry, First Endorsement of a Democrat in 40 Years. "Our choice was not dictated by partisanship. ... Indeed, it has been 40 years since the Sentinel endorsed a Democrat - Lyndon Johnson - for president." [Orlando Sentinel editorial, 10/24/04]
John Kerry Has Been Endorsed by 169 Publications with 19.6 Million Total Circulation. John Kerry has received the endorsements of 169 publications, including 150 daily newspapers, with a total circulation of more than 19.6 million. Of these, 40 publications, with a total circulation of more than 3.4 million, endorsed George W. Bush in 2000. [Bacon's MediaSource]
The theme was enlarged at the California Democrat Party site.

Those endorsement figures are more revealing than newspapers know. They speak of declining influence when 40 newspapers with a circulation of 3.4 million have more influence with voters than the leftwing, pro-Democrat, MSM.

No accounting fraud for circulation figures, no liberalization of ABC methods, will change the decline in newspaper circulation. Not when newspapers can't even command respect from their reporters who continue to flaunt ethical standards in imitation of the lack of ethical standards in the editorial boardrooms. Reporters know their papers better than the readers and Jason Blair's contempt for the New York Times and Jack Kelley's contempt for USA Today even while his wife is an Executive VP at the paper, tells more about the decline of newspapers than any loss of circulation.

Howard Kurtz, typical of the media who cover the media, literally cover for it. In "Ethics Pressure Squeezes a Few Out the Door" he takes the position that it used to be worse. We just never knew about it. Maybe. But then when someone of Kurtz's stature willingly glosses over Barbara Stewart as a "Boston Globe freelancer" without stating that she was a ten year veteran of the New York Times who is credited by herself with writing seventy profiles of the victims of 9/11, you know that Kurtz isn't ignorant of the facts. He just wants you to be.

To paraphrase Walter Cronkite, "And that's the way we want it to be."