calimary
calimary's JournalWelcome to DU, Teutonic Samuel!
Great to have you weigh in! I have no way of knowing this since I've been outta there for a LONG time, but I'd imagine Brokaw is trying to distance himself from mumblings he probably made - maybe in the makeup room or at some bar after work with friends and other people who may have overheard. Or friends who fancy themselves "unnamed sources" for Page Six (there's that "ACCESS" thing again! It's gotta be an ego trip when that big newspaper calls YOU for confirmation, or "the dirt" - especially if YOU yourself don't happen to be the marquee name or the on-camera talent who's famous and wears hand-tailored custom $2,000 suits and has a contract YOU would sell your grandmother for). So now he, too, is in the middle of a shit-storm and probably doesn't want to be attached to it. They all go to the same cocktail parties, too, and are fawned over by the same big names in politics and big business with whom one LOVES to be associated, because one's peers understand and respect and envy that status and prestige.
It's a strange world. Literally drowning in the cult of personality and glittering fame and obscenely big bucks and EGO-EGO-EGO - and who you get to hang out with and boast that you're thisclose friends with and you're the TOTAL insider. Hmmm... I guess that would just be more in the EGO-EGO-EGO department.
Personally, I always found Brokaw to be kind of a stuffed shirt. Too impressed with himself and his increasingly constipated delivery. And leaned way too far to the right for my liking. As he got older and more entrenched, and more of an "Elder Statesman" type, I found I trusted him less.
Welcome to DU, BetsysGhost!
Good to have you with us! Yeah, there were, and ARE, members of the journalistic community who walk the walk, have actually been shot at, have actually faced the fire, gone out into the mud, put their asses on the line and got their hands dirty. Maybe Brian Williams is your standard chickenhawk - except not in politics but in journalism.
I remember when Dan Rather went to Afghanistan. He was snickered at - nicknamed "Gunga Dan," because of photos of him with those scarves on his head, dressed to blend in with the guerillas. He had the cojones to get in there and see for himself and bear witness. Reminds me of the tradition of Edward R. Murrow's "You Are There." The journalist was YOUR eyes and ears, literally going to the front lines, hand-importing the nuggets of truth back to you that you would not be in any position to go get or see or hear for yourself. They were your surrogates, your information brokers, your representatives in the field. And because they put their lives on the line to get the story, they earned serious credibility - the hard way.
Granted, I understand the wish to protect the investment that a network anchor worth a multi-million-dollar contract - don't want him blown up by some IED out there in no-man's land. I understand that network anchor wanting to protect himself. Selfishly of course cuz HE certainly doesn't want to become a battlefield statistic, and professionally/morally because he wants to stick around to be able to tell the story and relay what happened and keep the public informed. But still. You should NOT misrepresent. You don't dare. You simply can't afford to, in a job like that! Because people are depending on you and your word, and wanting to be able to take what you say to the band. And because you can't afford to allow those who then say - "well, if you lied about that, then what ELSE are you lying about?" That contingent will have just had THEIR case strengthened, and by an awful lot, too - and YOU just effectively handed that valuable and hard-won credibility over to THEM.
Welcome to DU, Sarcastica!
Glad you're here! That point is a rather uncomfortable and inconvenient 8,000-pound gorilla in the room.
A news anchor, especially at THAT level, absolutely needs credibility. Absolutely needs to be counted on. Absolutely needs to be trusted and believed. Anybody remember "Uncle Walter"? Walter Cronkite - whose widely-known and supported nickname was "The Most Trusted Man in America." Those were the days.
That's still a HUGE tradition to live up to. And not many do, nowadays. Certainly the lovely folks at Pox Noise don't know or care. Their idea of "news anchors with credibility" is about as valuable as gnat shit. And the ratings success of Pox Noise has infected the whole industry. Ask yourself - do you trust what this guy (or woman) is saying? Would you take what he/she says to the bank? Would you accept what he/she is saying on its face, or would you feel like you needed to find out a little more, dig a little more deeply, just in case they "happen to be" leaving something out? Even the New York Times is finding this a high hurdle to jump. Would you trust the NY Times now? With everything we know about them during the run-up to the Iraq War? With the whole sordid judith miller business, stove-piping unvetted raw intel directly from the vice president's office and splattering it all over the front page above the fold?
We're advised to get second opinions for our doctors' diagnoses. Now we have to do it with the "news doctors" too.
And I wonder - how much weight does Rolling Stone magazine carry now - since it came out that their big rape expose had a few holes in it? And all the ramifications for rape victims and rape treatment/response from here on? They had a STERLING reputation as one of the few investigative enterprises that A) we still have (because "I-teams" and other investigative units are expensive, labor-intensive, and employee-heavy - usually with "payoffs" that are ANYTHING BUT immediate, and news departments usually can't afford them, and their station/network management certainly doesn't want to cough up more money in the budget to pay for them, either. They never want to spend the extra money ANYWAY!). And now, Rolling Stone has been compromised, too.
Frustrating as hell. I grew up with "Uncle Walter," and the other two "uncles" - Huntley and Brinkley. I got a very ravenous taste for journalism by watching Woodward and Bernstein and how their dogged reporting - the ol' shoe-leather/multiple phone calls/digging/begging and cajoling and cultivating potential sources - eventually brought down an entire White House. I've forgotten how many Nixon people wound up going to PRISON. To PRISON!!!!!!!!! What the power of the pen can do. It was a thing of magnificence, the ultimate leveler - the ultimate equalizer, that you could speak truth to power and actually make it stick. That the little guy COULD take on the BIG guy and even win. That there were real-life Davids out there who could take down a miserable, criminal Goliath.
And we just don't have that anymore. We saw it a little bit with the whole "Je Suis Charlie" controversy. Back in the day, many of us in journalism all hoped to be, and thought we should be, the little kid who stood along the parade route and hollered out that the Emperor was out there in public, sashaying by, with no clothes on. Now, all you have for the most part is crowds along that same parade route who are little more than lazy-ass, smug, elitist chuck todd clones, fawning and scraping and whoring for that precious thing called "ACCESS," and pretending they know what they're looking at - as though their lives depend on it. Well, certainly their egos and their bank accounts do.
My condolences, joeybee12.
Yep. The torch has passed. It is kind of weird, being the oldest now, for sure! Almost all our family elders are gone, too. Husband's parents, mine. I have an elderly aunt on my father's side who's still alive but she, sadly, is not at all well or able to live independently anymore. They're all fading into history. All our departed elders lived to ripe old ages. I'm glad your aunt was able to die at home, on her own terms. That's probably the final blessing.
Welcome to DU, kacekwl!
Glad you're here! I'm one of those who is happy for ANY holes that can be poked in the so-called reagan "legacy." He is either THE WORST, or the SECOND-WORST President EVER. His "legacy" has proven to be as toxic as george w bush's. Except the poisons he brewed and scattered throughout our land have been in the system much longer.
Welcome to DU, DryHump!
Love it! Glad you're here! The first cat I ever got was a little black kitten with a "rat tail" - he came straight from the animal shelter, no hair on his tail, mostly big green eyes, spindly, looked positively moth-eaten. He grew into this sumptuous Grand Duke of a cat, with long glossy black fur, a tail that any Pharaoh would have coveted - for his slaves to fan him with, and sexy tufts between each of his toes. A freakin' GLORIOUS-looking long-haired cat. We thought he might even be part Persian because of how long and luxurious his fur was.
Welcome to DU, walkingman!
Glad you're here! It's really frustrating how effective the campaign to push America wrong-ward was. With the onslaught of the reagan era, AND the louis powell roadmap:
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/
Our black cat reminds me of the old My Sin commercial by Lanvin.
Remember the perfume My Sin? The ads and commercials always featured a sleek black cat with a "diamond" collar. Gorgeous, of course. I've had several black cats. I think black cats are lucky charms.
Hey shadowmayor - some of us WILL NOT forget. Many of us here, within DU, for example.
And many of us ALSO will NOT forget that the list of PNAC signatories is chock-full of panty-waists and pansy-asses who NEVER served.
NEVER served.
NEVER saw combat.
NEVER put themselves in harm's way.
NEVER experienced first-hand what REAL war is.
NEVER put their own asses on the line.
NEVER got their hands dirty.
Starting with richard bruce cheney and his five deferments. Because he always had "other priorities."
The only one on the PNAC signatory list who did, to my limited knowledge - was general barry mccaffrey. I should also, for accuracy's sake, point out that rumsfeld, ironically, actually did wear his country's uniform. But he never got it dirty. He lucked out. Served between wars - I believe it was between Korea and Vietnam. So he never saw combat either. He just got lucky - served his time during peacetime and got his points and earned an honorable discharge - without EVER tasting the bitter taste of real war, and real blood, and real loss, and real carnage, and real genuine honest-to-God threats to your life that could come from anywhere - the top of a nearby building or even hidden under the ground that your humvee was about to drive across. Or if it isn't you facing that direct and constant threat, it's your buddy - who you may have just personally witnessed getting suddenly blown to Mars.
I was once begged, by a woman I knew who was gung-ho for the Iraq War because everyone she knew was a Pox Noise afficionado, to PLEEEEEZE hang out my American flag by my front door "to support our trooooooooooooops" on the day the war started. I told her the only way to "support our troops," FOR REAL, is NOT to feed them into some stupid useless wasteful Middle East meat-grinder for the sake of lies and fraud ill-gotten gains for our war machine and all its greedy corporate suppliers - a war that should NEVER have been undertaken in the first place.
It was just awful during that time. Seemed like everybody around me was so pro-bush/cheney, so gung-ho for war ("okay, if it's so damn fabulous, why don't YOU go suit up and go over there and get some!"
and a precious few spoke up. There were a few individuals who agreed with me but only when they knew we were alone going for coffee or there was nobody else around to hear what we were grumbling about. It was really awful. Seemed like so many around me were buying and swallowing, whole, what the media was force-feeding us while banging the drum so loudly for war. It was awful. Everybody believed contradicta and wolfie and dickie and rummy and all the rest of those lying, scheming BEASTS. You could NOT talk sense into them. You could NOT open their eyes. And if you tried, it was YOU who became the enemy, the sniveling "libtard" or "Saddam-lover" or "al Qaeda sympathizer" or "anti-American" or you were just stupid and naive with your dreaded liberal kumbaya ideas and it was YOU who didn't understand. And YOU who were the traitor and disloyal and on the side of the enemy. That whole "you're either with us or agin' us" thing applied directly to YOU for "NOT supporting our troooooooooooooops."
It was awful. I don't see many of those folks anymore. Our kids all grew up and went off to college and otherwise scattered to the four winds. We weren't close anyway, so there wouldn't be much reason or opportunity to hang out together. My husband and I don't do the country club thing. But sometimes I think back on that whole bunch and wonder what they think now, and wonder - if they ever saw me and it ever came up in conversation - that they'd ever admit they were wrong. And that they'd been royally HAD by the very "heroes" they worshipped and put their faith in and stood by, so firmly, in the bush/cheney cabal. HAD - at the end of a fork. I wonder if they still think they were "right." Sadly enough, there are still too many of our fellow Americans across the country who do.
But rest assured, shadowmayor, there are many of us who don't. Many of us who weren't fooled from the very beginning. And many more of us who may have gone along at first but then started realizing they'd been lied to and that the whole sordid mess was a FRAUD. There are many of us who won't be cowed or snowed and won't shut up, either. We're here to remind everyone and anyone of what happened, so that no amount of republi-CON or CONservative attempts to rewrite history after the fact will stick.
Gorgeous kitty!
I love black cats. We have one, too. Their coats are so sleek and shiny!
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