The question is, will Paul Linnman give some indication that he has had professional training or on-the-job experience in journalism, or won't he? 

Just prior to 8:30 A.M. on Friday, March 25, 2004, on KEX (1190 A.M.), Mr. Linnman discussed the presidency with George Steponallofus.  Now, this George is the host of the ABC Sunday news magazine, This Week. He was Bill Clinton's top campaign exec, at one time. After Bubba won, G.S. became the White House press secretary, then a broadcast network program host. ( Just like Bill Moyers, who also got his own broadcast network news program.  It only seems to happen to liberals, for some reason.)

This morning the famous local broadcast journalist (usually an oxymoron), Paul Linnman asked the former Clinton (I didn't have sex with that woman) flack about G.W. Bush's current below the fold approval numbers.  Georgie said it made some politicians less afraid to challenge this president.

Linnman asked Steponallofus about Bush's poor numbers? 

Now, there you have irony.  We'll set aside the booming national economy (minus Kulongoski's Oregon) numbers and the meteoric number of outbursts of freedom, from former Soviet slave provinces in Asia, through Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq and the Palestinian areas, all the way down to NE Africa.  We'll drop the part about how G.W.'s No Child Left Behind program is driving American educators crazy because (1) it requires them to work for a living and (2) is just coincidentally present as the Three R gap numbers between white and non-Asian minority groups are closing. We'll ignore the record number of homes purchased by blacks in America these past few years.  Yessir, we'll forget all these extraordinary and wonderful numbers.  What we'll do is focus on the popular approval numbers achieved by  Linnman's new pal, George Steponallofus. 

Compared to the numbers of G.W. Bush, Georgie  of A.B.C. is broadcasting  from the basement of an outhouse.  In btoadcast show business terms, his numbers are in the toilet.

Now, if Linnman were not, as we maintain, a joke of a journalist, his theme in his interview with Georgie S. would have been, "The ratings of This Week with David Brinkley began a serious decline when Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts took over as hosts.  Then, these ratings -- these audience  polling numbers -- entered a precipitous slide (as predicted in advance by Larry Leonard of Oregon Magazine) when you assumed program leadership. Do you, Mr. Steponallofus, feel somewhat hypocritical when you, a complete rating disaster, promote the temporary poll numbers of one of the most successful American presidents  in the last 100 years?"

Oregon Magazine didn't name a winner of our Baghdad Bob journalism award in February.  Nobody in the liberal press stood out (stunk that much more) from the crowd.  This month, March, we could have awarded it to the big press for their contribution to the shameful assassination by starvation of Teri Schindler (nee Schiavo) in a Florida hospice.  It was a ghoulish process to watch.  Journalism by Stephen King.  And, to be fair, on Monday, March 28, just prior to 8:30 AM, the prime theme of Mr. Linnman's report on this  woman was as biased as any by the national press.  No mention of the components which make this a story.  Just a hypocritical interview with someone who said the demonstrators at the hospice are bussed in.  Odd that when bussed-in liberal demonstrators fill the streets of his own town, it's not part of Linnman's story.

So, congrats to Paul Linnman who is pound for pound, the official exploding whale of Oregon liberal journalists, once again.  Because he is part of the Big Lie about a starving woman, and because of his so obviously ridiculous interview of George Steponallofus -- the sycophantic stink of it -- he now wears the symbolic press badge of the man who stood on the roof of a hotel in Baghdad and said that American troops would never enter that city -- while the camera he was facing showed over his shoulder our tanks driving down the street in his direction.

April's Oregon Magazine Baghdad Bob Journalism Award spotlights Oregon's Paul Linnman.  This month, he is clearly the worst journalist in the state.  No more ghoulish, biased or incompetent reporter treads the turf in this part of the planet, today.

(LL)

© 2005 Oregon Magazine