Bob Schieffer of Face the Nation, another CBS essay in fantasy journalism, said in a brief editorial (Monday morning, February 21, 2005) that his press, the proper press, the real press that gave America Dan Rather's Kinko Kangaroo Kourt, is being attacked by the corrupt Bush Administration. 

The very fabric of truth, justice and the American way, according to Mr. Schieffer, is in danger if this atrocity is allowed to continue.  The problem?  A judge may decide that journalism isn't above the law.

Here's what this is about.  Political charges from a few years back.  A continuation of the effort to give Iraq to Islamic terrorists by undermining our current President Bush via charges related to Africa, yellowcake nuclear ore, British intelligence reports, weapons of mass destruction and the identity of covert operatives in dangerous places.

Because Bob Schieffer, after Dan Rather leaves in March, will become the ranking stone of the CBS arch du propaganda, we are left with the dirty job of listening to what he says.   Unable to accept any conservative in the White House because of a genetic trait which also makes him blind to logic and reason, he has long haunted the national airwaves with his sepulchural visage. Just the other day, haunting Texas, he expressed disapproval that the American people seem unaffected by the torture in Abu Grabh prison, however it is spelled.  I wasn't asked by CBS to be on stage with Schieffer, so didn't have the chance to explain to him that the American  people know the difference between a college fraternity hazing and torture.  In the former you are put on a leash and must wear panties on your head.  In the latter, you can hear the man's screams as his head is hacked off.

  Not long ago, I watched him (Bob Schieffer, or "BS," as he is affectionately known to actual journalists) run a symposium on mainstream media bias.  He and his panel couldn't find any.  Since this was prior to Rathergate, it is clear that nobody in his inner circle of liberal pundits had ever been in a Kinko's, and so none of them are aware that this chain of photocopy centers is not the string of drive-through Library of Congress outlets they thought they were.

Folks, I hate to tell you this, but it is now clear why the big American media is so interested in the antics of the British monarchy.  Our liberal press is an American version of it.  You have your serfs, your palace guards, your lords, your dukes, your earls, your princes and your royal highness -- a unisex designation.  To criticize anything said by this American royal family, or as in this case, to expect any member of the royal court to succumb to the pressure of the law during  an investigation into illegal activities, is to invite a ceremony adjacent to the Tower of London, where a man in a mask uses a giant ax to behead the ingrate complainant for daring to inquire into the truth. (A scene from The Tower of London, a black and white Hollywood film starring some wonderfully evil classical actors like Vincent Price, and which was a Tinsel Town remake of Richard III, with no credit to the original author.)

Are we having fun?  I certainly am.

You see the big networks, Hollywood, liberal politics -- all are the result of decades of intermarriage and nepotism.  The spouses of senators run PR firms which represent clients whose survival or prosperity depends on the way Congress votes.  Liberal former campaign executives and White House press secretaries end up running all sorts of things from gigantic philanthropic organizations to university departments to network programs.  It's all a writhing mass of liberal bodies in a wormy pile.  A former New York Governor's son suddenly appears high in the news superstructure of a major network, and we are asked to believe that the reason he is there instead of some fellow who worked his way up from the minor leagues is that this well-connected young prince has genetic journalistic noblesse oblige.

We'll forget the fact that he never broke an important story in his life. 

This latest complaint by Schieffer is like that.  Reporters who have sources are part of the royal family.  In spite of the fact that releasing some kinds of information (like about spies in uranium ore country) can get people working on our nation's behalf killed is not relevant.  The sanctity of royal journalistic sources is total.  The very suggestion that any member of the royal American journalism family (all liberals, of course) might have a political motive in promoting a story potentially damaging to a conservative politician like G.W. Bush is ridiculous.  Even if it's true (that the journalist is lying about a key part of the information, for example), it doesn't matter.  The end justifies the means. Why is it that people don't understand that the legacy of Anglo-American socialism, academic progressivism and international appeasement is being protected here?  The legacy of Wilson and Chamberlain is at risk!

So, you ask, who the hell are Judy Miller and Matt Cooper, and why is Bob Schieffer defending them?

They are liberal journalists (the New York Times and Time Magazine), and they are about to go to jail for refusing to release (to a grand jury) the names of the (apparently White House) bureaucrats who fed them information they, being above bias, never hoped would damage the president.  This information included the identity of somebody who was working under cover in a very dangerous place -- on the ground and at risk of his life if exposed.

Matt Cooper: (On "Hardball" with Christ Matthews) There is a statute that makes it a crime to leak the name of a CIA operative but it‘s hard to prosecute someone under it.  No one‘s ever been prosecuted under it, the standard you need to meet, did the person have intent to leak names, were they of a sufficient rank to have known the name in the course of their work.  I think it‘s entirely likely that at the end of this whole process, the only people who do any time in jail are journalists and that the leaker, even if discovered will never do a day. 

These two are relying on the shield law idea.  Some states have such laws, and some members of the media believe this kind of legislation is based on First Amendment, freedom of the press, protection. Schieffer also thinks that journalists should be protected from revealing sources -- and lives and law and truth and intelligence sources be damned. He says that the fact that one of them didn't even write publicly about the information makes the charges ridiculous.  (The information was passed on to another fellow, Bob Novak, who did make it public.  It's like handing a loaded gun to a bank robber.)  I would call that observation amazing if I didn't know Schieffer's record well.  Nothing Schieffer says amazes me anymore. 

He (Schieffer) is -- of course and as usual -- full of crap.  As decades of his kind of journalism has proven, the most corrupt body in America is the liberal press, his liberal press.  And, whether he likes it or not, nobody is above the law. The irony of freedom is that it requires limitations at the point where one man's rights begin to abrogate another man's rights.  It is this second half of the rights equation which bothers liberals.  They prefer to assign rights and responsiblities based on their ideological preferences.  Some people, they believe, need to have more rights and fewer responsibilities than others.

I sure would like to see sedition prosecutions, again.  Those laws were good enough for Schieffer's hero, FDR.  It is a shame that they aren't brought to bear these days.  Strange, isn't it?  People like these liberal media barons complaining about corruption in high places.  Perhaps we can refer to Bill Clinton, here.  It all depends on your definition of corruption.

LL/OrMag

© 2005 Oregon Magazine