Soccer Dad

Around the web 9/23/05

Is Ocean guy half full or half empty?
I ask the same about Yourish.

Pillage Idiot is full of information about a Middle Eastern Barbie doll.
It's Almost Supernatural drops a bomb about another view of Barbie.

Wednesday night we saw a news report about Cindy Sheehan coming to Baltimore. The "news" report was simply a PR campaign telling of Sheehan's fortitude without questioning any of her dubious statements or alliances and of how the anti-war movement is growing.

That was TV news. But unfortunately, one can't do a lot better with a prestigious newspaper. I suppose I should be grateful that the Washington Post published "Peace by pieces" in the Style section. But the gist of the articles was the same. The reporter, David Montgomery noted with apparent happiness the growth of the anti-war movement without stopping once to question if perhaps some of that growth was due to the uncritical plaudits the media has often been giving it.

Postwatch was hard on Montgomery:

Putting aside the mysterious cameo of an unnamed author at an unexplained forum, it does become difficult to dismiss this incarnation as a fringe passion when you refuse to tell us everything about the passions.

It's not just withholding information about Cindy Sheehan, so that writer David Montgomery can paint her as the protesters' "Mother Courage" (did Mother Courage say President Bush is the biggest terrorist and officials who support him are war criminals? Perhaps. Email me). It's a habit and it covers more territory.

For example, there's the failure to report on the background of International ANSWER, which Montgomery (and everyone else at the Post) blandly refers to as an organizer of the protest. They're much more interesting than that. ANSWER is an arm of the Stalinist Workers World Party. This is not a careless insult; it's just tellin' it like it is.

Additionally it's been correctly argued by Susan Estrich, by no means a Bush supporter, that Sheehan's rhetoric has veered into antisemitism.

( BTW Postwatch excerpts a Michael Kellya article about Answer, here the link for the full article. Meanwhile Keshertalk links to this blog about the Jewish Left facing up to the antisemitism of the antiwar left. Which recalls this 2 1/2 year old article by Michael Lerner.)

There's no getting around it. Sheehan and the antiwar left are comfortable with some disturbing allies and disturbing rhetoric. But in order to romanticize their cause, many in the media look the other rather than ask the hard questions.

Mediacrity notes a different silence on the part of the media. The United States issued an unusually blunt criticism of the Palestinian Authority the other day. Strangely it didn't appear in the NY Times. The Washington Post could have done better but at least it ran an AP story on the subject.