Debates

While I'm thinking about it....

The presidential debates are starting to be discussed. We already know what's going to happen afterwards: supporters of each side will try to play up how their guy did and to play down how the other guy did. Those already committed to a candidate will have their opinion of him, and of his opponent, reinforced. Rare and hard to find will be the impartial analysis, though mainstream media will be rife with the pretended impartial analysis.

Specifically, Bush will have been misunderestimated, again; and, Kerry will have been misoverestimated, again. (It's like we're all in a big rut, isn't it?) I say this partly because Bush is a lot smarter than folks give him credit for being, and partly because I think Kerry is a lot not as smart as folks give him credit for being.

I strenuously doubt that Kerry is the debater that he supposedly has the reputation for being since his college days. Like so much else in his life — such as "heroism" in Vietnam — though it may have a kernel of truth at its core, it's mostly puffery. Even if he was a great debater — once upon a time back in the ancient days of black-and-white TV — two decades in the Senate, consorting with the likes of Chappaquiddick Fats and the Grand Kleagle, have seared Kerry's brain as much as Christmas in Cambodia Vietnam Southeast Asia ever did.

And I'm saying so now: those counting on Kerry to clobber Bush in the debates — and they are legion, no? — they are going to be shocked. Look for lots of them to be in denial about how poorly Kerry does. Right through Nov. 2.

At the very least, whether you agree with him or not, Bush can make a point. Kerry can't, mostly because he has spent most of his adult life jumping through hoops to avoid making a point as much as possible. And, he doesn't even know that's what he's been doing.

P.S. I saw an infobabe — a supposed newscaster in a supposed newscast — on a local TV station mention that John Kerry is reputedly the best debater ever nominated for president. I don't recall anybody saying that during the Democratic primary debates — do you?

Ha! Keep on talking him up like that, boys & girls, and he'll just look that much worse in comparison.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 09/28/04 06:41:36 PM
Categorized as Political.

Carlee Got Married

Congratulations to Jeremiah and Carlee (Clement) Thomas whose Jul. 10 wedding announcement is in this Uniontown Herald-Standard article, Sep. 19. Carlee was 1996 homecoming queen of our high-school alma mater: she is in some photos from the next year's homecoming.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 09/28/04 06:08:03 PM
Categorized as Other.

Fight 4 Terri

Vide.

(Thanks, Pete.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 09/28/04 05:54:34 PM
Categorized as Blogosphere Stuff.

Photographs Lie

"I killed the general with my camera."

An article by Duncan Currie at The Weekly Standard, Sep. 24 (emphasis in original):

Photojournalist Eddie Adams died last Sunday [Sep. 19] at age 71, but his place in history is secure. Indeed, Adams made history with his famous picture of South Vietnamese General Nguyen Ngoc Loan. Taken in Saigon on February 1, 1968, the picture showed Gen. Loan's point-blank execution of a Viet Cong captain named Bay Lop [a.k.a. Nguyen Van Lem]. The images were searing: Loan's cold grimace; a snub-nosed .38 revolver held inches from Lop's terrified face; the fiercely clenched teeth of an officer standing nearby.

It won a Pulitzer Prize for the Associated Press in 1969, and was one of the most influential still photos of the 20th century. But until the day he died, Eddie Adams regretted having taken it....

I learned from this Communist Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article that Adams was a native of this area:

.... In later years, Mr. Adams found himself so defined and haunted by the picture that he would not display it at his studio. He also felt it unfairly maligned Loan, who lived in Virginia after the war and died in 1998.

"The guy was a hero," Mr. Adams said, recalling Loan's explanation that the man he executed was a Viet Cong captain, responsible for murdering the family of Loan's closest aide a few hours earlier.

"Sometimes a picture can be misleading because it does not tell the whole story," Mr. Adams said in an interview for a 1972 AP photo book. "I don't say what he did was right, but he was fighting a war and he was up against some pretty bad people."

Mr. Adams won a 1969 Pulitzer Prize for the Saigon execution picture, among the more than 500 honors he received....

Here is what Adams wrote in Time when Loan died:

JULY 27, 1998 VOL. 152 NO. 4

Eulogy

I won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for a photograph of one man shooting another. Two people died in that photograph: the recipient of the bullet and General Nguyen Ngoc Loan. The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths. What the photograph didn't say was, "What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American soldiers?" General Loan was what you would call a real warrior, admired by his troops. I'm not saying what he did was right, but you have to put yourself in his position.

The photograph also doesn't say that the general devoted much of his time trying to get hospitals built in Vietnam for war casualties. This picture really messed up his life. He never blamed me. He told me if I hadn't taken the picture, someone else would have, but I've felt bad for him and his family for a long time. I had kept in contact with him; the last time we spoke was about six months ago, when he was very ill.

I sent flowers when I heard that he had died and wrote, "I'm sorry. There are tears in my eyes."

—Eddie Adams

The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

See also Calvin Explains How Media Bias Works.

(Thanks, Craig.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 09/28/04 05:39:30 PM
Categorized as Media.

"The Press: Time for a New Era?"

An article by the late Robert L. Bartley at OpinionJournal, Jul. 28, 2003:

.... I think we're coming to the end of the era of "objectivity" that has dominated journalism over this time. We need to define a new ethic that lends legitimacy to opinion, honestly disclosed and disciplined by some sense of propriety.

Though an opinion journalist myself, I'm certainly not against attempts at objectivity. Indeed I believe the ethic is a more powerful influence than disgruntled readers and viewers often seem to believe; it's simply not true that journalists conspire to slant the news in favor of their friends and causes. Yet it's also true that in claiming "objectivity" the press often sees itself as a perfect arbiter of ultimate truth. This is a pretension beyond human capacity.

Especially so given the demands of modern technology. With instant radio, television and now the Internet taking over bulletin-board news, newspapers have to make their mark explaining not just events but their meaning. This is manifestly a matter of opinion.

The opinion of the press corps tends toward consensus because of an astonishing uniformity of viewpoint. Certain types of people want to become journalists, and they carry certain political and cultural opinions. This self-selection is hardened by peer group pressure. No conspiracy is necessary; journalists quite spontaneously think alike. The problem comes because this group-think is by now divorced from the thoughts and attitudes of readers....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 09/28/04 07:54:42 AM
Categorized as Media.

"The Age of the Essay"

Lege.

(Thanks, Peter.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 09/28/04 07:41:58 AM
Categorized as Literary.

"'Blogs' Wielding Influence on News, Campaigns"

An article in the Macon Telegraph, Sep. 26:

.... Unlike most handwritten diaries, blogs are intended for the entire world to read.

Bloggers use the technology of the Internet, often writing under a nickname, to comment on movies they've seen or bands they've heard, vent about bad parties and rude strangers, or wax eloquently about beautiful fall weather. Through links to other blog sites, bloggers have a built-in audience.

They also use blogs to make political comments and to keep a close eye on the mainstream media by critiquing and fact-checking articles. These political blogs are having an effect on this year's presidential elections....

(Thanks, Steve.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 09/28/04 07:28:57 AM
Categorized as Media.

"Dan Rather's Day of Reckoning"

A great article by John Podhoretz at The Weekly Standard, dated Oct. 4:

CBS News airs a report about a Vietnam-era controversy. Almost immediately the report comes under harsh attack, its credibility and essential honesty challenged. There's a huge uproar, complete with calls for a congressional investigation. CBS is compelled to acknowledge certain errors in its handling of the story, though senior officials say pointedly that no one has challenged its basic thrust.

Does this sound familiar? It is, but this is not just a quick-and-dirty recap of the current mess at CBS. For the few CBS News staffers who have been at the network for more than 30 years, the events of the past few weeks must make them feel they're trapped inside Nietzsche's "eternal return." This is the third occasion over the past 32 years in which CBS News has been caught behaving unethically and irresponsibly in the reporting and editing of a hot-button issue involving the United States, the Vietnam war, and the behavior and conduct of senior officials in Washington.

One of those CBS employees with a long memory is Dan Rather, who has been with the network's news division for 42 years. If you want to understand why Rather is being so recalcitrant and finding it so difficult to make a full acknowledgment of his role in perpetrating a colossal journalistic and political fraud — and why he was so adamantly opposed to an internal investigation of his now-infamous story about George W. Bush's National Guard service — you need to understand that Rather saw his network weather two previous and surprisingly similar tempests....

(Thanks, Susanna.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 09/28/04 07:21:00 AM
Categorized as Media.