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Home Front: Culture Wars
Out of the Mouths of News Babes
2007-10-05
Jules Crittenden, Pajamas Media

I went out on a limb about a month ago and suggested, on the slimmest evidence, that Katie Couric could became a strong and brave new voice in the American media. And she has. Just not exactly the way I thought she might.

I thought then, when the leggy leightweight went to Iraq to establish her street cred, that she might actually emerge as the anti-Cronkite.

She alone among our nationÂ’s premier news anchors recognized that progress in Iraq was the story of the hour, of the day, of the week, month, year and decade, and she went there. Then, she reported that undeniable progress was being made.

Since then, possibly chastened by her pals in New York and Washington for her heresy, sheÂ’s backtracked considerably. . . . But thatÂ’s not the issue here. What is remarkable is how Couric, seeking to transcend bimbohood and establish herself as a serious thinker, emerged as an honest voice among our nationÂ’s premier news organizations. Couric is telling truths much of the media, guised in false claims of objectivity and fairness, is reluctant to admit overtly. Maybe itÂ’s because she is a lightweight, a news neophyte promoted over her abilities, that sheÂ’s willing to strip the emperor.

In fact, the presumption of AmericaÂ’s leading news media Â… with its insistence that it represents just the facts, as though reporters are an alien priesthood dropped down among us to sagely observe with a sort of scientific objectivity Â… may represent the greatest triumph of supernational multiculturalism in the United States. And Couric is its poster child. Because this is what else she said last week at the National Press Club:

The former “Today” show anchor traced her discomfort with the administration’s march to war back to the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

“The whole culture of wearing flags on our lapel and saying ‘we’ when referring to the United States and, even the ‘shock and awe’ of the initial stages, it was just too jubilant and just a little uncomfortable.”

“Just a little uncomfortable” may be a bit of an understatement. At the time of the invasion of Iraq, there were prominent news professionals loudly objecting to and questioning the ethics of embedding in U.S. military units, though they had no problem with the idea of reporters being posted to Baghdad to attend Iraqi propaganda sessions. Living among U.S. soldiers and advancing with them in combat against an undeniable evil was something that would challenge the objectivity of the press, which apparently has transcended not only national identity but even morality.

The world instead is something that must be observed from an amoral and relativistic perspective.

According to this concept the United States is not good or bad, not any better or worse than, say, Saddam’s Iraq, Ahmadinejad’s Iran or even al-Qaeda, whose murderous terrorist operatives, in the wake of marketplace bombings, are referred to as “militants.” In practice the theoretical equivalence vanishes; the United States is often represented as worse than those entities, with a greater intensity of focus on substantially less serious misdeeds … the humiliation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, or this discomfort at Guantanamo, for example, compared to mass slaughter of civilians by terrorist bombs, torture and beheadings in Iraq.

This distortion may be because, for the world citizens of the American press, their birthright has become an embarrassment they must deny.

So I’d like to praise Couric, and encourage her to continue on this path, shoving her way out of the crowd of serious, sober-minded journalists who wouldn’t dare admit such a thing as discomfort with saying “we.” It is good when leading voices in our nation’s news media admit freely they are uncomfortable with the trappings of citizenship, that their interests perhaps are not those of our nation. That those things make them … just a little uncomfortable.
Posted by:Mike

#3  Late 1980's-1990's, PRE 9-11 AL BUNDY > "I'M AN AMERICAN - I'M SORRY". POST 9-11 in 2007, looks like AL BUNDY still has to apologize for being an American??? DURING 9-11???
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2007-10-05 21:07  

#2  The world instead is something that must be observed from an amoral and relativistic perspective

Amoral is without judgement, relativistic is with judgement based on comparison.

Relativistically, that statement is dumb.
Posted by: flash91   2007-10-05 13:28  

#1  Couric is on thin ice and knows it. She's hoping that although she can't get the acceptance of a broad audience she can get the acceptance of her peers (and thus the audience will be blamed for her shows failure).
Posted by: rjschwarz   2007-10-05 12:09  

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