I’ve been watching the coverage of the aftermath of the attack on America in Benghazi, Libya on the anniversary of 9/11, and trying to figure out why it’s so different depending on which news station you get it from. The principals behind what is clearly the new normal in the “journalism” business seems to be in play as this story and its aftermath, continues. Once upon a time, journalists prided themselves, and actually, their professionalism and believability were judged by, their impartiality in reporting. If the reporter had an opinion on something, the reader/viewer/listener didn’t know what it was. This is the only way one can be relatively certain the reporter is just reporting and not editorializing. It’s what’s kept the news from being gossip, or worse, propaganda. And that’s what kept the press, and therefore the rest of us, free. I use the past tense, here, because I think it’s clear that unbiased reporting is a dying art in this country. And this country is nearly the only place it really ever existed. Its loss probably means the eventual loss of everything we treasure in our way of life. I hope I’m wrong. You can judge how far we’ve fallen for yourself by watching the various news programs. I have, and this is what I believe I’m seeing. Although nearly everyone else can easily discern the political leanings of most news networks and most reporters on those networks these days, the purveyors themselves are not yet willing to completely drop any pretence of impartiality. So, what happens in most cases, is if some piece of news doesn’t fit into a media outlet’s particular narrative, it will at first only be reported by the networks/papers into whose point of view it does fit. It will vanish then, unless the story grows powerful legs and begins taking on a life of its own. At some point, then, it will appear on those other news broadcasts, but only if those networks feel they must address it or be called out as incompetent or intentionally biased. And they will try to find a way to report it that softens any potential negative fallout impacting their agenda. Take for instance this latest act of war that killed our ambassador to Libya and several other Americans. Most of the news networks reported it as a spontaneous riot in response to some stupid anti-Muslim film, probably because White House officials were saying that’s what it was. They persisted in that analysis for several days, with even President Obama alluding to it in his speech at the United Nations. However, Fox News, and as far as I can tell, only Fox News, has been reporting its suspicions to the contrary from the start. More recently, its anchors are reporting that there’s proof Obama Administration officials knew within a day or so that the assault was a pre-planned terrorist attack, timed intentionally to coincide with the anniversary of 9/11. Nevertheless, Administration spokespeople continued repeating what they now admit was misinformation. Fox continues to wonder out loud why the administration “lied” about the nature of the attack, refusing to let up on the issue, and it’s begun spreading via social media, so now, and only now, other venues are starting to make mention of the “self-evident” nature of the terrorism involved. As though they have always said it was terrorism. They never said it wasn’t. Up is down. Black is white. Orwellian doublespeak. This is how it seems to work in the news business these days, except for when the subject is Israel. As it is the miner’s canary for the world’s attitude and conscience, Israel (the state and/or the People) also appears to serve that function for the media. Nearly all news outlets long ago gave up entirely any attempt to appear unbiased in regard to the Jewish state, to the point that several have been sued and censured for doctoring photos and otherwise lying to further the anti-Israel agenda. Most recently, many outlets published photos of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the United Nations, in which he appears to be giving the Nazi salute. Very subtle. In that same speech, Netanyahu used a cartoon-like drawing of a bomb to illustrate where a so-called “red line” needs to be drawn past which the world won’t let the lunatic megalomaniacal Iranian leadership go toward its goal to acquire nuclear weapons without reacting in some decisive way. Media the world over is making fun of the graphic, but, you know what? Because of that cartoon, everyone the world over is talking about a speech few, not even many of our country’s leaders, bothered to watch or listen to. It’s the water cooler story of the hour. How about that?

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This election year, while everyone is distracted, we are militarily forcing the Serbs to submit to Muslim Albanian mafia rule. If Americans think the fate of Kosovo’s Serbs doesn’t foreshadow their own future, they are manifestly mistaken.

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With Iran’s Hitleresque megalomaniacal leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaking to the United Nations on the holiest day of the Jewish year about his country’s intention to annihilate the Jews, and with the U.S. president making a milquetoast remark challenging those desires the day before, one must wonder where we go from here.

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“Death to the Film ‘Muslim Innocence’”

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Associated Press/Mark Baker - Prince William and his wife Kate, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge take their shoes off before entering a mosque in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Friday, Sept. 14, 2012.

They’re positively giddy!
Black people in America figured out the following about white people a long time ago: The bigger they smile at you, the more scared they are of you.

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     The first thing I learned from watching both conventions is how brilliant, oversized and glittering America’s teeth have become - between just Julian Castro and Michelle Obama there seemed to be enough choppers for several extra mouths and that’s before Barack Obama has had a chance to flash his trademark high-beam smile.  The Romney/Ryan ticket has a tough fight ahead on this plane, proving that white privilege does not extend to the universal benefits of fluoride and dental bleach.  The second thing I learned is that you can’t be a politician without a serious chronic disease to offer.  For Ann Romney, it was a twofer of her own multiple sclerosis and breast cancer.  While Michelle Obama has only her father’s MS card to play, she trumped with the description of a man who smilingly used a walker in order to get to work each day.  It seems that every American who seeks national office must have a required background of poverty or lowly service.  The Romneys began their married life in a basement apartment with an ironing board as a dining table but the Obamas had a car so rusty that the pavement was visible through the passenger door.  Marco Rubio’s father was a banquet bartender and stood behind his bar so that Marco could one day stand behind the Republican Convention podium.  That was nice but Julian Castro’s counterpunch was a grandmother who pushed a mop so that he could one day hold a microphone at the Democratic convention.  Of course Ann Romeny’s Welsh gramps would have been happy to trade his miner’s cap for the comparative ease of an above-ground moop or a dimly-lit bar.

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In the musical “Man of La Mancha,” Don Quixote vows to “dream the impossible dream” and “reach … the unreachable star.” Mitt Romney’s question is whether he has done “the impossible”:  blow an unblowable Presidential race.

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I am a lifelong liberal Democrat.

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In recent days, reporters have talked of a sudden rightward shift in the GOP. They point to the platform’s support of: the unborn child’s individual right to life, a balanced budget amendment, supermajority requirements for tax increases, consideration of the gold standard, voluntary school prayer, public display of the Ten Commandments, crackdowns on Internet porn, and repeal of the Davis-Bacon “prevailing wage” law. They also note that the platform opposes same-sex marriage and the use of foreign law in court decisions. There is just one problem in the “sudden shift” theme: all of these positions appeared in previous platforms, and in the case of school prayer, as long ago as 1972.

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