-Caveat Lector-
Subject: MRC Alert Special: Bozell Columns on Iraq, Clinton,
Albright & Limbaugh
***Media Research Center CyberAlert Special***
8:30am EDT, Friday October 10, 2003
Today, four recent Creators syndicate columns by MRC President
L. Brent Bozell: "Enough Vietnam Analogies," "What About Bill and
9-11?," "Mad About the 'Madam Secretary'" and "ESPN = P.C."
For the archive of Bozell columns:
http://www.mediaresearch.org/archive/newscol/welcome.asp
Now, the text of four recent Bozell columns:
> Bozell's September 9 column, "Enough Vietnam Analogies"
On one level President Bush's Sunday night speech was
unremarkable. It was a simple declarative address on what has been
accomplished in the war on terrorism and what remains to be done.
But on another level, it was stunning. In framing the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq (as well as the other actions in the war on
terror) as a noble cause and a great success, the speech sounded
shockingly unfamiliar, given the wholly different themes regularly
projected on television newscasts.
Bush reported how Fedayeen and terrorist scum have ambushed our
soldiers. They've killed civilian aid workers at the UN; they've
bombed the embassy of Jordan, a peaceful Arab country; and they've
murdered a Shiite cleric and over 100 Muslims at prayer.
But the actions of our enemies are rarely scorned by our media
elite. Instead, they're reported as problems for, or mistakes by,
the Bush White House.
The tone of newscasts in the weeks since the last unmissable big
success -- killing Uday and Qusay, and even these successes were
criticized -- has been largely gloom and doom, Vietnam and
quagmire. Two nights before Bush spoke, Dan Rather was pounding
Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, saying "rank and file Americans are
asking 'are we into quicksand? Is this going to be another
quagmire?'" Rumsfeld, for once, was far too neutral, saying "time
will tell" before noting that we've been in Iraq for less than six
months.
Dan Rather's "rank and file Americans" are asking these questions
only because the media can't stop focusing on them. Rumsfeld
should have dismissed the whole Vietnam analogy as ridiculous,
because:
1. We lost 58,000 American soldiers in Vietnam. Our casualties in
Iraq now aren't on the same planet as the losses in that war.
2. We didn't liberate Vietnam from communist dictatorship and then
have trouble reorganizing it along peaceful and democratic lines.
If we were in Month Six and still struggling to depose Saddam
Hussein -- while losing thousands of lives in the process -- the
comparison would be more realistic. In Vietnam, we withdrew in
defeat and left with the whole country united under tyranny and
concentration camps. In Iraq, we liberated the entire country from
tyranny and torture chambers in three weeks.
The anchors are now anxious to make us forget this.
3. In Vietnam, anti-war activists and anchormen could more
plausibly argue (though still incorrectly) that the complete
consolidation of communism halfway around the world was not a
threat to the domestic security of the United States. Since
September 11, are these same anti-war activists and anchormen
finding it reasonable to assume that America faces no threat, and
the proper response to world terrorism and the states that sponsor
it is once again withdrawal and negotiated humiliation?
The only Vietnam analogy that works is the comparison in press
coverage. As in Vietnam, the press is eager to discredit American
military action, to discourage American support at home for
military action, to disintegrate the noble cause of the fight, and
to bury any victory under a tidal wave of gloom.
Last week, when he wasn't hammering Rumsfeld, Dan Rather was
highlighting an interview with American-killing terrorists inside
Iraq. They told Rather from scarf-covered faces that they hated
Saddam, but now they hated Americans more. It's good and useful to
know the enemy. What's so discouraging about Rather's treatment is
that our sworn enemies are respectfully taken at their word and
granted less cynicism about their motives than our own leaders in
America.
Tom Brokaw came out of the Bush speech Sunday night with one
primary question: When will Rumsfeld or his deputies resign? He
asked Democrat Joe Biden this question from the left: "Obviously
there has been a profound failure of intelligence about what would
happen once we got to Baghdad. Shouldn't someone in the
administration be held accountable for that?" Minutes later, he
pitched the same question to retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, the man
who so badly predicted 3,000 casualties in the battle for Baghdad
and now, predictably, is again running Rumsfeld into the ground.
In short, anchors are acting like they are the ones who run this
country, and could execute this war better than the Bush
administration. Instead of covering this new decade of terror
threats, these anchormen are better suited to their hot stories of
the last decade -- O.J. Simpson, Princess Diana, and the McCaughey
septuplets.
END Reprint of first of four columns
> Bozell's September 16 column, "What About Bill and 9-11?"
On the second anniversary of September 11, there wasn't half as
much solemnity and national unity on network TV coverage as last
year. Bush administration officials were hammered by the TV
interviewers for somehow straying from the war on al-Qaeda into
Iraq. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton was being served cups of homage
along with the coffee. CBS's Hannah Storm cooed: "You've fought so
much for the heroes of 9/11...Has enough been done for the heroes,
the people who fought so bravely on that day?"
In other words, we're back to normal. The imbalance was not only
stunning for Team Bush, it was unfair to the viewing public.
Several authors are now reviewing the Clinton legacy on terrorism,
and it's a sorry one. Their new books should have caused CBS and
the others to ask Sen. Clinton: Why didn't your husband seize
Osama bin Laden when he had the chance?
It takes the passage of time for a true historical verdict to be
reached, but the Clinton legacy on terrorism is one virtually no
one wants to discuss. When they do touch on it, the authors seem
very sensitive to appearing to be too anti-Clinton.
On September 3, author Gerald Posner came on NBC's "Today" show to
discuss his new book "Why America Slept." Katie Couric bluntly
asked if he blamed Clinton for failing to prevent the attacks.
Posner tip-toed and mumbled into a yes, "unfortunately." But he
added: "If the Republicans had been in power it would've been the
same situation, Katie. I'd be talking to you today about nobody
paying attention. It just happened to fall on Bill Clinton's
watch, unfortunately." After changing the subject to the Saudi
connection to al-Qaeda, Katie underlined that Posner's book should
be read with a jaundiced eye: "a member of the National Security
Council and a senior intelligence official in this country says
the whole thing is fantasy."'
Posner was back on TV the next day on the hot morning show "Fox &
Friends," and the change in the author's tone was dramatic.
Co-host Steve Doocy asked how many times Posner voted for Clinton
(both times), and then asked if he would so again in hindsight.
Posner not only said there was zero chance of that, he rebutted
himself from the day before: "I thought anyone who was in office
[would have failed], we weren't paying attention as a
country...But Clinton was particularly bad."
Why? Clinton missed an opportunity to get Osama from the Sudan in
1996. "Worse than that," Posner told Fox, Osama landed in a jumbo
jet with 150 family members and aides on the ground of our ally,
Qatar: "They call up and say ?What should we do with this guy?'
And the White House says ?Send him on.'" Posner even charged that
Clinton did little because he was always doing polling to figure
out if he should go after bin Laden, as opposed to leading the
public against the building terror threat.
Conservative analysts from Rush Limbaugh on down have focused
their minds and energies on the things Bill Clinton could have
done to prevent the September 11 attacks. But our "objective"
press corps can't even imagine blaming Clinton for anything.
Posner's Clinton "bashing" was left out of the "Today" show Web
site excerpt. The September 8 Time magazine carried an "explosive"
book review, but it was another interesting Posner story about the
confession of top al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah -- nothing on
Clinton.
Even if it's negative, at least Posner's book is getting major
media attention. Former Wall Street Journal writer Richard
Miniter's book, "Losing Bin Laden," goes into detail on Clinton's
failures, but he hasn't been invited on ABC, CBS, or NBC. In an
interview with National Review Online on September 11, Miniter
listed sixteen moments of opportunity when Team Clinton screwed up
the chance to get Osama.
Miniter is most intrigued by the response to the 2000 bombing of
the U.S.S. Cole, which took the lives of 17 soldiers. Except for
counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, the entire Clinton team
wanted to take no military action in response. Janet Reno thought
it was against "international law." Madeleine Albright thought it
would hurt America in "world opinion." Even Defense Secretary Bill
Cohen was a no. One friend told Clarke: "What's it going to take
to get them to hit al-Qaeda in Afghanistan? Does al-Qaeda have to
attack the Pentagon?"
Albright is the next major author who will make the TV rounds
promoting a book. That's a good opportunity for the network stars
to ask the tough questions about Clinton administration mistakes.
But that's about as likely as Clinton doing the right thing about
terrorism.
END Reprint of second of four columns
> Bozell's September 23 column, "Mad About the 'Madam
Secretary'"
Morning after morning and evening after evening, the wrecking
crews of the TV news have their brass knuckles out for the Bush
administration's handling of Iraq and the war on terrorism. The
starting point of any conversation is the assumption that at best,
we've made no progress at all, and at worst, everything the
president has done has only made terrorists stronger.
So where was this frenzy of "accountability" during the eight
years of the Clinton administration, where every foreign policy
failure, every diplomatic vacillation and empty military gesture,
was greeted with either a hallelujah chorus or a defensive group
chant of "how dare those Republican haters question our brilliant
leader?"
All those bad memories returned when former Clinton Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright made the rounds to promote her new book
"Madam Secretary." The inquiries about the Clinton record were
very limp and apologetic; the tributes to her pioneer status were
fulsome; and the nasty or haughty things she said to interviewers
went largely unchallenged.
NBC's Katie Couric was the warmest, preceding the "Today"
interview with a taped piece claiming that Albright "defined her
foreign goals from Day One" and earned a reputation for "tough
talk" at the United Nations. (Saddam Hussein surely quaked in his
boots.) She asked Albright to remember how she was mobbed with
fans on an Amtrak train to New York after being named the
Secretary of State. "You must have felt like a rock star," cooed
Katie.
It went downhill from there. Couric brought up the Middle East,
"in such disarray and it is so discouraging." Albright tenderly
recounted how hard she and Clinton had worked to give Yasser
Arafat the best deal they could create for him, and denounced the
Bush team for not continuing that coddling campaign. Couric
suggested "they're now very engaged." Amazingly, Albright replied:
"Well, but two and a half years was lost and thousands of people
died."
Now why on Earth would Madeleine Albright lay thousands of deaths
at the White House door over its supposed lack of engagement
(read: agreement with Clinton) on Israel? If the game were linking
deaths to a lack of presidential "engagement," Couric should have
asked: then wouldn't it be fair to say Clinton failed to prevent
the massacre at Srebrenica? Or the wholesale slaughter in Rwanda?
But Katie was silent.
Albright even claimed that attempts to expel or even assassinate
Yasser Arafat show Bush failure: "You know he is now the center of
attention, he's throwing kisses at people." But no one threw more
kisses at Yasser Arafat than the Clinton team, which invited him
into our presidential home more than any other foreign leader. But
Couric didn't ask about that, or about the Clinton record on
al-Qaeda. She stuck to an anti-Bush script: "Iraq....What went
wrong?"
CBS's "Early Show" also failed to challenge Albright with evidence
from recent books questioning the effectiveness of Clinton
anti-terror policy. Harry Smith could only ask like a pal: "In
your most quiet private moments, have you ever thought 'This is
the diplomatic do-over that I want back'?..if I could have the
opportunity to take one more crack at it, what would it be?" Cocky
Albright gave no examples, and had no September 11 regrets: "I
think I had a pretty good run."
Time magazine had more bouquets for Albright, swooning that there
was "hardly a hint of score-settling" in her memoir, and remarking
on her collection of "pins that make political statements." Time's
J.F.O. McAllister did ask if there was "neglect" by the
Clintonites on the terror threat, but that was just the exception
to the rule. He also inquired: "Bush's foreign policy started as
'Anything But Clinton' in almost every area -- the Middle East,
North Korea, China. Now events have pushed it back much closer to
your approach. Do you ever succumb to schadenfreude?" Albright
replied she couldn't delight in another's misfortune: "No, I'm
much too kind and generous a person."
Not every interview was supine. On "Meet the Press," NBC's Tim
Russert read from Richard Miniter's "Losing Bin Laden." On "Late
Edition," CNN's Wolf Blitzer brought up the conservative argument
that if the Democrats were in power, "Saddam Hussein would die of
old age before he were removed." Albright's answer: "Well, that
might not have been bad either." After all the mass graves and
children's prisons and horror stories, after all the revelations
of Saddam sheltering terrorists and paying off suicide bombers, a
continuation of all that "might not have been bad"? Thank God
she's gone.
Whoever said it was the liberals who were the idealists and the
humanitarians? They may parade their generous natures and good
intentions, but their foreign policy legacies are atrocious. No
wonder reporters want to ignore them.
END Reprint of third of four columns
> Bozell's October 2 column, "ESPN = P.C."
The media frenzy that pressed Rush Limbaugh's resignation from
ESPN's NFL pregame show has been amazingly intense when compared
to what was actually said. The entire sports/political culture
ought to take a deep breath? and relax.
Rush said that he thought Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan
McNabb has always been overrated because liberal sports reporters
are blinded by a desire to see a black quarterback succeed. Forget
the first part of this statement: Many (including me) would
disagree that McNabb has been overrated. If Rush had said only
that, he would have triggered a good old ESPN shouting match,
presumably what he was being paid to do.
It was the second part -- the media are rooting for McNabb to
succeed because he's black -- that did him in. Typical of the
ensuing firestorm was this comment from Sports Illustrated's Roy
Johnson, who told CBS: "To say that there's a social concern and a
belief to want black quarterbacks to do well is ludicrous."
Ludicrous? What's ludicrous is the denial.
Of course there is a social concern to see blacks break sports
barriers, and it's laughable to pretend otherwise. Would Tiger
Woods' arrival on the golf scene have garnered one-tenth the
publicity were he white? Sports writers nationwide chased him with
notebooks and microphones from Stanford straight into the PGA
because he was making history, and they openly applauded the
achievement. Who would try to deny that the same sentiment could
be found with the ascent of tennis superstars Venus and Serena
Williams from their poor and humble beginnings? To deny that our
sports media -- along with the public -- cheer for black progress
and greater black representation at the top of sports is folly.
And the same can be found in football. There are countless
examples -- we've all heard them -- of commentators, columnists,
and editorial writers agitating for more black coaches and
quarterbacks in the NFL. Last January 8, New York Times columnist
Selena Roberts did precisely that: "Didn't Michael Vick decode the
Falcons' system ahead of the normal curve? Didn't Donovan McNabb
prove he would decipher defenses from the Eagles' pocket after he
broke a spoke on his ankle? Hasn't Steve McNair managed to
outsmart defenders despite missing Titans practices because of
pain? As the playoffs have revealed, there's progress, but so
little change. There are proven black quarterbacks and coaches,
but race relations are running a reverse in the NFL."
Maybe that wasn't what got Rush in trouble. Maybe it was that he
had the temerity to slam the "liberal" sports writers. But again
Rush makes a defensible point: many sports writers are liberal and
use their sports forums to agitate politically.
After New York Times columnist Roberts finished praising the
prowess of Vick, McNabb, and McNair, she turned her guns on NFL
Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, who she dismissed as hopelessly white
("as culturally hip as Pat Boone"); stated the NFL "is still as
white as baking soda while teams ponder their openings;" and
accused the owners of using "Trent Lott logic; just because you
say 'what up, homey' doesn't mean you're inclusive." If that's not
liberal-think, what is it?
Washington Post columnist Michael Wilbon is a great read on his
sports page, great entertainment on TV, and also regularly liberal
politically in his sports reports. In 1995, Wilbon cheered NFL
star Kellen Winslow when he entered the Hall of Fame with a
political speech attacking Justice Clarence Thomas for opposing
racial quotas and "barring the government from doing the right
thing." Wrote Wilbon: "Winslow can be my Gipper any day. My hands
are still raw from the applause." Wilbon even cheered the arrival
of black sports stars at Louis Farrakhan's "Million Man March,"
and said of this spewing preacher and racist, anti-Semitic and
America-hating bilge: "So much of Farrakhan's message was
necessary and correct." None of this stopped ESPN from hiring
Wilbon for its daily show, "Pardon the Interruption."
One wishes Rush had explained himself better. Maybe it would have
mollified his critics had he explained that it is also in the
conservative impulse to cheer the achievements of barrier-breaking
blacks, so long as the achievement is real (Woods, Williams
sisters) and not construed (in Rush's analysis, McNabb). But
that's the stuff of three hour radio talk show discussions, not
seven-second TV soundbites. That mistake, coupled with the media's
unwavering commitment to political correctness, is what spurred
ESPN to grow queasy and hush Rush.
END Reprint of fourth of four columns
> Thursday night I attended the home opener of the Washington
Capitals NHL team. They won quite easily, 6-1, over the hapless
New York Islanders. Just 81 games to go until the playoffs. Then
again, the Caps won the home opener last year and it was downhill
from there.
-- Brent Baker
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