I refer to this commentary
by Jake Tapper, billed as CNN’s “Chief Washington Correspondent” …
“I say this as an American -- not as a journalist, not as a representative of CNN -- but as an American: I was ashamed … [skip] … I find it hard to believe that collectively President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Attorney General Eric Holder -- who was actually in France that day for a conference on counterterrorism -- just had no time in their schedules on Sunday.”
Here is
another manufactured controversy - sensationalized and repeated
ad nauseam - that neither informs nor uplifts the public at a time
when positive back-stories are needed most. Who gives a damn what Jake Tapper thinks … as an American
(he does not speak for me), as a journalist (petty sniping is not journalism),
or as a representative of CNN (which fails to rise above the Faux News caricature).
The headline of President
Obama as a no-show is the one that sticks in the mind. Yet, imbedded within his
commentary is Jake Tapper’s half-assed stab at appearing 'fair and balanced' ...
“I find it hard to believe that Speaker of the House John Boehner and new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had more worthy pursuits on Sunday than standing side-by-side with our French brothers and sisters … [skip] … I'm frankly floored that not one of the people who is contemplating running for president in 2016 has yet to even tweet on the subject … [skip] … Chris Christie, Scott Walker and Paul Ryan attended the Green Bay-Dallas football game Sunday … [skip] … And Jeb? Mitt? Crickets.”
Why
headline the Commander-in-Chief as Deadbeat-in-Chief when our entire political
establishment appears vapidly unexceptional at street theater.
“In the days after the bloody end of twin French hostage crises Friday, stories of life-saving courage are beginning to filter out. One of the most striking is the story of Lassana Bathily, a young immigrant from Mali who literally provided police with the key to ending the hostage crisis at the supermarket.
Bathily was in the store's underground stockroom when gunman Amedy Coulibaly burst in upstairs, according to accounts given to French media and to a friend of Bathily's who spoke to The Associated Press. Bathily turned off the stockroom's freezer and hid a group of frightened shoppers inside before sneaking out through a fire escape to speak to police. Initially confused for the attacker, he was forced to the ground and handcuffed.
Once police realized their mistake, he provided them with the key they needed to open the supermarket's metal blinds and mount their assault.”
Here is the story of
a Muslim immigrant who put aside ethnocentric tribalism to save lives - Jewish lives. More than ever, we need this story to counter bigotry, to help prevent
a backlash against Muslim communities, and to stop the endless cycles of recrimination and
revenge. Now is not the
time for self-serving narratives steeped in nationalism, exceptionalism and narcissism. We need stories about heroes and positive role models such as Lassana Bathily - and less Jake Tapper claptrap.
And of course the Paris cop who we had to watch being shot over and over again, lying on the ground with his hands raised in surrender was a Muslim too. And of course Muslims were killed in the attack on Manhattan.
ReplyDeleteWe need however, in our quest to be sure nobody blames the innocent, that we are not sweeping the very concept of responsibility under the rug. I'm not reading about reprisals against the innocent, I'm reading about Islamist brutality all over the world against Muslims and Infidels alike every day. Islamic neighborhoods here and in Europe are recruiting sources and hiding places for terrorism. Nobody is talking about rounding up the innocent just as nobody went after the parents of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
We can't get around the fact that Islamic populations in Europe and in America are hiding places and recruitment centers and training grounds for terrorism. Who is asking for anything but to help decent people to rid their neighborhoods of murderous mullahs, bomb builders and hate mongers? Even the formerly Liberal Dutch are experiencing growing right wing sentiment because of the difficulty with their Muslim populations who want to live there but vigorously oppose freedom for others. It's not an imaginary problem. It's real. We will have to deal with this fairly and peacefully, but we risk becoming tragically liberal. There are those who think it's terrible that we killed Osama Bin Laden for example.
This is what I am PISSED OFF about:
ReplyDeleteTed Cruz Slams Obama For Not Attending Paris March
And this …
Republican Congressman Randy Weber Compares Obama To Hitler, who says:
"Even Adolph Hitler thought it more important than Obama to get to Paris. (For all the wrong reasons.) Obama couldn't do it for right reasons," Weber said in a tweet, referring to Germany's occupation of Paris in 1940.
All Jake Tapper accomplished was feed the ObamaMania machine with more bombast, more hyperbole, more defamation, and more polarizing rhetoric. Pointless! Mindless! Madness!
I could vomit!
Yes me too - CNN had become Fox Lite
DeleteAnd how does this kind of partisan verbal terrorism solve the problem of radical Islamic terrorism? It doesn't.
ReplyDeleteNo, it doesn't and solving problems is not on CNN's agenda. They are there to hype up the rage for profit.
ReplyDeleteI just want to assert that it's not our fault no matter how many wrong things our governments have done and it's not justified. Cutting off support would do something and we know who is supporting it "lone wolf" or otherwise.
"I just want to assert that it's not our fault ..."
DeleteAgreed, it's not our fault. Nevertheless, we put on blinders if we fail to look at history for possible causes or explanations. Perhaps I can resolve the conundrum this way: An explanation is never an excuse.
If I were the president I would have been there. But I'm not, nor is anyone else. Therefore I suppose what I or the other folks who honestly think he should have been there have to say really doesn't matter.
ReplyDeleteLeadership is sometimes about perceptions and nuance. I missed opportunity and IMO one that should not have been missed.
From commentary I read in French newspapers, very few people in France are especially bothered Рone way or the other - by the absence of President Obama or other officials in failing to attend the rally at Place de la R̩publique. Having lived in France during the 1990s, I know something about French attitudes.
DeleteThe American Revolution and the French Revolution are the twin historical engines of political and social change that brought principles of the Enlightenment and human rights into the mainstream of Western thought. Nowhere is this legacy more keenly felt and practiced than in France. Hence, the phenomenon of Charlie Hebdo, a style of satirical journalism that has no rival in the United States.
To this day, the French tend to be far more ‘laissez-faire’ and non-conformist in their attitudes than most Americans. In France as in most of Europe, ‘optics’ and symbolism are considered empty gestures without substance; and no one doubts American resolve in the struggle against terrorism.
In this context, I should mention a fundamental hypocrisy of the American rightwing - always short on historical memory but long on carrying grudges. If you peruse the rightwing blogosphere, you will read references to “Freedom Fries” and lingering resentments over Jacques Chirac’s refusal to join Bush’s war in Iraq.
As a conscript in the French Foreign Legion serving in Algeria, Chirac knew something about Middle Eastern fanaticism that Bush refused to consider. Decades of colonialism and successive military occupations tend to radicalize local populations. The outcome of Bush’s misadventure is now history, and the world has been paying a terrible price ever since.
A terrible price indeed and I have to wonder what things would be like if we had not shocked and awed Iraq back to the stone age. What can they feel but contempt for France when they turned out to be right that there were no WMD? Nothing makes you hate someone more than when they prove to have been right and you weren't. No, Bush didn't know a Sunni from a Mooney and so appealed to a nation of dummies.
Delete"... so appealed to a nation of dummies."
DeleteSpeaking of dumbshit Americans who would believe anything, it starts with dumbshit politicians who would say anything:
There Would Be No ISIS If Mitt Was Prez;
There would be No Ebola if Mitt Romney were Prez;
There Would Be No Shutdown If Mitt Had Been Elected President;
Mitt would run ObamaCare Better Than Obama.
The Vomit Comic
Tapper is just practicing a narcissistic form of "Gotcha!" journalism. By saying "...as an American, I...," he obliquely implies Mr. Obama is not a real American, because "as an American," as a real American, he would have gone. And no, I don't care what Tapper would have done "as an American." Or as a lump of foie gras.
ReplyDeleteI just don't watch CNN any more except for that series with Tony Bourdain. They chew stories to death and then drop them when another comes along and nearly all the world's events go unreported.
ReplyDeleteI recommend Aljazeera - seriously. and they have people all over the world and don't have to keep running the same second hand clips over and over. Much more news, much less speculation.. Fair and balanced, I might say.
Anthony Bourdain and Fareed Zakaria are the only CNN people I watch after so many bitter disappointments. Everything else about CNN is rubbish. For news, I read the BEEB and the Thompson-Reuters News Service. Recently, I added Aljazeera and Haaretz (cross-referencing their respective opinion sections).
DeleteMy younger brother watches Aljazeera and has made the same observations/recommendation. I catch it
Deleteoccasionally and I do like Reuters. Every so often I check
in with Hastert.
Mostly stay away from CNN and watch Fox Opinion Network occasionally to stay abreast of the looney faction.
Believe it or not Memorandum is a good source as it has a good cross section of news and views.
I wonder if TeeVee isn't becoming irrelevant for those looking for actual information.
DeleteA small piece of satisfaction, Jeremy Scahill (an investigative journalist and war correspondent who has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen, among other regions), said this today - live on CNN:
ReplyDelete“"Some of your paid analysts that you have on this network or other networks, basically are just making money off of the claim that they're experts on terrorism and really don't have the scholarly background or on-the-ground experience to justify being on your network or any other network."
The same comment can also apply to Jake Tapper.
Paul Waldman of The American Prospect on this subject:
ReplyDelete"Maybe my memory's faulty, but I don't recall any other journalist committed to the ideal of "objectivity" saying he was "ashamed" about the fact that millions of Americans have no health coverage, or about the 30,000 Americans killed by guns every year, or about our ample contributions to global warming...But you can say you're ashamed about something entirely symbolic—and in the long run essentially meaningless—like the fact that the American ambassador attended a march when it would have a bigger deal had the Secretary of State or the Vice President been there.
That isn't to say that symbolism is unimportant. Much of politics is about the creation and dissemination of symbols. But what exactly is the damage that has been done by the fact that a (supposedly) insufficiently high-ranking American official represented our government at this event? Will the peoples of the world no longer believe that America is an advocate for freedom of speech, or that Americans abhor terrorism? I doubt it."
well, I did offer to go in Obama's place.....it was rather unanimous,though, that I stay at home. Someone has to guard the cheese, .....the cheese cannot stand alone!!!
ReplyDeleteCome on folks........Obama's handlers fucked up on this one......just admit it and move on.....by next week it will be forgotten.....
ReplyDeleteThe president’s failure to attend a street rally is not a controversy in which I am invested, one way or the other. There are urgent and far more pressing concerns - such as national security and public safety – and I would rather have the president on the job as opposed to distractions of street theater. No one in Europe– no country or head of state – doubts the support of Obama in the fight against terrorism.
DeleteIn hyper-partisan times, there will always be critics of the president. If a partisan says something defamatory or inflammatory, the onus of responsibility falls upon the author making the claim, not necessarily upon the person who becomes the object of the attack. There are always two choices. You can either …
1- Refute the claim or
2- Ignore the claim
If you are very busy with urgent matters, the better part of valor is to ignore the sniping and not waste valuable time. So why should Obama - or anyone - feel obligated to respond to slush-on-demand. The most overindulgent sniping does not always deserve a response.
The most overindulgent sniping does not always deserve a response.
DeleteAnd ammunition is getting so expensive