My Usual Charming Self

The Eason Jordan scandal at CNN brings to mind the reality that, as the song says, we live in two different worlds. One is concocted by activists and the mass media, the other by basic human observation. The problem is that the mass media are supposedly there to provide information to us lowly humans. But due to its blatant political slant, the net reality is that only a few people continue to rely on the mainstream press, meaning there is a data shortage in the commerce of political life.

This void is being filled by Bloggers, who seem to have more information on hand than gigantic world news organizations. The truth is they don’t. Bloggers simply observe events factually without interference from the institutionalized bias at the networks, major dailies and cable news channels. The exception is Fox News. To make the point that viewers are fed up with the mainstream press, Fox now has more viewers than all the other cable news outlets combined.

CNN is the oldest cable news channel with viewers worldwide that can set the news agenda as it chooses. So it is especially pertinent what its news chief thinks and says. Critics have maintained that the major outlets and CNN have an anti-American bias and Eason proved it at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in late January where he claimed that US forces in Iraq were responsible for the death of 12 journalists, adding that the press was targeted by the military. In other words, he accused the United States military of murder. Eason is now removed from his position, but the question remains: how did he get there, and why was he allowed to fulminate his nutty theories as head of CNN News?

CAMPUS INCUBATORS

To enter the ranks of the network and big city daily higher echelons, reporters and presenters, like Jordan, are required to hold certain views. These views are articulated on campus by the post-modern radicals in the arts and sciences and picked up at Journalism schools. The basic premise is that the United States is an imperialistic, racist, chauvinistic and homophobic society that strides arrogantly on the world stage to further its own malevolent ends, i.e. its own self-enrichment.

This point of view has a familiar ring. Gee, it is exactly what the Soviets said about America during the Cold War. The pinnacle of success of this propaganda was turning the US against itself during the Vietnam War. It was the American activist Left who became the puppets of the Soviets. Their cadres led the war on the home front against the US presence in Vietnam, and in the process unfurled the banner of anti-Americanism that has attached itself to the body politic. Just a glance at the literature of the so-called Movement during the 1960s and 1970s makes it clear that, to them, the real enemy of justice is America itself.

The leaders of the Movement are still in place and remain dedicated to the anti-American cause. Their most influential cells reside on college campuses where the campaign began. Dedicated still to the overthrow of Amerika, they have transformed academe, and consequently reporters, into converts who march into newsrooms with their anti-American credentials on their sleeves. There they are embraced by the old boys and girls from the heady days of the ’60s and ’70s who have by seniority defined the nature of the media beast. And woe to the principled and factual newsperson who does not conform to the party line. They find no love and no position and thus the news monolith lives on, unconcerned with the truth and dedicated to attacking their own country at every turn.

Eason Jordan was just one fallen soldier shot down by his own allegiance to the mission. He probably thinks he is a hero rather than the poor brainwashed pawn he really is.

Yet Jordan will fade away and be replaced by another marionette spawned in academe and infused with the revolution that will discard imperialistic America and replace it with the ideals of the utopian state.

Today, the mission is manifested in the politically correct, multicultural doctrine that teaches students that there is no absolute truth, that all things are relative, so why bother with standards and ethics? The poetry of North Korea is as good as Shakespeare and you would know that if you weren’t a victim of Western cultural imperialism that tells you the Old Bard is better. It goes on like this in class but it shows up in print and broadcast media too. I read a piece by an editor of a regional daily recently that point-blank said there is no truth and facts are a matter of opinion. No truth; no facts; no ethical standard; no measure of quality… this is the world they see and the one presented to you in the mainstream news.

BEYOND DAVOS

I was in Europe as the World Economic Form at Davos dominated the headlines there and made the news here. The themes for the heads of the world’s biggest companies to ponder were what to do about Africa, AIDS and global warming. I’m not sure what conclusions the world’s leading corporate executives reached, but here is my take on the issues:

Concerning Africa: The southern portion of the continent is still reeling from 50 years of de-colonization that thrust them into the hands of the Third World Movement—subsidized generously by Moscow and friends until 1992—in which wooly-headed theoretical socialism replaced the nuts and bolts of running an economy and creating strong political institutions. Now the Dark Continent is a bigger mess than ever, with power vacuums filling up with ad hoc armies terrorizing the countryside, assuring that political stability is far off into the future. So what can be done about Africa? Simple. Return to the concept of spheres of influence and establish links to richer nations who can restore order, create democratic institutions, kick-start import and export firms, provide technology for modernization and offer military protection from the predations of rogue armies and urban gangs.

Of course I hear certain pundits cry: Colonialism! But if I were an African, I’d be begging for the US, Britain, Holland, Germany—even France—to be my partner to lift me out of chaos. Paul Theroux, the often vitriolic, somewhat left-leaning and always overly objective travel writer, returned to Africa five years ago traveling from Cairo to Capetown by train. He hoped to revive his fond memories of his days there in the Peace Corps in the 1960s (a kind of colonialism itself) and instead found that the end of the presence of Western powers in Africa was its undoing. After the colonial powers pulled out, the communist nations raced in, leaving behind half-finished railways and airports, broken communications systems, no democratic institutions and a general lack of initiative. Read Dark Star Safari and then think about what to do to help Africa.

Concerning AIDS: This is Africa again actually. It started there and it continues to decimate the population, creating despair and hopelessness. If the Western powers came back in with spheres of influence agreements as in the old days, the prevention and treatment of AIDS would be accelerated ten-fold. To continue to pour money into corrupt societies in our desire to help, we only perpetuate the thievery and attendant violence aid money causes. If, let’s say, the UK went back in to an African country and took control of the infrastructure for a period of time, all the while training the locals in proper administration, poverty would begin to dissipate and AIDS would be under control. Leaving assistance in the hands of charitable and religious groups, who raced in when the communists failed and who have no power over the chaos of current African life, cannot clean up the mess in Africa.

Concerning global warming: Just in time, Danish scientist Bjorn Lomborg penned a piece in the Jakarta Post pointing out that the recently enacted Kyoto treaty is a criminal waste of money. Lomborg you remember for writing the book that upset the apple-cart of environmental activists and global warming devotees two years ago. The Skeptical Environmentalist disclosed the truth that most of the science bandied about to prove that the earth is on the verge of an ecological apocalypse was cooked up and has no scientific basis. Lomborg was crucified on campuses and in the media for telling the truth, resulting in a tribunal of his academic peers in Denmark that gathered to discredit his research and him personally for daring to go against the Green party line. The inquisition, hoping for the academic execution of the deviant scientist, instead found that Lomborg was actually right and the eco-partisans wrong.

Lomborg agrees that earth is getting warmer, but not due to the reasons that have banded nations into the useless Kyoto treaty. Ocean temperatures have been rising for a century, and will continue to rise in the foreseeable future so there is nothing tangible that spending $150 billion, as called for in the Kyoto treaty, can do. Instead, Lomborg says that combating poverty with this money can help poor nations build infrastructure to prevent massive damage from weather events. He cites the difference between Haiti and the US after the same series of hurricanes struck. In the US the damage and loss of life was minimal, while in Haiti, thousands perished. The difference was the ability of a rich nation to protect itself.

NOTES FROM LA-LA LAND

I know how Harvard president Lawrence Summers feels. Like him I innocently posed to a meeting of area teachers that there were problems in the system and found myself the victim of an NEA jihad that included a headline in the Raleigh daily: Speaker Insults Teachers. Summers simply asked a question: Why are there so few women in the sciences? He might as well have stripped naked and told a dirty joke based on the reaction he received. Now he is the object of a jihad for daring to mention the truth, a no-no on campus today. The home of academic freedom is now an armed camp where free speech is banned and individual opinions banished.

•••

Poor Prince Harry. He attended a masquerade party where invitees were asked to dress as former imperialists. He unwisely chose to wear a German uniform that included a swastika on the sleeve. Someone used a cell phone camera and sold the picture to the tabloids and all hell broke loose. His father Prince Charles was pilloried for not returning immediately from vacation to handle the “crisis”. Harry I’m sure did not know that his attire coincided with the 60th anniversary of Auschwitz.

•••

Attending Evensong at Cambridge on the day of the Iraq election I heard the chaplain offer a prayer for the brave Iraqis who risked their lives to vote. Afterward, I asked him: why not a prayer for the brave UK and US forces who risked their lives so the election could take place?

METRO EDITOR TO SPEAK