I just watched Aaron Brown give the most hostile interview
to Michael Wolff, a media critic for New York Magazine. Wolff is un-embedded,
in Qatar, which is to say the only stories he has access to are the possibly
true, possibly not stories to come out of CENTCOM and the Pentagon. Well,
he made the mistake of expressing skepticism about the war effort to Brown.
Now mind you, he did not say the war was going bad. (No CNN transcript
available yet as of this writing). He merely said that, given the discrepancy
between what the U.S. media is reporting and what the international media
is saying, he really has no idea whether the war is going well or disastrously.
He said that there is definitely a sense in the Qatar press corps that
the quick win that was promised is not happening. Brown asked incredulously,
well
who is saying it's going badly? Wolff said that the international
press was suggesting that perhaps this could be the beginning of a
quagmire.
He was careful to point out, however, that he was merely pointing out
that gulf between the US media and the rest of the world was so huge
he did not know what to make of it.
Prefacing his next question with something like "well maybe this isn't a
fair question" --(always a bad introductory statement, ranking up there with
in my book with "I don't mean to be a racist, but...")-- Brown then
read from his Rumsfeld Talking Points, saying something along the lines of
"we've only been in this a week and a day, who can judge whether things are
going well or not?" (again, I'm not quoting, I wasn't taking notes, -- I
just ran to the computer)).
Now, on the face of it, this might not seem so offensive a statement. It's
true, no one can say for certain the war is going badly. Wolff's point,
as I understood it, however, was that no one could say it was going well
either, unless you were just buying Rumsfled Talking Points hook line and
sinker.
You see, not that long ago, people like Dick Cheney were suggesting that
the battles would be easy and the Americans would be greeted as
liberators.
As Dailykos ha said,
"oops."
Rumsfeld had to backtrack on these administration "it'll be a
cakewalk " assertions
in his briefing on his March 25
briefing.
A glimpse:
Rumsfeld: And it is -- it was one o'clock (pause) --
Q: Thursday.
(Pause continues.)
Rumsfeld: -- Friday --
Q: Friday.
Rumsfeld: -- that the air war began. (Laughter, cross talk.) It even
seems like weeks to me. (Laughter.)
The administration is
now saying the war might take longer (even as
the vice-president, who when last I checked was a rank or so above the Secretary
of Defense), was just recently saying something else. And Aaron
Brown repeats the Republican Guard, er, Republican Talking Points faithfully.
All together now,
what
liberal media?
Given Brown's defensiveness, you'd think Wolff had written this scathing
piece of media criticsm been about CNN, not
FOX.
Oh, wait, that's right, CNN is trying to
be FOX. Never
mind, I understand.
