October 15, 2001

 

THE BACILLUS AS THE CURE

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Earlier this month, several journalists, including NBC's Tom Brokaw, stated in no uncertain terms that they were in favor of a flag ban for on-air reporters. As Brokaw told Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism:

"I don't think a journalist ought to be wearing a flag, because it does seem to be, to me at least, a sign of solidarity toward whatever the government is doing, and that is not our role." He added, "I'm a patriot, and I think being a patriot means [to] love your country but think you can always improve it. And part of my role as a journalist is to ask questions and to examine the issues that will lead to some improvement of the country."

And here I thought that the flag represented the country, not the government, as if that matters when your country is brutally and deliberately attacked. Exactly what is wrong with showing solidarity with your government during wartime? Isn't that just what your "Greatest Generation" did during World War II, Tom?

Perhaps, there is a large gap between profiteering from ancestor worship and figuring out the realities of the present. Inexplicably, the World Trade Center attack did not resonate with Brokaw, even though the devastation occurred only a few miles from his office.

Go ahead, Tom, and ask all the questions you want, especially now, when someone sent you a letter containing a bit of anthrax bacilli. Now, it's personal. What better way to disengage the head from the anus of another over-pampered media elite? I guess the execs at NBC have a thing for sincere looking nitwits with annoying speech impediments. Who would have thought that the man we used to make fun of by saying, "Light plane plummeted," in his signature fractured manner, would graduate from local Los Angeles newscasts to network anchor?

Yet again, we have a celebrity who made it big beyond all reason and native ability, who should be thanking God every day for his good fortune. Instead, he prefers to spout off to information mandarin class wannabees about some kind of icy detachment, as if everyone doesn't already know that he is just another liberal hack.

Since the unfortunate victim of this attack was not Brokaw himself, but an assistant who, it appears, received only a skin infection, there is still a chance that he might not comprehend that he can no longer be neutral. No matter, though, since all the media have closed their mail rooms.

Isn't closing the mail rooms interfering with the free exchange of ideas? How quickly they change from neutral observer to activist victim! Suddenly, the golden theory is trumped by practicality. You can bet that all the overblown pencil necks and stuck-up news chicks were quickly looking REAL hard for some government agency that they could develop all kinds of solidarity with, to protect them from Bacillus anthracis.

There are some on the Right, such as Michael Savage, who are greatly incensed by the lackluster support, or even outright hostility shown to the Bush administration's efforts during this time of national crisis. He thinks that something should be done about it.

Something was. Anthrax.


 

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