Pay No Attention to the Tacky Draperies

There's a lot not to miss about the ol' whorehouse.  I look in on it every now and then to make certain this is still true.

It is.

Take the Old Gray Lady herself, the one that boasts about having all the news that's fit to print.

Here are the headline and first paragraph of the lead article in her Sunday national edition:

      While Warning About Fat,
       U.S. Pushes Cheese Sales

       When sales of Domino’s Pizza were lagging, a government agency stepped in with 

       advice: more cheese. This is the same government that, for health reasons, is advising

       less cheese. 

Is this the weightiest issue you could find for Page One?  The next couple of paragraphs read like a commercial for the pizza chain. 

 C'mon man!

* * *

The other big flap in the media for the last couple of days is the suspension, without pay, of Keith Olbermann by MSNBC. The suspension was imposed ostensibly because, by contributing to the campaign funds of three Democratic candidates in the recent election, Olbermann violated a policy of NBC News. I never for a moment believed that what Keith Olbermann does (or Rachel Maddow, or that matter, even though I am a fan of both) is "news."  What they do is provide an antidote to what Fox News does --which isn't "news" either. All of these people are entertainers with propagandist agendas.  Contemporary events provide a framework for their entertainments.  It's all in good fun and some of the opinions expressed by Olbermann and Maddow, in particular, have merit intellectually and ethically.

But it strikes me as unrealistic to try  to hold propagandists to the same standards as journalists. When I was reporting or editing news, I made it a point of pride in my craft not to donate to politicians, political parties, or special interests.  I honestly don't recall if such donations were prohibited by the organizations I worked for.

Some of my colleagues went so far as to refuse to register by party affiliation; some even refused to vote.  But we were doing our best to do real journalism, which virtually nobody on television even attempts any more. So what's the fuss?  Are we supposed to be surprised and shocked to learn that Keith supports Democrats?  Or that what Fox offers as "news" is pure Republican propaganda?

C'mon man!

* * *

The news columns of the Wall Street Journal once contained some of the best print journalism around, as if to compensate for the distortions and dishonesty of the paper's editorial and op-ed pages.  But in the days before this election, the Journal's news department joined those of the New York Times and other media in serious treatments of the Tea Party as a spontaneous grassroots movement.  Unlimited funding by the Koch Brothers (big oil), and a blueprint drawn up by Frank Luntz and Fred Malek (big lies) -- this is grassroots?

C'mon man!

* * *

One of the Sunday talk shows featured a discussion, presented as "journalism," with Republican Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, author of what the GOP calls "tax reform."  Under this plan, the taxes of the 20 per cent of Americans with the lowest incomes would increase 12.3%.  The 20% of Americans with the next-lowest incomes would increase  by 7.7%. The next  20%, in ascending order, of American incomes would be taxed at a 4.5% higher rate.  The next 20% would see see their tax rates rise by 2% (people in roughly the $50,000 to $90,000 a year bracket). Got that? The eight out of ten Americans with incomes under $100,000 would have their taxes increased.  But the next wealthiest 5% of Americans, who average $148,000 per year income, would have their tax rate cut by 1.6%. The four per cent of Americans who earn between $178,000 and $400,000 per year, would get a 4.2 per cent tax cut.  And the wealthiest one per cent of Americans, whose average income is $1.4 million per year, would receive a 15% tax cut. Nobody on the panel of "journalists" talking with Mr. Ryan found anything exceptional in all of this.

C'mon man.

The Mother Country Raises the Bar

My London correspondent reports that a recent election for a seat in Parliament has been invalidated and will be re-run.  The reason is that an investigating commission found that some of the things the winning candidate said about his opponent were untrue!

Your Pianist and a band of co-conspirators have begun their own investigation to determine how many of the recent election contests in the United States would pass such an honesty test.

Apparently the same question about the colonies came up in England, too, because our London correspondent suggested looking at a city council race in Minneapolis, where it was rumoured that neither candidate had lied about the other.

That contest, in the city's 11th ward, was won by a former marketing services consultant named John Quincy.  Your Pianist is skeptical that anyone trained in American marketing techniques could go an entire day, let alone an entire election campaign, without uttering a falsehood.  However, the investigation continues and no smoking gun has yet been found.

Later reports from London hinted that it wasn't Minneapolis but Cleveland that had a city council race in which no lies were told.  Once again, however, skepticism is in order.  A centerpiece of the Cleveland council's 2010-2011 programme is to expand the city's automated trash collection system to another 25,000 residents.  In a city with that much trash to collect, surely it's likely that at least some of the waste would be leftover lies from the electioneering.  Political billboards alone could account for the excess garbage.

If not Minneapolis or Cleveland, then where in American might there have been an election in which the candidates uttered only truth about their opponents (or themselves)?  We can immediately rule out Chicago, Detroit and the entire state of Texas. (In El Paso they even falsified the wording of an initiative question.) Add Iowa, where they tossed out three judges who ruled that gay and lesbian citizens have the same rights as heterosexual ones.

As a resident of New Mexico, I can attest that no lie-free race took place here.  And since the prevailing winds are from the west, the foul odors prior to Nov. 2 erased any doubt about Arizona, as well. 

As word spread of the Pianist's Diogenes Commission and its hunt for an American election free of falsehoods, tips from citizens poured in.  So far the most promising one is that an election in Murdock, Neb., took place without  so much as a fib being uttered. Our investigators will look into this as soon as they find Murdock, Neb.

Lawyers for party organizations in several states have issued challenges to the findings of the Diogenes Commission even before there are any findings.  "One man's lie is another man's Texas textbook," a Little Rock Republican lawyer said. "We're splitting etymological hairs here. Politicians in Arkansas can't even agree on what the definition of 'is' is."

You can see what we're up against.