The sorry thing about the State Department v. Anderson Cooper fooferaw is that it's just one more symptom of the Obama Administration's obsession with operating in utter secrecy.
One of the many reasons not to vote for Obama is that, after promising transparency, his administration surpassed its predecessor as the most secretive in the nation's history.
Citizens are entitled to know what their government is doing and why. Quit playing coy about your damned drones; this isn't a game. You're killing civilian men, women and children by remote control. The American people are entitled to know that and, if they choose, as they should, to demand that you tell them why you're doing it.
Quit playing coy about your spying on American citizens, poking into our telephone calls, e-mails, bank accounts and travels. It's our law, our Constitution, you're trampling on.
Quit your pious warnings to other countries about violations of human rights and tend to the atrocities in your own back yard: torture, rendition, endless incarceration without charges.
Cooper dared to peel back a tiny piece of the black shroud behind which our government operates when CNN got hold of a personal journal written by the U.S. ambassador slain in a consulate in Libya. Of course CNN did what any news organization worth its salt would do before returning it to the victim's family: looked inside to see if there was anything newsworthy in there.
There was. CNN again did what any news organization worth its salt would do: sent reporters to independently verify the news tips in the journal. Then it reported truthfully on what its reporters learned.
Foggy Bottom went berserk. How dare a news organization actually report news about us! What good Washington reporters are supposed to do is regurgitate the pabulum and propaganda we shovel out to them, no questions asked. Everybody inside the beltway knows that.
It's a sad state of affairs when a television performer like Cooper has to remind the mainstream media what real journalists are supposed to do. Sadder still that it happens so seldom.
When a government is as committed to secrecy and presidential power as this one is, and the free press reneges on its responsibilities, as today's media have, the people have two choices: accept their slide toward virtual slavery, or rebel.
By militarizing the domestic branches of security and public safety, mostly in secret, the government has assured itself, according to a (secret, of course) government study, that it is in a position to suppress by armed force any attempt at revolution by the people of the United States.
And if you think that's bad, wait till next year. The corporatocracy marches on.
"Don't tell Momma I'm a journalist; say I play the piano in a whorehouse."
