Tales Of The Bizarro World
Topic: Satire
It seems to me that at a time like this the CBS news non-story is extremely problematic not to CBS but to all the other news organizations who have been repeatedly failing to do their jobs. Just in case you haven't heard or don't know about what has happened at CBS let me explain. A politically motivated gentlemen handed CBS producers a couple of forged documents to REINFORCE a case that they already had, heaping atop the evidence that showed that our President is indeed an irresponsible coward who went AWOL from the National Guard. The documents were forged, the rest of the story was true. Did "concerned" citizens seize upon the veracity of the rest of the story? No. The story became about forged documents and not about the hypocrisy of a, pardon the french, pussy President, who's political operatives were going around calling a decorated Vietnam war vet, a traitor. Only in "bizarro world".
What's ironic about this whole thing is that it has been recently reported by USA Today that a conservative pundit by the name of Armstrong Williams has accepted $240,000 from the Bush administration's Department of Education to "promote" No Child Left Behind. The irony is that the Bush administration acknowledges this taxpayer funded "covert propaganda" with a shrug and a statement:
"permissible use of taxpayer funds under legal government contracting procedures."
The Dan Rather/CBS story didn't affect my life at all but my taxes paid Armstrong Williams and who knows how many other conservative pundits to promote a Bush administration governmental program. Add to all this that the CBS non-story is probably going to lead to journalists, who by and large have taken an extended break from being journalists, to be less aggressive and more concerned with losing their jobs. This means that we all should expect to see more "news" stories about J.Lo and Paris Hilton and whether or not a love triangle was the reason for the breakup between Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston. These types of stories should continue to dominate the news headlines, at least until CNN gets some forged documents from an romantically-motivated Angela Jolie, forever ruining the perception of news agencies as being "fair and balanced" and always right, all the time. Then we can expect news to include stories about the sky being blue and water being wet. This will all continue until a left-leaning President is elected and then the same conservatives that are calling for the heads of CBS news producers will be asking for a return to investigative journalism so that we can get to the bottom of cigars, dresses, interns and white lies.