CNN - The Voice of the Bush Administration; We Just Saw the Unseen

[Michael Tee]

Just finished watching CNN "News" (yeah, right!  That's what they actually call it, "news") examine the Turkish reaction to the Armenian Genocide issue.  An interview with three talking heads.  One, some babe in a red shirt who appeared to be Turkish or Middle Eastern (admittedly I walked in in the middle of this travesty) and she was basically explaining as repetitively as possible that the Turkish people were very angry.  They were proud people. They were angry proud people.  Proud and angry.  Angry and proud.  I think if I understood her correctly, she was saying that the Turks were a very proud people who were incredibly angry over the barbaric conduct of American legislators using very harsh language in referring to past Turkish massacres of Armenians.  Then next to her (on a split screen) some forty-ish Turkish guy explaining how the Turks could fuck up the American effort in Iraq AND Afghanistan, and they would do it, too, because they were very proud.  And angry.  They were, I believe he said, both angry and proud.  Very proud.  Very angry.  You get the picture.  Then next to him, in the split screen at the extreme right, some spiffy-looking thirty-ish American guy with shiny black hair and an attitude.  Not really GREAT hair, like on afternoon soaps, but not bad either.  He represented the Bush administration.  This was a bad time for this resolution.  Very bad time for it.  Now was not a good time for the resolution.   The House couldn't have picked a worse time.  The timing was awful.  This just was not the right time.  I think I got what he was driving at.  He was what the Bushies like to call "staying on message."  And staying and staying and staying.

Then when the three of them vanished from my sight and hearing, there was Nancy Pelosi.  Was this a bad time for the resolution? the fearless Anderson Cooper asked her.  "No time is a good time," was Nancy's fearless answer.  Some more equally inane chitchat followed, then I had to leave the room.

I loved the three talking heads.  Not a single representative of the Armenian people amongst 'em.  Not a word about the actual wording of the resolution, what it commemorated.  An idiot watching the show (I got the feeling there had to be a LOT of idiots watching THAT show - - I myself felt like an idiot for not banishing them from my screen in the first twenty or so seconds)  - - and that none of them would even know what a genocide was, let alone that the what was making the proud Turks so angry was an old, old genocide, let alone that a million and a half Armenian men, women and children had been butchered for no reason whatsoever other than for being who they were.

But I also got the feeling that somebody very powerful in America was very, very angry at the resolution just passed in committee, and wanted very badly to stop it.  So badly that his minions in the "free" press of the "freeest" nation in the free world were presenting only the most one-sided version possible as to what was going on in the Congress.  The charade of a free and independent press was suspended because there was too much at stake.  The Boss doesn't often tell the networks so explicitly what they gotta do, but this time it was really blatantly in your face.  There is no possible doubt about it - - there is nothing at all "free" in the so-called "news" that Americans are fed.  Somebody is setting the agenda and rationing out just how much independent thought you are allowed at any particular time.  Tonight I saw the face of Big Brother.

[BT]

Either that or the timing was incredibly bad and could put our troops in harms way.

Now i know you could give a lip about the troops but the american voters have repeatedly stated they do.

[sirs]

Touche', Bt     

[Michael Tee]

<<Either that or the timing was incredibly bad and could put our troops in harms way.>>

No, BT, this time I am going to agree with you.  The timing WAS bad.  It DID put your troops in harm's way.  (Not that they don't deserve to be wiped out to the last man, but that's another story.)

My beef is not with the timing.  It's with the presentation of the news.  From the POV of the "President," that resolution has to vanish into the dustbin of history.  Now.  Yesterday.  My point was that here you have what is ostensibly a "news" outlet effectively acting as the "President's" mouthpiece.  Not even the pretence of objectivity.  Not even a token representative of the other side of the story.  Your MSM is REALLY under government control, and as much objectivity as you manage to see there is as much as the government ALLOWS you to have.  So much for the "free press" theory.

[BT]

If the MSM were under govt control Bush's approval numbers would be in the high 70's.

The real story is the insensitivity of some congressman as to the real consequences to their actions.

[_JS]

It has been noted that the Bush Administration prefers CNN to release information. What effect this has on CNN's overall news coverage, I'm not sure.

If the MSM were under govt control Bush's approval numbers would be in the high 70's.

I disagree there. Even in the Warsaw Pact states they could not, and often did not attempt to, hide public opinion. The media were used to shape public opinion and obviously towards the Government's viewpoint, but many leaders became terribly unpopular with the people and were replaced for that very reason. Popular opinion was monitored rather closely in many of those states with a few notable exceptions.

[Michael Tee]

<<If the MSM were under govt control Bush's approval numbers would be in the high 70's. >>

That's not true at all.  First of all, the government can't often be SEEN to exert control, so they only crack the whip once in a while, which is what made the incident I wrote of so notable.  We actually SAW the Wizard.  The rest of the time it's much more subtle, they'll usually "balance" two middle-roaders with one (often silly and ineffective) left-of-centre schmuck who spends most of his or her time trying to placate the other two schmucks trying to prove that he or she loves Amerika just as much as they do.

JS gave a good example as well.

I once had a very intelligent and capable assistant from an Eastern bloc country.  She said that she found that the people in her home country were actually much better informed than North Americans about many world events and she attributed this to the fact that the people there knew that their so-called "news" was heavily censored and often purely fictitious, and so had learned to read between the lines and put two and two together, whereas the North Americans, believing that they had a free press, just lapped up whatever the corporate media fed them, with little or no critical analysis.

The government could very well manage the news AND show a 30% approval rating.  The effect of the management would show in the fact that Bush had escaped being lynched by his own subjects.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The Congress can be insensitive to the Turks or insensitive to the Armenians in California, who are incredibly rich and have been lobbying for this for decades. Every year they get richer, and their prospective donations get larger. This is about campaign donations from wealthy Armenians to US politicians, most of whom are Democrats.

All the Turks who committed the unspeakable acts against the Armenians are dead. Nearly all the Armenian victims are also deceased. There is no resolution possible that will punish the dead Turkish soldiers, or bring Mardarosian's, Karadosian, and Kevorkian's grandmother back to the land of the living. There was no such thing recognized as 'genocide' until 1944.

The Kurds in the PKK who are seeking refuge in Iraqi Kurdistan (where the Iraqi national flag has been banned from public display) are alive. The Turks that the PKK attacks are also alive. The US troops that are guarding Kurdistan are also alive. If the Turks get really pissed, they can block US supply lines. They can attack the Kurds that run Iraqi Kurdistan, too.

Is is in any way possible that a comdemnation of the Ottoman Turks (Turkish hero Kemal Pasha, aka Ataturk was one of those Ottoman soldiers) would prevent any future genocide, anywhere?  I fail to see how this could happen. We know all about genocide from the bazoilions of Holocaust movies, documentaries and TV shows. There has also been a three-part Armenian genocide TV series. And yet, these did nothing to stop the Pol Pot massacres in Cambodia, or the mass murders of Hutus in Rwanda.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                The US really needs its base in Turkey. Pelosi is correct when she says that 'there is never a good time". and it is clear that the Ottoman Turks were guilty as charged. Even though the crime they were guilty of did not actually exist at the time.

This is a diplomatic situation very badly in need  of a really good diplomatic solution. Everyone mostly could be appeased with a nice stroking.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

[Amianthus]

It has been noted that the Bush Administration prefers CNN to release information. What effect this has on CNN's overall news coverage, I'm not sure.

George must be good buddies with Jane Fonda's ex.

[Michael Tee]

<<This is a diplomatic situation very badly in need  of a really good diplomatic solution. Everyone mostly could be appeased with a nice stroking.>>

The Turks could just bite the bullet and say, Yes it was genocide, yes our ancestors were guilty as charged, yes it was a godawful crime and yes we are sorry.  What is the big fucking deal?  I don't care how rich some Armenians became in California, they're entitled to an apology and they're entitled to hear the Turks acknowledge their people's suffering.  I'm sick and tired of hearing how "proud" and "angry" the Turks are about all this, their country was in the wrong and this is as good a time as any to make amends.  Anything less than that is a fucking insult.

I don't have the source for this, but I remember reading that during discussions of the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem, some Nazi warned Hitler that Germany would bear the blame for a massacre for a long, long time, to which Hitler's answer was "Nonsense.  Who today remembers the Armenians?"  There's no good reason NOT to remember the Armenians, Turkey's "pride" and "anger" notwithstanding.

[Plane]

There are still Armenians and they are still hurt even if it was only their grandmother that was killed.


This resolution has been around for a long time , what made the thing rise to the top now?


This is a truly inconvenient truth.

[Amianthus]

This resolution has been around for a long time , what made the thing rise to the top now?

The Democrats are making sure the important business gets taken care of...

[sirs]

This resolution has been around for a long time , what made the thing rise to the top now?

The Democrats are making sure the important business gets taken care of...

D'OH     

Seriously though, I heard someone reference that if the Dems were so SURE that the war is wrong, that the citizens of America believe its wrong, the Dems have the absolute LEGAL and jurisdictional means of bringing this war to an end.  Do they?? 

Instead, they postulate all this hyperbolic innuendo, toothless resolutions that don't even make it to the floor for a vote, and in this case, try to rile up a strong local ally we have, in this war on terror, that way they're hands are relatively politically clean, with any fall-out.  In other words, they want the issue, and they want to keep using it, just like this latest SCHIPS bill, to simply bash Bush

[sirs]

[_JS]

So, do you believe the Armenian killings were not genocide or not the fault of Turkey (as the Turkish claim) Sirs?