American Credulity and the Attacks on the Press:
Look, here's the deal on the whole NSA-spyin', bank-record-and-rectum-probin', listenin'-in-on-yer-"Dial a Namibian Man-Whore"-international-callin', secrets-revealin' New York Times, oh-motherfuck-the-fuckin'-sky-is-fallin', national-security-damagin' bull-fuckin'-shit: Prove it. Fuckin' prove it. The Rude Pundit's sick and tired of the mad levels of credulity we're all expected to have.
Check it out: here's Jonah Goldberg today (and, remember, motherfucker writes for the Los Angeles Times, which has garnered virtually no heat for publishing its story about the financial transaction searches), writing about the NSA communications net-toss: "These revelations caused serious damage to America's ability to work with allies to fight terrorism and arguably put lives in danger." This is in a column taking the press to task for publishing classified information, where he mocks the Plame leak uproar and the Pulitzers received by reporters for revealing the NSA spying. Yet recognizing irony is not Goldberg's strong suit. Indeed, if irony bit Jonah Goldberg on his bloated ass and then waved its hands and screamed, "Look at me, I'm irony," Goldberg still wouldn't see it.
'Cause you'd think that Goldberg (even though, yes, he's a columnist and therefore allegedly not held to the same standards as "journalists") might wanna offer just a scintilla, just a little microbe of proof that any of the Times's revelations have damaged one goddamned bit of "America's ability" to "fight terrorism."
In fact, has anyone seen any evidence of this other than the words of crazed, feces-tossin' members of Congress and the slithery smirk-grunts of the Vice President telling us it's so? What's worse is the pride in ignorance that the right wing media takes in presenting us these words as facts. It's like watching macrame' day at the school for very special kids, all of them just so damn happy that they can hold the yarn steady, let alone make a knot, without stabbing each other with pins or scissors.
Hugh Hewitt, prissy wad of fuck though he is, actually takes a stab at making the Times banking story have meaning. Says Hewitt, "The Indonesian master terrorist Hambali was captured through the SWIFT program." Now, while you may sit there and think, "Mmmm, hamball," Hewitt undermines his own "argument" in the very next sentence: "He was apprehended in August of 2003, months after a general commitment to following the money was announced and even some obscure references to SWIFT had made their way into print, proving that even if you know the city is looking for speeders, it doesn’t mean every scofflaw knows where the speed traps and cameras are located."
Hewitt, of course, means that now the Times has shown the terrorists where the cameras are. But the terrorists knew that they were being watched, that every step they take has the chance of being discovered. In other words, truly, there is nothing a criminal or enemy can do that doesn't have the chance of being revealed. It's part of the game, no?
Back in World War II, cited unendingly as America's time of greatness and loyalty and unity and press kowtowing to the will of the state for the good of the good war, everyone fucking knew that messages were sent in code, through secret couriers or transmissions. In the build-up to the actual war, here's Time magazine from November 18, 1940: "Secret British information intended for Washington is usually handed to the U. S. Embassy in London for transmission in code." Look at what that reveals: the place, albeit an obvious one, where information is handed off, the fact that it's in code, and its destination.
Even during the war, after the government's censor issued dictums on a limitation of information that could be spread, Time could still publish, as it did on April 19, 1943, about America's intelligence gathering and alert system set up in China against the Japanese: "No one except the Chinese knows how many there are of these little primary posts. The secondary posts are all linked together by telephone lines. Here, at certain secret points like Mickey's, U.S. radio stations have been set up to tap the secondary and flash warning of raiders to American fighter posts in the hinterland."
What's changed is a number of things: the bar on what a secret actually is has been raised so high, that it's impossible for any information to be below it; and also that level of credulity has changed in a population made ignorant by--
Well, let's continue this tomorrow.
