Now, only the jesters are telling the news
This topic is worthy of more of a look, but since its Friday, and we’re all workin’ for the weekend as they say, we’ll make it brief.
Two huge stories have surfaced recently, but other than stray mentions here and there, our national media has chosen to largely ignore them. Media Matters shows us:
Summary: On April 22, The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart highlighted two recent reports concerning national security that have been largely ignored by most television news outlets and NPR: a New York Times article reporting that “the Bush administration has used” media military analysts, many of whom have clients with or seeking Pentagon contracts, “into a kind of media Trojan horse – an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks”; and a Government Accountability Office report that found that the “United States has not met its national security goals to destroy terrorist threats and close the safe haven in Pakistan’s FATA.”
So two huge stories- how the Pentagon systematically used sock puppets to pimp a war- a war, the GAO shows, that has done NOTHING to reduce the threats we face from wild-eyed freaks around the globe- and the only place you see them mentioned side by side is on Comedy Central. Which, when you think about it, is apt.
As TDS “Senior Military Analyst” Rob Riggle rightly pointed out:
Well, let me just give you the Cliff Notes, OK? In 2001, there was a memo: Bin Laden determined to attack the United States from a safe haven in Afghanistan. Now, seven years and $700 billion later, we get a new memo saying, bin Laden determined to attack United States from a safe haven somewhere around Afghanistan. We’re right back where we started. We could have gotten here by doing nothing.
When does comedy tumble into tragedy?
