Ellington

A New York Times editorial today: "H. L. Mencken is said to have guffawed and slapped his thigh in delight at times as he would write about a typical day at a presidential nominating convention. Those long-ago times are enviable for their unpredictability — eons removed from the scripted conventions that will soon be offered to the nation once more as lean cuisine for thought. All the more reason to hope, then, that this year's one potentially risky innovation — accepting dozens of free-form online bloggers as accredited convention journalists — may lace the proceedings with fresh insight and even some Menckenian impertinence."

"People who think the mushrooming world of wannabe polemicists and their Web logs, or blogs, is merely a high-tech amusement should talk to Senator Trent Lott, the Mississippi Republican."

"In Web lore, bloggers are credited with relentlessly drilling Senator Lott after he expressed segregation-tinged nostalgia for the Strom Thurmond presidential campaign, a story that the major news media initially missed. Mr. Lott was subsequently forced to quit as majority leader."

"Beyond its power as a source of news and commentary, the Internet has proved itself to be the ultimate fund-raising tool. Bloggers can be crass and biased, but politicians no longer scoff at their rich online realm. Hence the red carpet at the conventions — at least for some of them."

Here's our early blogging on the Lott affair, which indeed started before other media here:

http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/comments.php?id=P485_0_3_0
http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/comments.php?id=P489_0_3_0
http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/comments.php?id=P493_0_3_0
http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/comments.php?id=P503_0_3_0

Previous Comments

ID

137074

Comment

Speaking of Mencken, here's one of his quotes that came to mind last week during the latest round of terrorism alerts: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." I don't know about y'all, but I'm alarmed.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2004-07-15T14:53:21-06:00

ID

137075

Comment

Now you have *me* alarmed.

Author

corrosiongone

Date

2004-07-15T19:23:10-06:00

ID

137076

Comment

I tell you what's really alarming is this stuff going around that Seymour Hersh saw all the prisoner-abuse photos and that they contain video of children being sodomized in the prison. The mere thought of this is so horrifying -- and what could possibly be the international ramifications if it's true?!? I cannot even fathom the country and the world dealing with such a thing, if it's true, although we can't sweep it under the run, either. I am NOT stating this has fact, though; has anyone else seen/heard anything reliable about this? MoveOn sent around a link to this earlier, but I can't get the ACLU speech link to work to hear Hersh's comments. And, remember, of all journalists out there, he's one of the more credible: http://www.misleader.org/daily_mislead/Read.asp?fn=df07152004.html

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2004-07-15T19:31:56-06:00

ID

137077

Comment

Salon's got more on the Hersh revelations today: f Seymour Hersh is right, it all gets much worse. Hersh gave a speech last week to the ACLU making the charge that children were sodomized in front of women in the prison, and the Pentagon has tape of it. The speech was first reported in a New York Sun story last week, which was in turn posted on Jim Romenesko's media blog, and now EdCone.com and other blogs are linking to the video. We transcribed the critical section here (it starts at about 1:31:00 into the ACLU video.) At the start of the transcript here, you can see how Hersh was struggling over what he should say: "Debating about it, ummm ... Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out." "It's impossible to say to yourself how did we get there? Who are we? Who are these people that sent us there? When I did My Lai I was very troubled like anybody in his right mind would be about what happened. I ended up in something I wrote saying in the end I said that the people who did the killing were as much victims as the people they killed because of the scars they had, I can tell you some of the personal stories by some of the people who were in these units witnessed this. I can also tell you written complaints were made to the highest officers and so we're dealing with a enormous massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there and higher, and we have to get to it and we will. We will. You know there's enough out there, they can't (Applause). .... So it's going to be an interesting election year." Lord help us all.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2004-07-15T19:46:53-06:00

ID

137078

Comment

There's more on Brad DeLong's blog. You get the feeling this is one of those stories that is going to seep out bit by bit in blogs until one of the big media outlets take a breath and busts it wide open. But this is difficult; the story must be told, if it's true, but what kind of repercussions will it bring? And I'm not talking politics. This is really more horrible than I can imagine. I need a stiff drink just thinking about it.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2004-07-15T19:49:53-06:00