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March 23, 2007 at 18:47:20     Permalink TV News and My Discontents Diary Entry by Carol V. Hamilton (about the author)

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Assorted thoughts during and after watching the news on tv

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As a fellow cancer patient, I'm sympathetic to Tony Snow for his medical sufferings. I also prefer him to that dullard Scott McClellan. But it flashed through my mind today, after watching some of his responses to the press, that the post of press secretary has become that of Professional Liar.

Bush blustered today that the Congress had loaded their Iraq bill with pork for their own districts. Having seen one pointless highway to nowhere in Pennsylvania, I'm not sympathetic to unnecessary domestic projects. But domestic spending of almost any kind is preferable to more wasteful spending on the war in Iraq. Eight billion a month, and how do American citizens benefit from this spending in their daily lives? They don't.

A few months ago, the Republicans were parroting Karl Rove's latest phrase, "we're fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here." Yet we could have spent one billion of that money every month on Homeland Security and been much safer than we are throwing money at Iraq (to use another Rove-like expression). We could have spent another billion on health care, a third billion on education, a fourth on domestic infrastructure. Then we could have stopped, and saved the remaining four billion for future use.

I have other criticisms of the Iraq War, but I put this one forward because I just don't understand how the average Republican voter can justify spending more abroad than at home. I can only think that this voter isn't really aware of the cost of the war.

One article I never got around to writing concerned the wall-to-wall coverage of the Anna Nicole Smith story, complete with the dates of her life, as if she had been an important historical figure, and a nickname someone cooked up for her, "America's Rose." I used to surf past ANS when she was on cable, vaguely wondering who she was. She was certainly no one any American woman should emulate or admire. Her story was tawdry; in this coverage Muslim fundamentalists must have found further evidence for their low opinion of American culture. To his credit, Chris Matthews rebuked someone who mentioned her on hardball, exclaiming, "I will not hear that name on my show!" (Matthews has been much better lately, speaking out forthrighly about the war and the president.)

Today on Hardball, Mike Barnicle remarked on the fact that Congress had never officially declared war on Iraq. This is another disturbing departure from the Constitution--undeclared wars that nonetheless go on and on.

Everyone who travels outside the US remarks on how much better CNN is outside the country than inside. CNN does have an international edition, but it plays at noon and in the middle of the night, when no one is likely to see it. Too often the news seems fixated on a single story, which it then beats to death, repeats, solicits further opinions on, flagellates, and finally relegates to reruns. In its empty hours MSNBC is obsessed with the most unsavory crimes--John Wayne Gacey, etc. For a while recently it replayed "Supersize Me," which was a big improvement, but now it's back to its hobbyhorse.

By the way, my favorite guests on political shows include Ron Reagan, who makes only rare appearances, and Rachel Maddox of Air America.

 

Carol V. Hamilton has a Ph.D. in English from Berkeley and teaches at the University of Pittsburgh. She also writes for History News Network (hnn.us) and CommonDreams.org.

 

 
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