Cheerleading vs. Leading

This Guardian article focuses on the media playing cheerleader--but you can just as easily make the case that the media is little better than a pep squad--amplifying Smirk-Chimp-in-Chief's bellowing:

The US media reached an "all-time low" in failing to reflect public opinion and Americans' desire for trusted information, instead acting as a "cheerleader" for war, said Amy Goodman, the executive producer and host of US TV and radio news show Democracy Now!, at a news forum organised by al-Jazeera.

Newsweek's Paris bureau chief, Christopher Dickey, said the US media were dying because of cutbacks and weren't interested in covering the world outside America...

Ms Goodman said in the run-up to the Iraq war a study of NBC, CBS, ABC and PBS newscasts over a fortnight recorded 393 interviews on the conflict, of which only three reported the anti-war movement.

"This is a media cheerleading for war and does not represent mainstream opinion in the US," she added.

Ms Goodman said she believed the policy of embedding reporters with coalition forces was "a total failure for independent journalism ... western audiences need to see the other side of the story - from communities and hospitals".

"If people in the US had a true picture of war - dead babies, women with their legs blown off, dead and dying soldiers - they would say 'no'," she said.

Last night I was thinking somewhat along the same lines, but again, focusing on the puppeteer instead of the various Pinocchios. I made a small note:

Salesmanship vs. Leadership


Even Shrub's strongest defenders are aware that his leadership qualities are just plain awful...so they ratchet up their rhetoric to focus on the sale (see Krugman below re: politics vs. policy).

The result: A foreign policy debacle overseas...an entire region destroyed, then subsequently ignored, here in the United States. Meanwhile, the rest of the country isn't in such great shape either. To wit: check out this Dave Zirin article about Detroit. Something tells me you won't see much about that this weekend...