Loose Links (Monday)
¶ Let's have more thinking and less shouting. Writing in today's Times, Adam Cohen cautions bloggers against demanding the head of Lawrence Summers, Harvard's recklessly maladroit president. Yes, we can call him names, but we should resist the temptation to storm the university gates in a torch-bearing mob. Two can play at that game, and when they do, life gets ugly. I'm thinking of the rivalry between the Greens and the Blues in old Constantinople that, in 532, boiled over in the murderous Nika riots. (Gibbon's account is, predictably, dramatic in a long-winded way; scroll here to Chapter XL if you've not got the classic handy.) The collapse of our body politic into mortally aggrieved factions is only encouraged by shrill imperatives.
¶ Bob Somerby is right, too, to protest that the mainstream media have not been derelict in ignoring the Jeff Gannon story. It is extremely trivial. There is, perhaps, reason to inquire into the admittance of an edgy, ex-military hustler into the White House briefing room, but to call this a security risk is nonsense. As the Daily Howler says, Mr Guckert was not the only lightweight in the room. Bloggers who expect this affair to dent the Bush Administration are hyperventilating. This is not to suggest that we give all concerned a pass. But the matter is not really news, and there are no grounds for demanding action. Really. Aside, that is, from the action of talking calmly and deliberatively about the culture that has enabled such monstrosity. And, by the way, such a fascination with the trivial.
¶ A good place to begin would be with a viewing of Mr & Mrs Bridge. (Shamless, I know.)
Comments
But what could be more important to mainstream media than how the media is credentialed? After all, if just anyone could have access, anyone could enfranchise themselves as a news relater.
Posted by: Ken Roberts | February 28, 2005 12:49 PM
The Gannon affair ought to be taken very seriously by the mainstream media, but more as a matter of internal policing than as something to splash on the front page. I don't deny that there's a story here. But it's not the story that angry bloggers are demanding. At the back of this particular argument is a sullen conviction among bloggers that the big boys don't take them (or their stories) seriously enough.
Posted by: R J Keefe | February 28, 2005 12:53 PM
Guckert was a security risk because he was a blackmail magnet. Whoever got him in to the White House was vulnerable, as was Guckert himself.
If Guckert were a woman everyone would wonder who she was sleeping with to land such a plum job with no qualifications. I'm wondering the same think about Ganniguck. I also wonder whether Guckert was blackmailing someone important. A Washington escort might know a lot of embarrassing secrets.
At the very least, somebody deserves to be fired for allowing him to coast for two years on a day pass.
Two possibilities: a) Guckert was never properly vetted; b) the White House knew all about him and gave him hard pass privileges on a soft pass.
In either case, serious security lapses remain uninvestigated and unpunished.
Posted by: Lindsay Beyerstein | February 28, 2005 05:20 PM
The blackmail angle is a really good one, and I hope that someone's investigating it. But until something's actually discovered, where's the story?
Perhaps we have good reason to suppose that the mainstream media aren't investigating the Gannon story. But it seems excessive to demand that newspapers report on the progress that they're making with investigations, and in such a way that the absence of a report implies the absence of an investigation. Perhaps they ought to! But that would be a very new wrinkle.
Posted by: R J Keefe | February 28, 2005 05:55 PM