This Could Be the Last Time, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld
August 9, 2014 Martha Thomases 7 Comments
Last Friday, I was delighted to see this story come across my news feed. It says that, Mike Thompson, a prominent Democratic Congressional member of the House Intelligence Committee reports that the most recent investigation concludes that there was (and I quote the headline) “No administration wrongdoing in Benghazi attack.”
“Oh, boy!” I thought. “I bet this will be a big story on tonight’s evening news.
But it wasn’t. Nothing. Nada.
I went back and looked again. The story is by the Washington correspondent for the San Francisco Chronicle. It’s not my local paper, so I don’t know much about any editorial biases, but the real estate ads generally feature multi-million dollar homes, so I would guess it isn’t too much of a commie rag.
Perhaps the media was waiting for a more dynamic story, with a Republican member of the committee denying the statement by the Democrat. Mainstream media likes a two-sided story (even though most stories have many many many more sides). It makes them feel fair. It lets them cover the news as a series of horse races, rather than events that make a difference in people’s lives.
There is not yet any Republican denying anything Thompson said. I know that doesn’t mean he’s right, but it is newsworthy.
Apparently MSNBC thought so. I don’t watch much cable news anymore (too much yelling), so I didn’t see this. According to my link, the story only ran twice.
Twice on MSNBC is only a fraction of a percentage of the entire Benghazi coverage just at MSNBC. If one also includes other cable news networks and the Sunday morning opinion shows, two mentions is a veritable drop in the ocean.
Everybody, right and left, likes to talk about media bias. Sometimes, we all like a chance to play the victim. I get that. I’ve felt a little thrill at seeing myself set upon by the Big Bad Whatever. It’s entertaining, but it’s not productive. So I’m not going to claim that this is any kind of conscious corporate conspiracy.
Even if it is.
I mean, there are lots of other stories that the public either needs or wants to know. There is the possibility of an ebola epidemic, even though there seems very little chance it will affect anyone in the United States and the science about the cure is decidedly under-reported. Beyonce and Jay-Z might be splitting up. There are sharks in the ocean.
So why not set the record straight on a story that has occupied so much of the public’s attention over the last several years? Why not do a little, I don’t know, actual reporting about what the committee report actually says?
Is it because of the astronomical profits from campaign ads either attacking or defending Hillary Clinton, if she’s a presidential candidate? Is it because dozens of pundits will be out of work if they can’t cry “Benghazi! Benghazi!” whenever they feel like it?
If there’s one political bias you can count on with corporate media, it’s the bias towards the money. The stories will support the people with power because they have the money to buy the ads, to produce the movies, to run the theaters or the networks.
And they don’t care about what happened in Benghazi. They only care if you do.
Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, didn’t like how the “Back to School” ads started two weeks after school let out.
R. Maheras
August 11, 2014 - 7:27 am
The report basically states that the administration did not screw up INTENTIONALLY.
That’s not an exoneration. It’s a clarification.
The report does not absolve anyone of stupidity or incompetence — and that may be the real reason the left-leaning media folks shied away from the finding.
Dem strategists want Benghazi to go away so it doesn’t taint Hillary in 2016. They don’t want a spotlight on an event that was handled badly — albeit unintentionally.
Martha Thomases
August 11, 2014 - 7:39 am
Russ, I’m not saying the administration acted perfectly. Obviously, they did not. People died. That’s a tragedy.
And we don’t know what the report says, because it hasn’t been released.
However, the only outlet who covered the story (aside from the SF Gate) is MSNBC. Fox News didn’t cover it. The Pittsburgh Tribune didn’t cover it. The Washington Times didn’t cover it. The New York Post didn’t cover it. The Wall Street Journal didn’t cover it.
I know. I looked. And then I got sucked into reading comment threads, which is a horrible, horrible experience.
So it’s not the primarily the Democrats covering this up.
The reason for all the investigation, allegedly, was the idea that the Obama administration deliberately lied about what happened during the embassy attacks immediately after this attacks occurred. The reports on the report seem to indicate that, in the jumble and chaos of the aftermath, no one knew precisely what happened. It took some time to go through the evidence and discover the truth.
As for Hillary benefitting from this, while I think she is an intelligent, hard-wording and competent person, her recent hawkish statements are doing her far more than enough damage, thank you.
R. Maheras
August 11, 2014 - 8:38 am
Martha — I think an investigation into Benghazi was absolutely warranted, and not a “waste” of money — as Democrats are wont to characterize it. After all, four Americans died — including an ambassador — on a day when we should have been extra careful about possible 9/11 anniversary attacks around the globe.
That said, the Republicans who argued that someone did this or that “on purpose” should have kept their mouths shut.
However, I did share the incredulity that, when this whole thing went down, that there were no response units available near enough to assist. I’m from the old-school military where we were prepared and on hair-trigger alert world-wide during times of crisis. That we weren’t on a day like the anniversary of the bloodiest attack against the US since Pearl Harbor speaks volumes on how this administration is constantly trying to downplay threats by pretending they don’t exist. It’s a troubling pattern that’s been repeated over and over again. Sometimes I wonder what reality our leaders are living in.
Moriarty
August 11, 2014 - 9:18 am
I work in San Francisco but cannot afford to live there. The Tech-boom fueled by Social Media has caused what is termed “Hyper-gentrification” in the city. Those lower middle class and below workers are being priced out of the City and they’re taking their social protests and union rallies with them. (Or not showing up for after work events because an hour and a half commute leaves them getting home in Contra Costa County across the bay at 6:30 with little desire, after feeding the kids and putting them to bed, to come back.) So the more liberal people are moving out and the less likely to be liberal, sic wealthy, people are moving in, making it a less liberal city.
So San Francisco may be becoming less liberal and with that the Chronicle is likely following suit to appeal to the most subscribers. It was probably never actually a “commie rag” but certainly was more liberal than say the L.A. Times.
I’m surprised that they regularly feature multi-million dollar plus homes on their website. I always figured if I ever had that kind of money to put down on a home, I wouldn’t find it in the classifieds.
George Habreberger
August 11, 2014 - 10:59 am
” And then I got sucked into reading comment threads, which is a horrible, horrible experience.”
Hey! What are you saying? I comment on this site fairly regularly.
Martha Thomases
August 11, 2014 - 11:20 am
Russ, I don’t think I argued against any investigation. However, this is, like, the fifth or sixth one. It’s like Daryl Issa is going to keep holding them until he gets the answers he wants.
And THAT is a waste of money.
Mike Gold
August 11, 2014 - 12:27 pm
The San Francisco Chronicle is a Hearst paper, purchased to replace their faltering San Francisco Examiner, which they sold off. These were the two papers Orson Welles used as models for Citizen Kane. Whereas it is by no means as far to the right as the Murdoch papers and its off-editorial page coverage is fairly straight-forward, it cannot be characterized as a liberal paper.
The fact is, Americans don’t care about Benghazi. The Republicans rammed this one into the wall, but as a nation we really didn’t care about it before it became the central distraction for the noisy right. We really didn’t care all that much back in 1983 when suicide bombers took down the US embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 63 people, mostly embassy and CIA staff members, as well as several soldiers and one Marine. But of course it wasn’t in the Republicans’ best interests to make a big deal about Beirut, as it would embarrass their messiah, Saint Ronald Reagan the Hoser.
Bottom line: according to Republican policy, Beirut + bombing + right wing poster boy republican president + 63 dead is not worthy of outrage, but Benghazi + attack + black Democratic president + 4 dead is a national disaster of the highest order. Perhaps those dead soldiers and the dead Marine in Beirut were Denocrats.
There’s a technical term for this. It’s called “fucking hypocrites.”
I await George and Russ’s comments.
Rene
August 12, 2014 - 9:45 am
George –
This site is an exception. We got mostly regulars and everybody is fairly polite.
I feel the same way as Martha when I read comments in the big news sites, both American and Brazilian.
Crazy people, fanatics, extremists, sick people saying stuff they wouldn’t say in “mixed” company in real life.
George Haberberger
August 12, 2014 - 11:01 am
Rene,
My comment above was failed attempt at humor, implying that Martha was talking about comments on this site being a horrible experience.
You’re right about people saying stuff they would never say in real life. The anonymity of the internet does no favors for political discourse.
R. Maheras
August 12, 2014 - 11:15 am
Martha — Yeah, one bi-partisan investigation — with adequate teeth — should have sufficed.
Mike — Don’t get me started about Beruit. I’m still pissed that no one in the DOD, State Department, or intelligence circles got fired for that incident. No commander in their right mind should have signed off on housing so many troops in such close quarters. Even if there hadn’t been a truck bomb, those guys were vulnerable to rocket, mortar or artillery attacks. And the rules of engagement (ROE) were the touchy-feely kind designed to placate the local nationals while putting American servicemembers at risk. I saw these stupid ROEs repeated over and over again — to the point where we were deploying people to hot spots with absolutely no weapon at all.
By the way, I don’t blame Reagan for what happened, unless he signed off on the stupid ROE for Beruit, the security setup for the compound, and the decision to put so many troops in such a tiny area. I blame the military commander(s) who let all of that happen on their watch.
George Haberberger
August 12, 2014 - 11:21 am
Mike,
You make a couple of assumptions in your post. One is that I was not outraged about the Beirut bombing. But a number of things make that different than the Benghazi attack. The Beirut bombing was never described as anything other than terrorism. It happened on April 18 of 1983. That was not the anniversary of a significant terrorist attack. There was not an election in two months. No one had spent 4 days two weeks earlier claiming that al-qaeda was decimated and no longer a problem. No one claimed the bombing was caused by people upset by a YouTube video when they knew that that was simply not true.
As Russ points out above, the report claims that the poor response was not intentional, but it was incompetent. And that incompetence did not support the narrative that: “Osama bin Ladin is dead and GM is alive.” Better to attempt to explain it all away with something completely out of the administration’s ability to foresee.
Another assumption is that Americans don’t care about Benghazi. That is simply not true.
Whitney
August 14, 2014 - 4:53 pm
Hi All –
I just got back from the Gypsy project and need to reconnect…
Two stories hit my eyeballs in the monitors at the airport during a 5 hour layover:
ISIS
Sharknado II
Equal time for both.
We face urgent threats that require wisdom and courage and movement. Whatever can be learned from Benghazi, apply now and engage.
Whitney
August 14, 2014 - 4:57 pm
Hey Moriarty –
Did you connect with James…?
And your description of the San Francisco housing market is accurate. Blue collar emergency response workers are completely priced out of the market. So if something happens to those bridges, I personally would prefer to be on the side of the knuckle-draggers instead of the alphas…