Blah-gging - Death on the Rails - The White House & Fox News

For the last couple of weeks it seems that all the gay bloggers have been off terrorizing Las Vegas at NetRoots or buying new refrigerators in Chicago or baking themselves silly at the southernmost point in New Jersey (that would be me).

Aside from the Bus & Truck production of "Hate on Parade" starring Mz. Brown and Mr. Gallagher of NOM, which is packing them in by the 5's, things are pretty slow around here in the cyber-sphere.

The big excitement in my life this week (and the lives of about 60,000 other commuters in NY/NJ) was the unfortunate suicide of a 30 year old woman this past Tuesday who opted for a permanent solution to her problems by throwing herself in front of a southbound AMTRAK Acela train, which was doing 135 miles per hour at the time.  That night my 1 hour commute from New York City to Princeton Junction took nearly 5 hours.  But even at that, I still had a better day than that unfortunate soul had.

But it wouldn't be a good week if I didn't stumble across something that really got my knickers in a twist.  And this is my knicker-twister du jour:

As you may recall, the dean of the White House Press Corps, Helen Thomas, was recently forced to resign after an outburst of anti-semitism.  The WHCA is now getting ready to give away Helen's former front row seat in the Briefing Room to one of the other senior newsgathering organizations.

And here are their current choices:

1.  NPR
2.  Bloomberg News
3.  Fox News

Needless to say I sent them an e-mail.

"It is my understanding that with the recent departure of Helen Thomas from the press corps, the WHCA is considering assigning her vacant seat to one of three organizations, Bloomberg News, Fox News or NPR.


I would like to urge you to NOT consider Fox News for this prestigious seat. I have no problem with either NPR or Bloomberg, but it is my opinion that Fox is not a serious news gathering organization but, rather, serves but one purpose, that being to generate profits for it's parent, News Corp, by callously agitating the American political right.

Please do not open yourselves to ridicule and dishonor by giving this seat to Fox.

Thank you."

Google "White House Correspondent's Association" and send them an e-mail expressing your views.

Duplicity in the Press

"Scrap the Constitution" Copyright © Austin Cline.

Bill Moyers, whose babies I would have, was back on PBS last night, doing what PBS and Bill Moyers do best, telling people the truth.

I didn't get to watch all of it because of the time constraints, but I did see the first 45 minutes and believe me, it was pretty devastating.

Basically, he showed how the American press, led by the New York Times (and especially Judith Miller, who actually did time for failing to name her sources about the Valerie Plame thingie, which she never did an article about anyway), CBS, ABC, NBC, Dan Rather, the Washington Post, CNN and a host of other mainstream media (it goes without saying that Fox was in on it, too) rolled over, played dead, got in bed with, lubricated themselves freely and took it straight up the ass from the Bush Administration in terms of buying into and, worse, convincing the American public to buy into, the war in Iraq.

He was unrelenting, merciless and didn't gloss over anything. He followed the trails. The only "heroes" he could dig up were

Bob Simon of 60 minutes

and

Knight Ridder News

Apparently nobody at Knight Ridder was buying all the "WMDs" and "aluminum tubes" crap from the get-go and Bob Simon was able to easily find and call up CIA colonels to find out that Hamabi, who led the so-called Iraqi National Front, was basically a high-paid CIA fraud, telling lies to anybody who would listen, in order to get a check from the US government in the amount of $350,000 a MONTH.

The neocons got raked over the coals.

According to a piece by Greg Mitchell, dated April 21st, on the website EditorandPublisher.com, at the close of the show Moyers mentioned some of the chief proponents of the war who refused to speak to him for the program, including Thomas Friedman, Bill Kristol, Roger Ailes, Charles Krauthammer, Judith Miller, and William Safire.

That same piece went on to say:

"Of the 414 Iraq stories broadcast on NBC, ABC and CBS nightly news in the six months before the war, almost all could be traced back to sources solely in the White House, Pentagon or State Dept., Moyers tells Russert, who offers no coherent reply.

The program closes on a sad note, with Moyers pointing out that 'so many of the advocates and apologists for the war are still flourishing in the media.' He then runs a pre-war clip of President Bush declaring, 'We cannot wait for the final proof: the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.'

Then he explains: 'The man who came up with it was Michael Gerson, President Bush's top speechwriter.' He has left the White House and has been hired by the Washington Post as a columnist."

God help the United States of America.