I’ve been too busy to post regularly this week so far, and may be for a couple of days, though I hope to weigh in more on the presidential primary race that’s simmering to a full boil now that the dates draw nearer. For now, I’d like to point out the tendency of the press to make a “gaffe” out of most any bold statement from the Democratic candidates. Famously, the process repeats itself in Dean’s campaign, where he’s taken to task for pointing out how caucuses work or how Iraq won’t have the net effect of making the US safer from terrorist attacks. (I rather feel he’s right on both counts).
Now, it seems the press has come to scrutinize Gen. Wesley Clark’s words in the same manner. Slate’s Chris Suellentrop notes that “Clark has the same propensity for speaking imprecisely off the cuff” and goes on to point out several presumably outrageous statements. Some of Clark’s claims ARE tendentious - particularly his conviction that the Bush administration had sufficient advance warning on 9/11, but did nothing about it. Nonetheless, at each turn, Suellentrop takes what could be read as a nuanced statement and reduces it to absurdity. For instance, from this Clark quote:
“Now, there’s one party in America that’s made the United Nations the enemy. And I don’t know how many of you have ever read that series of books that’s published by the Christian right that’s called the “Left Behind” series? Probably nobody’s read it up here. But don’t feel bad, I’m not recommending it to you. I’m just telling you that according to the book cover that I saw in the airport, 55 million copies have been printed. And in it, the Antichrist is the United Nations. And so there’s this huge, ill-informed body of sentiment out there that’s just grinding away against the United Nations.”
comes this summary:
“Fifty-five million voters are “ill-informed” dupes of the Christian right?”
I actually think it’s an interesting point that Clark is making, that one can’t come to terms with the US role on the international stage without examining the larger culture’s (including pop culture’s) demonization of international bodies. One can point out that other factors are at play, that the Republican foreign policy has a secular objection to the UN as well, but the statement’s not as stupid as the criticism would make it out to be.
UPDATE: I see that Dan Kennedy has a good rebuttal to the Globe’s Peter Canellos, who claims that Dean ignores the middle-class tax cuts enact, where in fact Dean is making the broader point that the small tax cuts enacted do not exceed the rise in property taxes, tuitions, fees, etc. that the tax cut requires. “It’s very simple,” write Kennedy, “Canellos mischaracterized Dean, and then used that mischaracterization to build his case that Dean is an angry guy who has a ‘tendency to paint complex issues in very stark terms.’ The truth is that it’s Canellos who is shooting from the hip here.” Vigilant journalism is a good thing, but the creation of straw men to beat is a disturbing trend here.
No comments have been added to this post yet.