House of Eratosthenes

On the desk in front of me is the “Forum” section to the Sunday paper, slightly misshapen from what has become a customary “oopsie” or two as the corners are accidently dunked in the hot tub at twilight. Let us review all the opportunities this piece of paper had carry something important, by reviewing the seven days of events upon which this section might have commented.

Someone claiming to be Osama bin Laden appeared on a videotape that was released on or about Monday, dispensing a lot of instructions to Americans that we should convert to Islam, bemoaning global warming, chiding the democrats in Congress for failing to pull America out of Iraq, and basically sounding just like middle-eastern version of Keith Olbermann. Word got around Washington that the long-awaited report from Gen. David Petraeus is going to say more positive things about the “surge” in Iraq than the democrats would like it to say. As a result of that, after months of going on record with a wait-and-see approach about the General’s report, our democrats have decided to pull a hairpin U-turn and start trashing the report before it is released, questioning the General’s value as an impartial observer of the progress in the theater, and sending Harry Reid and Charles Schumer out in front of cameras to make asses out of themselves.

MoveOn.Org, the liberal activist group that for seven years has been dedicated to not moving on from things, has started attacking Congressman Brian Baird, D-Washington, for traveling to Iraq, returning back here, and daring to speak candidly about what he saw over there. So now, not only are Islamic terrorists attacking Americans for being American, but Americans are attacking other Americans for practicing freedom of speech after being elected to Congress, seeing the success of our country’s military engagements with their own eyes, and honestly informing the rest of us about what it is they’ve seen.

There was an absolutely unbelievable story about one of Hillary Clinton’s most prominent fund-raisers missing his bail hearing. Whereabouts unknown!

Oh and one other thing — in making his remarks, Sen. Schumer got busted by some intrepid bloggers after his web site was updated with a phony transcript of his comments on the Senate floor. In the floor speech, he singled out our troops for special criticism, citing “The inability of American soldiers to protect these tribes…” and someone altered this on his web site to “The lack of protection for these tribes.” So we learned our senior Senator from the state of New York wants to bash the men and women who are out there, risking life and limb, and he doesn’t even have the stones to stand behind his own remarks. Certainly, this is valuable information for the citizens of a democratic republic to have.

Fertile ground for my newspaper’s opinion section that coming weekend, wouldn’t you say?

See, to an American who has his priorities in order, I know what is to be concluded from the events above. I am one of those Americans. But numerically, I am insignificant, and so this is why I buy the Sacramento Bee from time to time — especially on Sundays. How do our nation’s most ignorant and easily-led citizens see such things? Can they detect lies, deceipt and charlatanism when such things are paraded right in front of their noses and pointed out to them? Well…now that the pages have dried out again, let’s rustle them open again and see what we have here.

I see the token conservative George F. Will wants us to think about Iraq. But only from a very high level, with commentary about Gen. Petraeus’ educational background, how we got the situation we currently have over there, the mistakes some of our civilian leaders have made. Not too much about recent events and how they might shape things from here on out. Nothing about Schumer’s shenanigans, or the videotape, or the political machinations by our democrat leadership in Congress as the Petraeus report comes due.

Leonard Pitts would like to talk about peoples’ feelings as the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks comes up. Always nice to have a human-interest story in The Bee; you can never have to many of those, I guess.

Commentary about healthcare. Together with a cartoon by Rex Babin prominently featuring a man’s bare buttocks. Good…what else? Letters to the Editor about whether or not President Bush should be impeached. Looks like it was “Impeachment Day” at the Letters Desk…there’s one letter about the Hillary fugitive, another one about kids not being able to play rough anymore, all other letters are about an impeachment that isn’t going to happen. Someone managed to detect some irony in Tony Snow’s overall medical condition — but not Michael Moore’s. For the uninitiated, Snow is the outgoing White House Press Secretary, and Michael Moore is a filmmaker who produces left-wing propaganda, calls his works “documentaries,” and wins awards for said documentaries as if they really were documentaries. One would expect Snow to have a right-wing outlook on the United States’ healthcare system, whereas Moore thinks our healthcare should work kind of like Cuba. Tony Snow has ‘fessed up to not having a 401(k) account. He is not yet cancer free. Moore, on the other hand, is a big fat slob who’d rather make movies about how our healthcare should work, than stop making his own healthcare needlessly expensive by being a big fat slob. So anyway…we have a special hatchet-job on Tony Snow for having an empty 401(k) account, branding him some kind of a hypocrite, but not a single peep about Moore.

Ah, and I almost the centerpiece: A hit piece on the front page, chastising homosexuals who dare to support conservative values…or conservatives who dare to be homosexual. It’s called “Hypocrites & Haters” but it should really be called “Who We’ve Decided You Should Hate This Week.” Not deemed complete without a huge splash photo of Sen. Larry Craig resigning in front of a zillion cameras. Not sure which is the bigger crime, being a gay Republican or a Republican who’s gay, but it’s clear someone’s got a big beef with anyone who is both of those. The dirty little secret is, it’s a reprint from an article on the hard-line extreme left-wing web site The Nation. I have never understood this practice. I hope it’s a questionable one: It’s like newspaper editors walked into your living room or home-office, fired up your inkjet printer, printed up something freely available on the Internet, reimbursed you for the ink but then charged you $1.62. If you wanted a printout — you would have made one yourself, right?

I’m also a little lost on this thing where you can’t have a negative thought about homosexuals in general, or even any thought that approaches negativity, until you find out they’re Republicans, at which point you’re somehow obliged to be displeased with them. Had the article taken homosexuals to task for their sympathies to any other political viewpoint, it surely would have been branded as “hate speech.” Since homosexuals are being effectively disallowed from any service or activism in support of conservative values, it seems not only are you allowed to write such stuff without anyone calling it a crime, but you can charge money for the reading of it…to be paid by Bee subscribers who lack Google skills, and can’t track down your hatred and invective on the Internet.

Well, with all these things going on with terrorism I’m glad to be reminded there are gay Republicans and that I’m supposed to hate them, that’s certainly valuable. Personally, I’m still of the opinion that if a politician is gay, but his votes are likely to bring in more dead terrorists, then by all means let ‘im go to work. But keep on burning up ink by the barrel, telling me what kind of prejudices I’m supposed to have a zillion more times. Maybe I’ll come around eventually. Well done.

David Brooks writes about a social contract for healthcare. Weintraub gives us more info about some kind of a health care “deal” coming into focus. I like Weintraub overall, but counting the “butt” cartoon this is four pieces already. Maybe my own good health has spoiled me rotten…it just seems like I should be reading more about terrorists, and what we’re doing to kill them, and less about how politicians and union officials think overly-expensive pills should be covered.

The Supreme Court ruled that the public has a right to access information on salaries of public officials.

A puff piece on Couric. A tasteful farewell to Pavarotti. Ginger Rutland isn’t pleased with the way the city handled Tex Mex and other downtown restaurants. Someone else is unhappy with the way prison guard pay is managed.

I could go on, but I think you get the point. We’re about to have a big showdown over the killing of terrorists, how well we’re doing it, whether Iraq will end up being a place where a lot of them get stamped out like the weeds they are, or to bloom like never before. I could, with very little effort, assemble a logically compelling argument that no other issue really matters by comparison. At least not right now. But whoever has the task of assembling the “Forum” section for the Sacramento Bee, doesn’t seem to see it that way. That person lacks a certain vision. It would be beneficial for that person to be called into a meeting with his or her superiors, for a quick talk, which need not be altogether pleasant.

I would start with this: Henceforth, let’s draw straws to see who gets to write the ONE editorial about health care, sniveling away about how America hasn’t “pinkified” the industry fast enough or hard enough to make us happy. Just one of those — that way we have the defense that the topics covered on the weekend may be marginal in importance and interest, but hey, they’re diverse. No need to sprinkle the healthcare-whining throughout the six-page opinion section, like flakes of pepper on a cod fillet, thereby depriving the paper of even that defense-of-last-resort. But in general…share some opinions that are timely, poignant, thought-provoking and important. There’s an agenda present that is due for a dropping, or an agenda absent that is due for a picking-up. Maybe both of those.

See, I don’t really begrudge my local paper for being hard-left-wing. I don’t even begrudge them for missing the cajones to admit this is what they are. Such misdemeanors are expected of newspapers nowadays. But newspapers should be topical. Or at the very least, they shouldn’t engage such an abundance of effort in making themselves trivial.

Well said, Morgan. I’d point out that perhaps you’re reading the “wrong” paper, but you know that, and it ain’t the point, to begin with. The thing that amazes me is the newspaper biz seems totally clue-free as to the whys and wherefores of the free-fall in subscription rates. They simply don’t get it…or if they DO get it, they refuse to acknowledge the real reasons they’re losing their readership.
- Buck | 09/10/2007 @ 13:25
Buck,

Thanks for the comment. I really should add that laying this kind of smackdown on The Bee is not an prospect that I relish with great enthusiasm. Over the years I’ve had the pleasure or pain of interacting with a few of the folks laboring away there, and each time I’m somewhat more confused about what’s going on behind the walls than I was before. The impression I’ve gathered during that time is that it’s a “mixed bag” of sorts.

And I really do want to give credit to the folks who are trying. I think they’re there.

But the missing-of-the-big-picture, at this point, has become a problem for The Bee that has reached “mammoth in the room” status, at least among the folks who are directly responsible for putting things in print. This is not an isolated case. Over the years, I see what’s going on in the world, and I see what The Bee editors decide is worth column-inches and ink…I compare those two…and I’m just amazed. Larry Craig gets a splash page, but you leave the Hsu scandal up to the letter-writers? Our congress is set to engage in self-contradiction that will instantly twist itself into a pretzel…only token mention of this, if any at all?

Perhaps this was covered elsewhere. Maybe in another day’s edition. That’s really no excuse. Not when healthcare stuff is dropped in a relatively thin opinion & comment section, practically every page, like Starbucks shops dropped into a ritzy business district, or chips onto a cookie. When you have that going on, the message is clear that whatever doesn’t make it to press, isn’t worth discussing. In a non-paper medium more open to comment, you’d never be able to substantiate that or even make it a cosmetically appealing idea.
- mkfreeberg | 09/10/2007 @ 14:00
Not only well said, but well written and entertaining, and there’s a lot to be said for that.

When you can seamlessly combine accurately expressed thoughts with the humor you’ve injected here, I think you’re firing on all cylinders.

I’m still chuckling at a few of them.
- philmon | 09/10/2007 @ 15:03

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