Thursday, April 25, 2024
Miles from the Mainstream
D. R. ZUKERMAN, proprietor
LPR Reveals:
Media, Backwards, is Aid 'em

SEPTEMBER 26, 2004 --

Nowadays, the aidee, of course, is the Democratic presidential candidate. That, LPR submits, is what "Rathergate" is all about.

 

Dan Rather, pictured on Opening Day at Yankee Stadium, last April.

This doggerel comes to mind:

You can lead the media to anti-Bush water

And see how quickly it does move to swallow

All protestations of objectivity seem sorta
"Rather" transparent and Da[r]n hollow

Liberal pundits like David S. Broder now profess to be shocked--shocked, that the media is losing the trust of the American people.

Aparently forgotten was Lincoln's sage observation that you can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all
the people all of the time.

And what is the apprent aim in aiding the Democratic presidential candidate? It seems not unfair to conclude: installing the principle of rule from the top down, taking sovereign power from the people and handing it to a political clique. Just
the thing our Revolution sought to undo, LPR believes.

 
Of course, the Republican presidential candidate, for all his talk of bringing liberty abroad, seems not to notice that this election amounts to a referendum at
home of personal liberty.

The Washington Post was on target in calling attention, in a September 20 front page article, to the anti-liberty aspect of the arrest sweeps in Manhattan during the Republican National Convention.

(Andy Rooney, speaking with Don Imus, criticized Imus for using the term "front page" instead of page one.

Yet the title of the classic play about newspaper people is called, not "Page One," but "The Front Page.")

LPR's contends that it is not that great a leap from sweeping up people's cars, as happens every day in Manhattan, to sweeping people up, themselves. Until
President Bush takes public notice how truly illiberal "liberals" are, his own commitment to our founding principles of limited government, fundamental fairness and individual liberty remain at
issue, too.

A number of years ago, in a New York City property tax office, this writer heard a citizen complain how she had paid her property tax, did not get credit for payment and now was being told to pay again. Later that day, this writer heard a clerk in that office tell a colleague -- with reference to this beleaguered citizen: "Oh, she paid her taxes; someone just key-punched wrong."

That is the mindset of callous, unfair, heavy-handed government. Perhaps it is to be expected that the media will look the other way. A Republican president, however, need not be compassionate to take notice: just committed to our founding principles.