Thursday, April 25, 2024
Miles from the Mainstream
D. R. ZUKERMAN, proprietor
W

JUNE 19, 2006 --

LPR caught the president's press conference at the Quality Inn on
Torrington's Winsted Road. This motel comes with cable tv which, unlike the networks, continues news crawls at the bottom of the screen, while the president is talking.

The practice of crawled coverage is, perhaps, best suited to persons who can concentrate on two things at once (these people should, certainly, be exempt
from bans on driving while using hand-held cell phones.)

Crawled coverage could be used as a form of media bias -- with items that tend to show the president in a favorable -- or unfavorable -- light.

LPR noticed that the cable channels also showed the Dow Jones average while the president took questions on his quick trip to Iraq.

At the start of the press conference,the president appeared confident and relaxed--and the Dow Jones went up. As the president continued to answer questions, the Dow Jones started to drop a bit.

This suggests to LPR that the president ought to have a Dow Jones monitor in view during daytime news conferences.

Should he notice the Dow Jones dropping, he might consider that he is repeating himself and should tighten his answers, and maybe also remind reporters that the sun will come out, tomorrow, just like Annie says, in the song.

(Whatever happened to the journalists' jump at presidential press conferences?)

LPR does not join the call to yank the troops out of Iraq, but is still not clear on our strategy.

President Bush seemed to say that success in the war with the terrorists depends on the Iraqi government and people.

But LPR also heard the president say that we cannot leave Iraq because it would become a base for terrorists in a war that extends beyond Iraq's borders. If so, how would we react if the Iraqi government proves ineffective in subduing the terrorists?

To critics of the administration who are tempted to compare our involvement in Iraq with Vietnam, LPR would note that in Vietnam we were confronted by a very single-minded enemy.

Can this be said of a country that was formed as a colonial patchwork?

Isn't Iraq after Saddam more like Yugoslavia after Tito? If so, would that mean, under a Democratic administration, the U.S., with its NATO allies, would just bomb the heck out of whoever is perceived most guilty of sectarian cleansing -- Sunnis, Shiites, or Kurds?

Say, how are things in Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo, anyway?