ustxtxb_obs_2003_04_11_50_00007-00000_000.pdf

‘!ifo’711; Og? Economic royalism Bernard Goldberg [author of Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distorts the News] is screaming that only liberals are on the air. Like a man who says I don’t get enough to eat. I have an advanced degree in economics, and I’m not on the air because they don’t want to hear real economic reports. Goldberg was the economic reporter for CBS. So, one of the great canards is to say, like the right-wing press, “Oh, it’s a liberal media.” What they mean is that most reporters are for abortion rights and against the death penalty, as social issues. At New York cocktail parties that’s sufficient. But when it comes to the real issues, of war and peace, of economic royalism in America, there is no dissent. [To Goldberg] the left wing in the American press, is Thomas Friedman. He’s considered the left-wing of the left-wing newspaper, The New York Times. And what’s Friedman’s statement about economics? He said that all our economic problems were solved by Margaret Thatcher and that her system was simply perfected by Ronald Reagan. This is what passes for the Left. Where is there a single reporter who has anything negative to say about how the World Bank operates? First of all, they are hardly saying anything about how it does operate, let alone providing any type of critical information. I’m not talking about viewpoints. I’m talking about an information blackout, a stonecold information blackout. War hero out, war criminal in The Democrats are wearing this big sign that says “kick me.” The Republicans banged away at Bill Clinton for being a draft dodger.Which he never was. He didn’t dodge the draft. He didn’t volunteer for Vietnam because he didn’t believe in it. He stuck with his beliefs and he did his best to make sure that other kids didn’t have to go, either. Whereas you’ve got a president here who pretends to be a war hero. He went to Texas Air Guard while his daddy was a powerful congressman. W gets a test score of 25 out of 100 to get into the Texas Air Guardyou’re meant to get 100. This put him below about 1,000 other applicants. And right now he’s doing his damned best to eliminate affirmative action: No one should get their position except through. merit, and all that. This guy scores 25 out of 100 to get out of Vietnam. His daddy in Congress is sending other men’s kids to Vietnam and his son goes into the chickenhawk army, the Texas Air Guard. I’m not saying our president is a chickenshit coward; but he certainly doesn’t mind when other kids take the bullets for him. There are no presidential sons and daughters on the front lines. Napoleon always made it a point that he rode the first horse into battle. Whereas our president made sure that he’s riding the last ass out. I’m not happy about this because I’m one of the kids that have faced a death lottery, and I didn’t have a daddy in Congress. The only argument for disarming Saddam Hussein, I guess, is if the Bushes hired him in the 1980s, they have the right to fire him.The Chevron corporation won Gulf War I. They didn’t pay Bush Senior but they did put over half a million dollars in the Republican party campaign chest for his son’s run for the president. That’s one thing the Bushes have perfected. You never know where foreign policy begins and the Bush bank account ends. Or any policy for that matter. The Bushes have figured out how to cash in. Marvin Bush and Neil Bush sold Enron’s pipeline systems in the Gulf after the last war. An objection was raised by that radical lefty, Norman Schwartzkopf, who said that we didn’t send a half million boys into the desert so that the Bush family can cash in big time. You don’t see much of old Norman these days. He was the big hero. You couldn’t get him off TV. Where is he? He’s actually been paid a fortune for an exclusive contract to comment on the war for one of our networks. But he’s not there. The exclusive contract is effectively acting like a gag. Think he might have a couple of unkind words to say about the Bush family and the profiteering on the blood of our kids? Who do you have instead? Henry Kissinger on the payroll of NBC. War hero out, war criminal in. Welcome to embedded coverage. Observer intern Patrick Timmons lives in Austin. He likes raking muck. 4/11/03 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 7