“Burying The Reeking Lede*”

Ruminant With A View

by Elizabeth Boleman-Herring

“George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to the Guantánamo Bay prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for war in Iraq and the broader War on Terror, according to a new document obtained by ‘The Times’ [of London]. The accusations were made by Lawrence Wilkerson, a top aide to Colin Powell, the former Republican Secretary of State, in a signed declaration to support a lawsuit filed by a Guantánamo detainee. It is the first time that such allegations have been made by a senior member of the Bush Administration.”

—from “George Bush ‘knew Guantánamo prisoners were innocent’,” by Tim Reid, The Times [London, UK], 9 April 2010

TEANECK, NJ—(Weekly Hubris)—4/12/10—In my last incarnation as a fully employed and responsibly compensated adult, I taught Journalism at both Clemson University and the Henry W. Grady School of Journalism.

George W. Bush was then president; and Journalism, itself, had not yet morphed into the bastardized genre of infotainment it is today. We had a cretin the in the White House—a passel of cretins, truth be told—but we had a few major organs of news (print, broadcast), and a few reporters and editors and publishers (just a few, mind you) who knew which stories should run above the fold, which stories comprised “news,” which stories merited further ferreting and ferreting and ferreting, to get past the bull puckey and down to the truth.

During the 1980’s and a good chunk of the 1990’s, I didn’t feel “dirty” teaching Journalism, or preparing college  students for careers in Journalism.

Now, after watching most broadcasts, reading most newspapers of record, I feel I need a bath. For the most part, the Fourth Estate no longer serves to inform, enlighten, and educate its readers and viewers: it’s there to entertain, shock, coddle, comfort, titillate and amuse us. Oh, and to sell us stuff.

Ah yes, I am bitter.

For two years, during the Obama & Biden/McCain & God-Help-Us campaign, I existed 24/7 on the very edge of my seat, writing—largely about politics—for an online periodical I will not name; a publisher now gone over to the dark side. (My columns were collected into a book by that same publisher—now unavailable for sale due to the publisher’s sudden dismantling of his wee publishing empire. Just my luck to work for Mini-Murdoch!)

All that aside, my writing of 2007-09 was meant to keep my own tiny spotlight trained on the crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush Administration, and the great, Black & White Hope that was Obama.

I worked hard. I told the truth as I saw and uncovered it.

And then, I must admit, once the election was decided—and not, this time, by a skewed Supreme Court decision—I thought I’d sit back for a bit and rest. There were good folks in DC now: superannuated online Journalists could rest on their slender laurels.

I guess I’d forgotten being in Washington during the Carter Administration. I’d forgotten what lobbyists and Big Pharma and Big Insurance and Big Military-Industrial do when they have a neophyte Democrat in the White House.

. . . and, I’d overestimated the size of the Obama/Emmanuel/Axelrod balls.

I imagined that, once Obama came in, Valerie Plame’s outing would be avenged by the Big Kahuna who’d outted her (not Scooter, for Chrissakes); that Cheney and Bush would be brought to trial for war crimes; that single payer health care for everyone would become a reality (Obama’s not FDR, not LBJ, I was to learn), and that all the bad, evil beagles of the Right would be picked up by their wretched ears and taught a thing or two. (That’s another LBJ reference, for all you babes in the wood.)

But . . .

But, Gentle Reader, Tim Reid, of The Times [of London] is the only one thus far to run, front and center, with a big story about the former administration’s malfeasance—against innocent Guantánamo detainees; against the Geneva Convention; against humanity—and I think precious few of my fellow Americans care to cast their minds back that far in the past, or trouble themselves with bringing the Republicans to justice. Too messy a proposition. Just think of the precedents it would set. Better let those sleeping beagles lie.

And Obama is complicit.

If  We on The Left, We The Progressives, don’t now go after Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld et al for the crimes of Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo, and all the secret torture chambers we erected (and still run), here and there, around the world—if we continue to “bury the lede” along with the dead and imprisoned and tortured innocents, well . . .

. . . who, exactly, have we become?

And whom have we elected?

*The Lede=usually the first sentence in a hard news story, which encapsulates what is most “newsworthy” in the story, so readers with little or no time for long pieces can cut to the chase. To “bury the lede” is to run that crucial sentence farther down/later on in a story, for stylistic purposes—not always a wise Journalistic practice.