Skip to main content

Federal Johns hire hookers

President Bush has told subordinates to stop seducing phony "journalists" with cash.

What's depressing is that he needed to: depressing that government officials would sink so low and more depressing that people who pretend to be journalists would sink even lower.

The feds have armies of PR people on the payroll. They hire even more. And every administration has thousands of loyal political appointees sprinkled through the bureaucracy to pitch the president's line.

That massive PR firepower wasn't enough for some Bush officials. They also wanted spokesmen who appeared to be independent and honest - who appeared to be working for their readers and viewers, not for paying politicians.

These officials created phony "news" programs that pushed administration policies. They sent these programs to TV stations dim enough, desperate enough or dishonest enough to air them.

Other officials made outright cash payments to corruptible opinion mongers. The most egregious example was the $241,000 that columnist and broadcaster Armstrong Williams accepted to push Mr. Bush's No Child Left Behind program.

By comparison, columnist Maggie Gallagher was a piker, taking $21,500 directly from the government for assorted services that just happened to promote the president's "pro-marriage" policies. She took another $20,000 in a roundabout deal involving a private group.

Mr. Williams and Ms. Gallagher say it never occurred to them that taking money from federal officials to betray their readers and viewers was wrong, or that they should have mentioned it to the readers and viewers who thought they were getting unbought opinions.

These people aren't journalists. They're prostitutes. If they had any principles, they'd quit writing and find an honest way to make a living.

Of course, if they had any principles, they wouldn't have sold themselves to the government.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Arundhati Roy: The 2004 Sydney Peace Prize lecture

The 2004 Sydney Peace Prize lecture delivered by Arundhati Roy, at the Seymour Theatre Centre, University of Sydney. Peace & The New Corporate Liberation Theology It's official now. The Sydney Peace Foundation is neck deep in the business of gambling and calculated risk. Last year, very courageously, it chose Dr Hanan Ashrawi of Palestine for the Sydney Peace Prize. And, as if that were not enough, this year - of all the people in the world - it goes and chooses me! However I'd like to make a complaint. My sources inform me that Dr Ashrawi had a picket all to herself. This is discriminatory. I demand equal treatment for all Peace Prizees. May I formally request the Foundation to organize a picket against me after the lecture? From what I've heard, it shouldn't be hard to organize. If this is insufficient notice, then tomorrow will suit me just as well. When this year's Sydney Peace Prize was announced, I was subjected to some pretty arch rema

"Global Doubts as Global Solutions"

by Amartya Sen Melbourne Town Hall Tuesday, May 15, 2001, 6pm 1. Misery and Resignation We live in a world of unprecedented prosperity - incomparably richer than ever before. The massive command over resources, knowledge and technology that we now take for granted would be hard for our ancestors to imagine. But ours is also a world of extraordinary deprivation and of staggering inequality. An astonishing number of children are ill nourished and illiterate as well as ill cared and needlessly ill. Millions perish every week from diseases that can be completely eliminated, or at least prevented from killing people with abandon. The world in which we live is both remarkably comfortable and thoroughly miserable. Faced with this dual recognition, we can go in one of several different directions. One line of thinking takes the form of arguing that the combination of processes that has led to the prosperity of some will lead to similar prosperity for all. The advocacy of this perspective c

Prisoners in the land of the free

Better be careful if you are in the US and want to buy a ciggy lighter. You could be arrested for conspiring to detonate the nuclear arsenal the US has been piling up over the years. America's attitude towards anyone with a Middle Eastern origin is not too shocking. In Chinua Achebe's wonderful piece of writing 'Things Fall Apart' -- there is a passage where African tribal men sit around eating and drinking, contemptuously referring to white men, comparing their white skin to lepers’ white skin. One can understand the ignorance of the African tribals; they thought all white men are lepers! If America as a nation is as ignorant as the African tribals were 100 years ago... it is time to salvage their souls from the dark depths of ignorance. UN should set up an Educational Aid programme to help the ignorant and ill-educated American population, which includes the President of the US. 3 Texas men arraigned on terror charges CARO, Mich. — Three Texas men were arraigned Satur