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Saturday, September 25
The Counterpoint: Hyman and the Lies
by
Linda Thieman
on Sat 25 Sep 2004 03:46 PM CDT
The Counterpoint: Hyman & the Lies
The rational counter to "The Point," "The Counterpoint"
critiques and corrects the daily editorial by Sinclair Broadcasting's
corporate vice president, Mark Hyman, that is broadcast on all
Sinclair-owned television stations across the country.
by Iowa's Ted Remington
What do Robert Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Benjamin Spock, and Walter Cronkite have in common?
They all, at various times and in
various ways, expressed their conviction that the war in Vietnam was
unwinnable, a mistake, and that a peaceful solution should be sought.
They all made these statements during the 1960s. They are all among the
most revered names in recent American history as well.
To hear Mark Hyman tell it, however,
John Kerry single-handedly created and led the anti-war movement when
he came back from Vietnam in 1971. The most recent "Point"
accuses Kerry of aiding the enemy through speaking out against the war,
suggesting (again with no evidence, despite the several links to nearly
random Vietnam-era press clippings on the Newscentral website) that
somehow Kerry’s anti-war activities slowed down the release of
prisoners and prompted increased military activity on the part of the
North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong.
For Hyman, as it was for Richard
Nixon and his Watergate crony Charles Colson who targeted Kerry for
political destruction in 1971, any questioning of administration policy
is tantamount to treason. Apparently, the soldiers who came back from
Vietnam and felt to the depths of their souls that the war was not
right and that the U.S. was pursuing a mistaken policy should have kept
their big mouths shut. So much for freedom of speech and the public
discussion of issues in a democracy.
(We're just wondering Mark: do you have the guts to call today's soldiers traitors as well? Check out "Operation Truth" for firsthand accounts by soldiers in the field of the failures of our current policies in Iraq and Afghanistan.)
Hyman doesn’t acknowledge that the
antiwar movement had been a force in American politics since 1965, or
that half of the American people felt the war was a mistake by 1971. He
doesn’t acknowledge that even those who supported the war at first,
including one of its architects, Robert McNamara, now say that Kerry
and others in the antiwar movement were right: the Vietnam War was a
quagmire. Would we have “won” in Vietnam if antiwar voices had kept
silent? Of course not; the conflict would simply have dragged on even
longer with more and more loss of life. But that doesn’t stop Hyman
from using charges of communist sympathy to tar a current political
adversary. For folks like Hyman, history is not something to be
understood or learned from; it’s simply a collection of raw material
that can be twisted into a weapon for today’s battles.
Not that this attitude should
surprise us. Part of the reason the Vietnam War has become such a
central issue (beyond whatever tactical advantages might be gained in
the daily give and take of campaigning) is that the “war on terror” has
become the new Cold War for conservatives. Having spent eight years in
the wilderness after the fall of the Soviet Union, conservatives are
all too aware that their most powerful weapon is fear. Now that
communism is gone as a present threat, terrorism is taking its place,
and with it, the neo-con remedy: a sort of reverse domino effect in
which the U.S. attempts to create democracy at the end of a gun, at
which point it will supposedly flourish and spread of its own accord.
So once again we have a war in which
U.S. soldiers are caught in an impossible situation on the ground, in
which enemy combatants and innocent civilians are indistinguishable,
and for which there is no coherent exit strategy beyond escalation.
Once again we have a war that we’ve chosen to fight and which was
pitched to the American people on false pretexts. And once again, those
who support the war and the administration waging it accuse any who
dare criticize them of treason.
Thus we have Hyman’s rant about
Kerry’s antiwar activities morph into an attack on Kerry’s supposed
weakness on defense, including the canard that Kerry voted against all sorts of weapon systems.
It doesn’t matter that folks like George H.W. Bush and Dick Cheney
supported eliminating these same weapons systems or that it was the
current administration that knowingly sent U.S. troops to Iraq without
enough body armor or armored humvees. Hyman knows these charges have
been refuted, but as long as these untruths help him create a myth
about Kerry that combines Vietnam and the current campaign, he’s happy
to ignore all evidence to the contrary.
In this case, Hyman’s juxtaposition
is not meaningless; it’s part of a larger parallel between the Vietnam
era and today, one that involves the creation of military and political
enemies in order to maintain power. However, it’s every bit as bogus.
Just as the notable names we mentioned earlier were speaking with a
sense of moral imperative, not a lack of love for country, so was John
Kerry in 1971 and so is John Kerry in 2004. So are all the voices that
question the wisdom of sending thousands of men and women to fight and
die in a conflict that has nothing to do with stopping terrorism or
making America safer. But because they can’t defend their position
rationally, Hyman and his ilk rely on distortions and jingoism to
berate their opponents.
In fact, “distortions” doesn’t accurately reflect what Hyman does here and in so many of his pieces.
He’s a liar.
And that’s The Counterpoint
Friday, September 17
The Counterpoint: Guilt by Association
by
Linda Thieman
on Fri 17 Sep 2004 11:34 AM CDT
The Counterpoint: Guilt by Association
The rational counter to "The Point," "The Counterpoint"
critiques and corrects the daily editorial by Sinclair Broadcasting's
corporate vice president, Mark Hyman, that is broadcast on all
Sinclair-owned television stations across the country.
by Iowa's Ted Remington
For the third straight day this week, "The Point"
devoted itself to attacking the character of John Kerry. This has
become standard operating procedure at Sinclair, given a lack of
anything positive to say about the Bush administration.
This is
also the third straight “Point” in which Mark Hyman has put on the mask
of an “investigative journalist,” claiming to find hidden evidence that
proves some sort of dastardly conduct on the part of Kerry. As we’ve
noted often before, this is also part of Sinclair’s ongoing efforts to
blur the lines between opinion and news. Mark Hyman attempts to assume
the ethos of a newsman, but hides behind the cover of “commentator”
when called on his partisanship.
This
time around, Hyman goes after Kerry for his participation in the
“Winter Soldier” investigation, which ultimately led to Kerry’s
testimony before Congress. The tactic employed is guilt by association,
tarring Kerry with the words and deeds of others. For example, Hyman
claims that participants in the Winter Soldier investigation claimed
that the U.S. committed atrocities on POWs, but that the North
Vietnamese did not. It’s possible that someone, somewhere said
something along these lines, but Kerry certainly did not, nor did
anyone with any sense. The Winter Soldier investigation wasn’t about
challenging evidence of Communist war crimes; it was about the
circumstances that led some Americans to engage in similar behavior.
We also
have a nod to Jane Fonda, who helped organize the Winter Soldier
investigation (along with many others). Hyman trots out the photos of
Fonda sitting on North Vietnamese anti-aircraft guns as well as a photo
showing Fonda and Kerry both in a large crowd at a rally. Hyman uses
this as evidence that Kerry was somehow in cahoots with Fonda and that
Kerry’s denials of meeting with Fonda personally are lies. For Hyman,
having a photograph of two people at the same gathering makes one
responsible for the misdeeds of the other. We’re just wondering, Mark:
if that’s the case, what about this picture?
Despite
Hyman’s protestations, the Winter Soldier investigation was not
“anti-American.” In fact, the organizers specifically wanted the
investigation to not pass judgment on America in general. The goal was
to look at the circumstances that had led American servicemen to become
so desensitized to indiscriminate violence that decent individuals were
capable of committing monstrous acts. It was an indictment of the
faulty war planning of the administration and the military
establishment, not America.
If you want a firsthand account of the motivations and purposes of the Winter Soldier investigation, read this overview
by William Crandall at the University of Virginia’s online resource
center on the Vietnam War. From this page, you can also find any number
of other documents, both primary and secondary sources, related to
Winter Soldier. The truth is out there; we don’t have to rely on
Hyman’s self-serving distortions.
As for
the validity of the charges of Winter Soldier, that atrocities were
committed by Americans, there is, unfortunately, no doubt that such
events occurred. The only debate is on how widespread they were. The
non-partisan Factcheck.org has an analysis
of the claims that Kerry “betrayed” America in his anti-war testimony
that provides several sources that back up claims of U.S. atrocities,
in addition to a helpful overview of Kerry’s testimony and his
attitudes about it today.
The
entire purpose of Winter Soldier in general and Kerry’s testimony
specifically was not to condemn U.S. troops in the field, but warn of
the costs of fighting a war in which the enemy is indistinguishable
from innocent civilians. To fight such a war, soldiers are conditioned
to accept a level of brutality and indifference to suffering that would
be unthinkable in any other context. It creates conditions in which
horrific events can happen.
And that’s The Counterpoint.
Friday, September 3
The Counterpoint: GOP Bait n Switch
by
Linda Thieman
on Fri 03 Sep 2004 10:10 AM CDT
The Counterpoint: GOP Bait 'n' Switch
The rational counter to "The Point," "The Counterpoint"
critiques and corrects the daily editorial by Sinclair Broadcasting's
corporate vice president, Mark Hyman, that is broadcast on all
Sinclair-owned television stations across the country.
by Iowa's Ted Remington
We knew “The Point” was predictable, but even we’re surprised at how closely Mark Hyman has followed RNC talking points.
A few days ago, we wondered aloud how Hyman would address the
disconnect between the Republican platform and the headline speakers at
the convention in New York. Perhaps, we mused, Hyman would try to
characterize it as somehow showing the “big tent” that is the
Republican Party.
And right on cue, Hyman did just that. Kicking off a recent editorial
with the statement that by “any measure” Bush is the most conservative
president in 40 years and Kerry is the most liberal Democratic nominee
in recent memory (a pronouncement that seems to be trotted out every
four years about whoever happens to be the Democratic nominee), Hyman
went to an interview with “moderate” Governor Robert Ehrlich of
Maryland, who waxed rhapsodic about the contest of ideas every four
years. Queried by Hyman about the “spectrum of philosophies” on display
in New York, Ehrlich said that it was good for the party and
demonstrated that the GOP has (you guessed it ) “a larger tent” than
the Democrats. When asked how the GOP (or, as it was continually
referred to throughout Hyman’s editorial, simply “the party”) had
changed in the last 20 years, Ehrlich said (with a straight face) that
it had become the party of “Main Street rather than Wall Street.”
Oh, really? Well, we know that last statement runs counter to all facts available to us. As we noted last week, a recent CBO study
showed that the Bush tax policies shift the tax burden from the richest
segment of society to the middle class. Add to this the loss of a
million jobs, the rise in those without health insurance, the revoking
of overtime pay, the diminishment of veterans’ benefits, and the
sending of more than a 100,000 troops to fight and die in Iraq (almost
none of whom, we’re guessing, are the sons and daughters of Wall Street
execs), and you have an out and out war on Main Street America. For
more on the specifics of the Bush administration’s attacks on the
middle class, see this collection of articles collected by Movingideas.org or the excellent site by California Congressman George Miller.
As Thomas Frank argues in his book, What's the Matter with Kansas,
the GOP wins votes from “Main Street” not by championing policies that
help average Americans, but by claiming to represent the moral values
of those who live in Anytown, U.S.A. Focusing on issues such as gay
marriage, abortion, prayer in schools, gun control, and the like,
Republicans appeal to the moderate to conservative morals of many
working class Americans. But despite the claims of those on both the
left and the right who focus on these specific issues, the person who
occupies the White House is unlikely to dramatically shift the current
uneasy consensus on these issues one way or the other. The issues get
people riled up, but they don’t have the impact on the daily lives of
individuals that broader issues such as tax policy, health care, labor
law, and education do. The misdirection allows the GOP to claim to
represent Main Street while practicing economic and social policies
that ensure that its storefronts are boarded up, its potholes aren’t
fixed, and people wander up and down its length looking in vain for a
well-paying job.
And the spectacle in New York is a case in point. Despite Hyman’s
assertion that a “spectrum” of philosophies are on display at the GOP
convention, a glance at the primetime list of speakers (the only ones
who get seen on any TV channel beyond C-SPAN) shows how distorted a
picture the country is getting: Giuliani, Schwartzenegger, McCain,
Pataki . . . not a true Bush conservative in the bunch. The only member
of the administration to speak (with the exception of the president and
vice-president themselves) is Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, in the
obligatory attempt to be ethnically diverse.
So Hyman and Ehrlich combine forces to lie both about the GOP’s
devotion to Main Street America and about its “broad spectrum” of
values. But we can add to this list of insults on journalistic
integrity the fact that Hyman again plays it both ways. As we’ve noted
several times in the past, Hyman likes to flip-flop between being a
“commentator” and playing a journalist. In Boston, he was exclusively
the former, offering no coverage of the proceedings of the Democratic
convention and giving us instead personal attacks on Kerry and other
assorted perceived enemies. In New York, Hyman not only talks about the
convention itself, but uses his “commentary” slot to interview a major
Republican politician, giving him free reign to spout the party line.
Of course, Hyman usually does this himself, but it’s at least in the
guise of editorial commentary. The latest “Point” masquerades as an
interview, but in essence is a free 60-second national ad for the RNC.
Maybe “The Point” will get in trouble with the FCC for violating the equal time regulation.
On second thought, probably not.
And that’s The Counterpoint.
You can read "The Counterpoint" here daily.
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