Blumner: Republicans are stupid

OK, not in so many words. It might as well be the title of her Sunday editorial from this past week, however.

Blumner informs us that Gore was right about climate change, and moreover that he is right about American voters being dumbed-down by television news.

And she's got proof. Sort of.

This is Gore's other main point. A citizenry that abandons the dynamic exercise of reading and the reasoning process it engages, for the passive absorption of emotionally charged television images, is susceptible to choosing the worst kind of leaders. And it has.

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney could never have held on to power and committed the wrongs they have against our constitutional system without a public too wrapped up in the happenings of Natalee Holloway in Aruba to care about domestic warrantless wiretapping.

Gore meticulously documents how Americans have been sleepwalking through their duties as citizens while this administration has been systematically destroying the pillars of our democracy.
(the St. Petersburg Times)

There you have it. Bush and Cheney winning re-election had to do with the stupidity of voters. It had nothing to do with John Kerry's poor campaigning, poor debate performances or flip-flops. And what's with the "domestic" warrantless wiretapping? Number one, the NSA program monitored international calls, not domestic ones. I guess if one end of the call is in the United States, then it qualifies as "domestic" for Blumner's way-above-television-news intellect.
Two, warrantless wiretapping arguably falls within the president's article 2 powers under the Constitution. Blumner's entitled her opinion, of course.

The title of her piece in the Times is "We're the boobs in front of the tube"--but she doesn't really refer to herself. It's not like Blumner would ever have voted for Bush/Cheney. It's your fault, Bush/Cheney voter. You're stupid.

She offers us the wisdom of former television newsman Dan Rather, of fake but true document fame: Television news has been "dumbed down and tarted up."

This attitude is so typical among newspaper folks. They don't acknowledge the falsehoods they seem to eagerly promulgate (Bush tricked Americans into thinking that Iraq was responsible for 9-11, and Blumner's own statement here about "domestic" wiretapping). The problem, apparently, is that the American public will not believe the lies of print journalism in favor of the lies of television journalism (though I can imagine that plenty of the lies of television news would get a thumb's up from Blumner).

She decries the "drummed up" threat of terrorism (great timing with the recent terrorism plot foiled at Kennedy airport, Robyn!), comparing the chances of dying in a car or plane accident to the chances of dying in a terrorist attack. Funny--I'll be she never used that tack to defend the low number of troop deaths in Iraq.

From there she leaks her apparent belief that Democrat gains in Congress reflect a repudiation of the war in general. Talk about an evidence of superficial reading.

Blumner is a hack. Here's exhibit A: She calls Gore's book "meticulously documented" yet here is Gore's representation of the main point of his book:

It is a seriously indictment of our political discourse that almost three-quarters of Americans were so easily led to believe that Saddam Hussein was personally responsible for the attacks of September 11, 2001, and that so many Americans still believe that most of the hijackers on September 11 were Iraqis.
("Assault on Reason" @ Amazon.com)

Gore's buying the same media-fed lie that Noam Chomsky and Paul R. Pillar bought. See my post here. Yes, Mr. Gore, it's a serious indictment, at least in terms of gravity. Just one problem. It's a false charge.

It's too ironic for words that Blumner excoriates the broadcast media for engaging in a technique she emulates in print.

***

Last up, the Sawyer interview of Gore. It was after viewing this that I realized that Gore is peddling untruth in his "meticulously" researched tome.

Sawyer, to me, seems excited at the prospect of another Gore run at the presidency. She gives him no hard questions, just the softball question about the political dimension of the book (which is obvious). I think Sawyer wanted Gore to announce he was running, hoping that the wonderful Al Gore would personally effect the changes called for in his book.

The interview also gives more information than does Blumner's print editorial.
Have a look; see what I'm talking about: