Joe Scott 3: The Body Politic

Hooray for Harry Taylor

06 April 2006 |permalink | email article

Real political theater happened yesterday when W. addressed an open-forum event in Charlotte, N.C. Harry Taylor, 61, did something that no frustrated Democrat has yet been able to accomplish since John Kerry blew the 2004 election. Taylor stood up in the balcony and told off the president.

Abandoning the drill of screened audiences and scripted meetings, the forums represent a new PR effort by W. to confront his falling public approval and appear more spontaneous and unafraid of criticism. The response has generally been a love fest.

That is until the commercial real estate broker challenged the president and rattled off a series of grievances on war, liberty, domestic eavesdropping and quality of life issues.

ìYou never stop talking about freedom, and I appreciate that,î Taylor said. ìBut while I listen to you about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me with charges. To try and preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food.î

Many in the audience of a nearly 1,000 booed but W., to his credit, took the criticism in stride. He refused to apologize for the eavesdropping, boasted about building democracy in Iraq, said that if he didnít think victory was possible heíd bring the troops home and justified the decision to go to war.

When an angry citizen has to guts to tell the president of the United States to his face that ìI hope, from time to time, that you have the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself,î heís expressing the frustration of a majority of Americans about this administration.

Taylor’s three minutes of fame is in contrast to the failure of Democrats to get beyond talking the talk about a plan for victory. So far, there has not been a single, unified and compelling voice such as the improbable real estate guy was able to articulate.

Would W., a hard-liner on leaks, have been so sweet had Taylor asked him about authorizing White House official ìScooterî Libby to disclose secret intelligence information to reporters in an attempt to discredit a CIA adviser whose views undermined the rationale for invading Iraq? Replying it was legal would only beg the Nixonian question about using such data for political advantage. 

Iraq, Bloody Iraq

05 April 2006 |permalink | email article

The Los Angeles Times, in a feat of award-winning journalism, published a three-part series this week that addressed the hush-hush issue of the more than 17,000 American troops that have been seriously wounded since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

I say hush-hush because it appears that the Bush administration has gone to far greater lengths to discourage media coverage of this carnage than previous administrations during Vietnam. The ìMission Accomplishedî slogan after the fall of Baghdad turned out to be cruel hoax.  

The Times series told the stories over 13 pages of five men injured last November as a reporter and photographer followed them through a system of military medical care described as more advanced than in any previous conflict. 

But it is the bloody front-page pictures and inside each day that show how most of the wounded have been victims of explosive devices similar to mines in earlier wars which sensitizes one about the reckless rush to war without ample pause or preparation - factors which have turned the nation strongly against it.

For a generation of Americans who will do almost anything to avoid suffering, these pictures are sobering confirmation that it exists, in battle, as in life.

Retired Maine Gen. Anthony Zinni, former head of the U.S. Central Command and a special envoy to the Middle East who endorsed Bush in 2000, soon compared Iraq war strategy to a ìbrain fartî emitted from a Bush ìpolicy wonk.î Addressing the Naval Institute in the fall of 2003 he summed it up:

ìOur feelings and sensitivities were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam, where we heard the garbage and the lies. And we saw the sacrifice. We swore never again would we allow it to happen. And I ask you, is it happening again? And youíre going to have to answer that question, just like the American people are. And remember, every one of those young men and women that come back [a casualty] is not a personal tragedy, itís a national tragedy.î

Paging Paul Conrad

03 April 2006 |permalink | email article

Longtime Los Angeles Times readers remember that political cartoons appeared on the editorial page much of the time three-time Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Conrad was itís chief editorial cartoonist from 1964 to 1993. Liberals applauded, conservatives jeered and guess what? ñ Conradís pen and slashing one-line captions sold newspapers.

Then, more than 20 years ago, Conradís controversial work, and generally less compelling cartoons since, were abruptly shifted to the op-ed page.

Thatís why last week it was stunning to see a cartoon about U.S. immigration policy in the space normally occupied by the second of three essays on the editorial page. Undistinguished, it was drawn by Christophe Vorlet for the Times Editorial Board.

Is this more tinkering by Andres Martinez, the youthful opinion page editor and protÈgÈ of Michael Kinsley, founder of Slate, the on-line magazine, whose brief reign as a virtual Times editor telecommuting mostly from Seattle ended after several bizarre and controversial misjudgments?

Or does the brief cartoon repositioning signal yet another daunting editorial experiment by the Times, struggling under the demanding revenue yoke of Tribune Co. ownership as it attempts to staunch a national trend of declining newspaper circulation and advertising revenue?

Hereís the point. Conradís observations still reportedly appear in newspapers worldwide, are syndicated by the Chicago Tribune with the Times owning the L.A. area syndicated rights as of last year. Ironically, his work rarely appears in the paper where he became famous.

While at the newspaper he was honored with six Distinguished Service Awards for Editorial Cartooning by the Society for Professional Journalists/Sigma Delta Chi (SDX) ñ the only journalist s to win that many SDX awards in any category since the competition began in 1932.

Asked by Random Lengths, a L.A. Harbor area weekly, last summer why he hasnít seen one of his cartoons in the Times, Conrad replied: ìYou wonít. They just wonít do it ñ even if they agree with it.î

Since the Times no longer has an in-house cartoonist and, for the most part, carries a rather mediocre roster of op-ed columnists (in contrast to the New York Times and Washington Post), itís not surprising the section is a rare must read. In contrast, Dean Baquet, the paperís new editor who won a Pulitzer Prize for investigating reporting at the Chicago Tribune, has assembled several I-Teams which have started producing significant journalism.

Carrying Conrad once again might help the paper restore the biting edge it’s opinion pages once had under Otis Chandler.