ASK ROSCOE

Dear Roscoe,

Why do you bloggers make such a big deal about picky things like a crayon being flushed down a toilet?

Is the correct term for people like you right-wing nut? Or right wing-nut? And why are you picking on the Society for Professional Journalists and The New York Times? Are you some kind of censorship advocate? Don’t you think the people have a right to know what their government is up to?

B. Keller

Dear B.,

There you go again. That wasn’t a crayon allegedly flushed down a toilet—it was a Koran, you dhimmi. And Newsweek’s false report about that actually led to people dying. Your mainstream mediocracy elitists have become a full-blown menace. That's the problem.

And the correct term, sir, for people like me is mad-as-France-and-not-taking-it-anymore. Frankly, as far as we’re concerned, the SPJ and The New York Times can kiss our rosy red jazeera.

Speaking of Al-Jazeera, guess who rushed to the defense of Al-Jazeera “journalists” after 9-11, when the government wanted to restrict their access in our own country? Yeah, the SPJ--denouncing the government, moaning about the First Amendment, freedom of the press, etc. Kinda tells you where their priorities are.

Oh, and, B., here’s a trick question for you: Which news organization is more biased—The New York Times or Al-Jazeera? Bet you can’t guess. Look here for the correct answer.

One of the problems here is a lack of respect for truth. Here’s a case in point. We hope your attention span is long enough to follow this:

Three years ago SPJ’s Charles N. Davis, director of the Freedom of Information Center at the University of Missouri (see Thursday’s post, “Banana republic journalism”), wrote an opinion piece sharply critical of the President, “Public not served by secrecy,” that showed up on a few op-ed pages. In it Dr. Davis wrote:

“Only a few days before terrorist bombs killed eight Americans and many others in Saudi Arabia, President Bush stood behind the great seal of the United States and told the American people and the world that al-Qaeda terrorists ‘are not a problem anymore.’”

That darned Bush, huh? But wait. Want to read the real quote? Here’s what Bush actually said:

“Al-Qaeda is on the run. That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top Al-Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they’re not a problem any more.”

Oh. Did you catch the difference, B.? The President wasn’t talking about Al-Qaeda as a whole no longer being a problem—as Dr. Davis represented it—but the ones who were in jail or dead. Big difference—at least, to honest folks.

An editor for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
, bless his heart, went to the trouble of contacting Dr. Davis to find out why he would do something like that. Did he simply misread the President’s statement? After a few minutes of dodging and weaving, the editor wrote, Dr. Davis finally admitted that he had taken deliberate license in reinterpreting the quote—“contextual bullying,” he called it.

Where we come from, B., that would be called bull-something, for sure. The second part would be what you and your kind are full of. To the max.

--Roscoe