Thursday, August 31. 2006
There is Fascism, Indeed
While Jon Stewart on The Daily Show has possibly been the Administration's most recognized critic (To the point that Geraldo Rivera found it necessary claim he is unimportant because he and Colbert "make a living putting on video of old ladies slipping on ice and people laughing", Keith Olbermann is becoming this generation's most erudite critic.
In reaction to Rumsfeld's speech to the American Legion, in which he compared the Bush Administration's current policies to Churchill's fight against fascism, Oldbermann replied:
Read the Transcript and Watch the Video.
At this point, Keith, JaBbA says that you, of all current journalists, have the right to evoke Edward R. Murrow:
In reaction to Rumsfeld's speech to the American Legion, in which he compared the Bush Administration's current policies to Churchill's fight against fascism, Oldbermann replied:
Mr. Rumsfeld's remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis-and the sober contemplation-of every American.
For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence - indeed, the loyalty - of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse, still, it credits those same transient occupants - our employees - with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration's track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.
[snip]
His government, absolute - and exclusive - in its knowledge, is not the modern version of the one which stood up to the Nazis.
It is the modern version of the government of Neville Chamberlain.
Read the Transcript and Watch the Video.
At this point, Keith, JaBbA says that you, of all current journalists, have the right to evoke Edward R. Murrow:
Although I presumptuously use his sign-off each night, in feeble tribute, I have utterly no claim to the words of the exemplary journalist Edward R. Murrow.
But never in the trial of a thousand years of writing could I come close to matching how he phrased a warning to an earlier generation of us, at a time when other politicians thought they (and they alone) knew everything, and branded those who disagreed: "confused" or "immoral."
Thus, forgive me, for reading Murrow, in full:
"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty," he said, in 1954. "We must remember always that accusation is not proof, and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.
"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were for the moment unpopular."
And so good night, and good luck.
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