Yoo Who?
There's a spat going on between Megan McArdle and Glenn Greenwald over the lack of coverage of the John Yoo "Torture Memorandum."
GG says the media (for various reasons) trivializes the news and covers foolish items like Barack Obama's bowling prowess at the expense of important stories like the Memo. MM claims the media can't force-feed the public stuff it has little interest in.
In general, I'm with Megan. The media, no matter who you think they are, only have so much sway. The time people have to read about current events is limited. If the media concentrate on stories people don't care about, all that happens is readers (and listeners and viewers) go elsewhere.
Nevertheless, what I don't get is that the Yoo story--especially considering it's fairly technical and about stuff that happened already--got widespread coverage. There were only a handful of stories in the past few weeks that were bigger. (And one of them is not Barack bowling.)
What does Greenwald want? Stop the presses, we're putting out an all-Yoo edition?
The ultimate irony is though Greenwald is outraged that we're not outraged, my guess is if we had ridiculously extensive coverage of this story, with experts on TV discussing its ins and outs 24 hours a day, there's a decent chance it'd be a winner for Bush.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:23 AM
3 Comments:
Even if the American public could support torture which I think unlikely except in the immediate aftermath of a terrorist event or a "24" marathon, the fact that it was associated with Bush would be enough to kill the issue. The name "Bush" will be reverse-Midas until the revisionists get going some time in the next decade
I'm not saying the public would support torture.
The public DOES support torture in an "if necessary" scenario. There is debate as to two things. Is waterboarding torture? and What are the criteria for "it was necessary"? Both issues are trust issues. The dems have succeeded with their relentless attacks and bush's poor communication skills in painting bush as untrustworthy. (whether he lied or not is not the issue, people commonly think that at least he manipulated the data in his favor and at the expense of hearing all sides.) So if we can't trust bush with the big issue of war, then the smaller issues of trust re: what is, when and who to rough up a little become wrapped up in that same distrust.
AAGuy
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