Scott McClellan dishes in his memoirs

[kestra]

f course they'll do better next time, unless people don't want to hear it. Media outlets are buisness. They're selling a product, and need the maximum number of viewers to increase that product's value.

Great! So what does that make the troops? Business expenses?

[Aristotle]

Originally posted by kestra
Great! So what does that make the troops? Business expenses?

ROFL.

As if you give a fuck about the troops, Kestra. They are just a convenient tool when you want to trash America or the obviously worthless George Bush.

As for the main topic: this is really nothing more than an obvious, convenient, easy money grab. As much as I think George Bush has been a gigantic failure and disappointment as a President, having staffers come out with garbage "books" like this is just unseemly. The fact that we, as a country, contribute to this annihilation of the Presidency really makes me sad.

Together, Bill Clinton and George Bush, along with the pathetic pile-on haters who do everything they can to create as much drama around them as possible, have done potentially irreparable harm to the office of the Presidency. And that is actually a worse thing that you might think. Successful leadership both at home and abroad is largely about the respect one is able to command and the trust one is able to engender. When the Office of the President of the United States loses is luster, that hurts our country's ability to function.

So everyone who contributes to this is part of the problem. People who write these trashy books, people who create drama about them, people who give them more credence than they deserve, everyone.

I mean seriously... "George Bush sucks"... "Politicians are dishonest"... Wow, this justifies a book and a bunch of media attention? Give me a break. This is news?

[kestra]

As if you give a fuck about the troops, Kestra. They are just a convenient tool when you want to trash America or the obviously worthless George Bush.

I have a cousin fighting in Afghanistan, you ignorant jackass!! So don't assume to know what I give a fuck about.

The media and ex white house members have now deemed it safe to clear their consciences, and hell, why not make a few bucks on the side. I smell bullshit coming from McClellan.

[Aristotle]

Originally posted by kestra
I have a cousin fighting in Afghanistan, you ignorant jackass!! So don't assume to know what I give a fuck about.

I don't have to assume. You prove it with your words. You probably do care about your cousin, but beyond that you clearly don't give a damn about "the troops." The fact that you care about your cousin is not proof that you care about the troops in general. If anyone is being an "ignorant jackass" that would be you for attempting that logical fallacy.

You demonstrate your hatred for America and everything it stands for on a regular basis. You only trot out the "what about the troops!" canard when it suits your America or George Bush bashing purposes.

If the shoe fits wear it. If you don't like the way it smells, buy some new shoes. You have a history of getting indignant when people aptly peg you. Maybe you should take that as a gigantic clue to change your behavior and your words.

Now run along back to Moveon.org for your marching orders and find a new lame, irrelevant topic to bash America or George Bush over.

Kestra, I think you really should do a lot more soul searching and a lot less parroting of crap you read on left wing web sites. You never seem very pleased with the reaction you get from your posts, nor do you seem to like the conclusions people draw about you based on your words. The disconnect there indicates to me that deep down even you know how hateful and BS laden the crap is you open up with.

[kestra]

Kestra, I think you really should do a lot more soul searching and a lot less parroting of crap you read on left wing web sites. You never seem very pleased with the reaction you get from your posts, nor do you seem to like the conclusions people draw about you based on your words. The disconnect there indicates to me that deep down even you know how hateful and BS laden the crap is you open up with.

Your interpretation of the truth is your own perception of things. I have no control over that. My guess is that McClellan was feeling the heat from someone, somewhere, and decided to write this book to distance himself from any potential future investigation into his complicity in the build up to war.

[Fynn]

Great! So what does that make the troops? Business expenses?

Nope, media outlets have no financial interest in the troops. They make good subject matter for selling their product. But troops getting slaughtered by the thousands, raping Japanese schoolgirls, or helping rebuild disaster and war torn communities are pretty much all the same for them, more stories to sell more advertising.

Those responsible for the troops are the elected officials, the voters who put them into office, and the troops themselves. You can't blame the media for the failure of any of those three, since the information was available, just no one chose to read/watch the outlets who had the right information because they were telling people what they didn't want to hear.

[Rosuav]

Originally posted by Fynn
Nope, media outlets have no financial interest in the troops. They make good subject matter for selling their product. But troops getting slaughtered by the thousands, raping Japanese schoolgirls, or helping rebuild disaster and war torn communities are pretty much all the same for them, more stories to sell more advertising.

To an extent; but controversial topics and bad news always sell more papers than "Everyone's doing the right thing, all's going well" stories. (Not that the latter are worthless, just that the former are better.) So if there's good news and bad news, guess which one are they going to put on the front page. Troops getting slaughtered by the thousands? Let's give that a picture and a big fat headline. Troops helping to rebuild a war-torn community? I think that deserves page 3, subheading, but still with a picture. Preferably of some topless girl. (Okay, I'm being REALLY cynical here.) Both stories will sell papers, though.

[Malacasta]

I agree that the issue is quite complex. It's conventional wisdom that 'bad news sells' and if I had the time, I bet that on researching that belief I'd find a lot of truth.

On the other hand though, other issues such as 'empathy burn out' and the 'memory hole' counter the argument that there's money in misery. We just don't get headline news day after day about how many kids were murdered last week in Sudan, or how many miners were crushed to death in China, or how many deformed babies were born in the agent orange poisoned areas of Vietnam. Sure, we usually get immediately sensational stories, but the chronic (and more tragic) effects are ignored - who here knows the current death toll of Katrina without having to look it up? How many folks who aren't from Australia could summarize the last 30 years of East Timor's history?

There must be a reason we aren't getting these stories, and I believe it's largely because people don't want to be reminded of just how much horror exists for so many people on such a large scale (little horrors of course, such as missing blond teenagers, defy this). I remember when I last traveled, noticing homeless people everywhere I went, and how I was handing out money like it was Xmas. After a day or two I must have subconsciously realized this couldn't go on, and I stopped seeing the homeless for the most part. While this is anecdotal, I think it's probably the general experience. You block out what you don't want to know, and people just don't want to know about the latest catastrophe in Bangladesh because it hurts too much and there's just not very much they can do about it (possibly though some people block it out because they don't give a shit about foreigners - I have had lots of arguments with Threshers where that sentiment was pretty strong). The point is though, that if there was money to be made by publishing these stories then they'd be published.

As to the memory hole, I find this one quite extraordinary. Anyone with a passion for a particular thing is obviously going to remember 'gotcha' stories and facts and figures which help to push their barrow so I'll admit that I remember a lot of obscure things that most normal punters wouldn't (and ignore and forget a lot of other things that other punters might retain) but I'll use a long past example to make my point.

During the first gulf war, in Australia (we didn't have google in those days so I can't tell you how much attention this story got in the US) support for escalation after Iraq invaded Kuwait was insignificant. The media then ran a story about how Iraqi soldiers invaded a maternity ward and threw the babies out of the incubators. This story was told by a 15 year old Kuwaiti girl to congress;
"I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital...(w)hile I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where . . . babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die."
Afterwards this story was repeated as one of the most compelling reasons to support the war. It was repeated in Congress, by President Bush, by the Media and by the UN Security Council.

Anyways the story was entirely fabricated by the media firm "Hill & Knowlton" and the girl was a member of the Kuwaiti royal family and the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US.

The reason I retell this story is because in my experience almost nobody remembers it. Nobody remembers it being front page news, even liberals from the US don't remember it. It's like it never happened. I have hundreds of examples like this in the anecdote file in my head, and I'm sure that those people on the opposite side of the political aisle to me have their own overstuffed files full of similar examples. And the reason I say it's counter to the 'bad news sells stories' meme is because if these examples stayed in the public consciousness then Powell's speech to the UN wouldn't have sold; The WMD stories wouldn't have sold; people would be generally more skeptical and would have boycotted or protested against the way that the war being sold so uncritically. Instead, I think they subconsciously 'unremembered' what they knew and stuck it in the memory hole because they WANTED to believe the White House, they wanted to buy into the 'good news' about patriotism, US benevolence etc etc.

All we need to do is look at the way Foxnews is building the Iran story to see that a significant part of the population continues to willingly buy into what for them is 'good news' propaganda.

[Theairoh]

Man. Why is it everyone's propaganda has to be 'leftist' or 'rightist' propaganda when it's just propaganda?

[Gromgor]

I have to somewhat agree with Malacasta (I know. Shocking!)

I think the reason is because we want to feel good about ourselves as human beings. In all countries we're willing to find excuses, find reasonings for the things we disagree with because if we, in our own individual countries, don't feel something is right, then we either have to step up and see about changing it, or we have to accept that we're too weak in mortal character/ability to bring about the change we want to see in the world.

It diminishes our sense of self to believe we live in a country capable of doing wrong beyond a certain extent.