I regularly read publications of a certain flavor, like the Washington Post, the New York Times, the New Yorker. In one day of reading this sort of thing, I can get outraged a hundred times over about what's going on in the world -- most recently, I've worked myself into many a fury over Abu Ghraib. And I also read a good number of liberal/progressive blogs, much of which consists of commentary on stories that appeared in the Washington Post and the New York Times and the New Yorker.
And lately I've been wondering why we bother thinking and talking and writing
about these things so much. I have a tough time shaking the feeling that all
this talk, all this commentary, pretty much amounts to preaching to the choir.
And while that's useful and necessary, to really get gymnastic with this analogy,
the choir ain't gonna be picking the next preacher.
I took a look today at what someone in, say, Ohio might be reading if they get
their news from only their local paper, as I think many people do. Today in
the Akron Beacon Journal
on Abu Ghraib, we have 'Bush praises Rumsfeld'. In the Cleveland
Plain Dealer, 'Bush at Pentagon today; President talks about prisoner
abuse, shows support for Rumsfeld'. The home page for the Cincinnati
Enquirer, one of Ohio's bigger papers, shows nothing on Abu Ghraib.
Also showing nothing: the Toledo
Blade, the Youngstown Vindicator,
the Canton Repository, the Portsmouth
Daily Times, and the Ashtabula
Star Beacon.
That's not to say that Abu Ghraib isn't and won't continue to be a wide-reaching
story -- as I predicted
last week, I'm pretty sure this is the beginning of the end of this presidency.
And I know that what starts in the 'big papers' often works its way to the more
local ones. This one will, and not the least of the reasons is that abuse like
this speaks to basic human decency and our understanding of ourselves as Americans.
That's why were seeing Republican senators like Lindsey
Graham say things like:
"[W]e're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience."
and John McCain say things like:
"I have seen a lot of people die. I've seen a lot of terrible things in my life. But to see it done by Americans to human beings is what's so appalling. It's so outrageous, I can't describe it."So I do think Abu Ghraib, both the abuse and its larger meaning as a reflection of the conduct of this Administration, will come to define the next couple of months. In the meantime, though, so much of the other detail on how just how misguided this war slips through the cracks. There's a whole lot of people not reading SF Gate (and who might be scared away by Mark "Where Is My Gay Apocalypse?" Morford) who should know, and know now, that the cost of the war "could top $150 billion through the next fiscal year -- as much as three times what the White House had originally estimated" and that that this tough on terrorism president is spending "about $3 in Iraq for every $1 committed to homeland security."
I think it's the sort of thing that Andrew Sullivan, a well-known conservative commentator, is alluding to when he writes:
You could feel the psychological barometric pressure drop this weekend in Washington. Maybe the rest of the country won't react the same way. Or maybe there will be a time-lag in which the country as a whole realizes it has lost confidence in this administration as profoundly as Washington now has. But every time I try to think of a way in which this is not catastrophic to the cause of democracy and peace in the Middle East, I come undone.(To be fair, the Administration is doing their best to speak to this difficult moment. Our Vice President has addressed the concerns, the outrage, the profound loss of confidence in this Administration. Witness "I think Don Rumsfeld is the best secretary of Defense the United States has ever had.")
A three-quarters brilliant idea that came out of the Dean campaign was to have devoted supporters write letters to voters in early primary/caucus states. I say three-quarters brilliant, because I think in practice it may have done more harm then good to have a nice lady in Iowa to get a letter in January from say, 'Nancy, Washington DC,' that read, "Please help the Governor take back our country!!! He's our only hope!!!"
But the idea was right. The idea was to reach beyond the choir. I guess the question now is how to take all the outrage, all the hope, all the dedication found in the liberal and progressive blogs, all the questioning of this Administration that's now standard issue in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and find them all a home in the Akron Beacon Journal . In a way that the folks of Akron will read.
(edited early on May 11 cause I wrote it real tired)
