Because You Never Asked

COMMENTS ON COMMENTARY: THOMAS FRIEDMAN

(5/08, Spain)

     It could be time to consider my “comments on commentary” from the International Herald Tribune, while residing by the Roman Sea, as a formalized tradition. My need to find a baseball score in a country that wouldn’t know a double play from a “ménage a  trois”, was always the catalyst for these infrequent sojourns into Yanqui journalism, but my inculcation into the Googly has made such purchase obsolete. I now buy the Trib --- and I am surprised at my need to do so --- simply to find out how the news is going down in the world’s only Stupid Power.

     The Iraqi war has always been a fecund source of “comments on commentary” from the Trib, especially in the first two years of the reckless adventure, when American attempts to polish this turd contrasted vividly with Spanish and Euro journalism in general. It fell upon people like myself (somebody had to do it) to point these dichotomies out so whoever might lay eyes on these pages could begin to realize what a shit sandwich American Big Media was feeding them --- a la “cart”.

     As the war wore on, this all began to lose its impact as the imperial incursion fell unambiguously into failure, so much so that not even American Big Media could rescue anything positive from the colossal quagmire. This has somewhat emasculated the tension that used to exist between the American and foreign press, mainly because there is no war left. What we have now is a military occupation in a hostile land that can maintain its military position, but cannot accomplish any of the goals its trillion dollar ($1,000,000,000,000) price tag is trying to buy, i.e.- a client state over some of the world’s most important petro-reserves. (It is interesting how such military romantics as  John McCain are hailing this slight change as some kind of “success”).

     As the Bush Gang gets ready to cowardly hand this mess off to a new Head Coach (back to the ranch, see ya’), the Grand Canyon-like rut of pessimism this war has fallen into seems to have driven the Trib towards a flirtation with the truth.

     Two editorial page commentaries by such vastly different voices as Thomas Friedman and Garrison Keillor seemed worthy of my annual “comments on commentary” tradition. I’ll discuss Keillor in the next essay, “Comments on Commentary: Garrison Keillor”.

     Friedman has appeared in these pages before (see essay, “Introduction To Propaganda, 101”). He is one of America’s preeminent journalists. He works for the New York Times where his geo-political opinions are prominently displayed on a daily basis. His self confident, scholarly demeanor regularly shows up on television’s egg head political circuit (you know, the kind of stuff Woody Allen people watch before kickoff on Sunday mornings). He is “somebody”.

     Somebody or not, he seems a bit of a phony to this commentator. In spite of his somewhat intimidating intellectual jargon, all festooned and camouflaged as objective center-leftism, his voice is little more than a propaganda mechanism for the neo-liberal global economy that currently has the world roped and tied. The above cited essay (“Introduction To Propaganda, 101”) is an attempt to unveil this shroud and show the real Thomas Friedman.

     Friedman’s piece from the Trib was called “Imbalances of Power”. As mentioned above, the American failure in Iraq has left the door to the truth somewhat ajar, and Friedman’s article is a good one. It dwells upon the incompetence of the W. Administration and the resultant loss of influence the world’s only Stupid Power (my words, not his) is now facing. In spite of the article’s overall excellence, there is still some “Friedmanesque” hypocrisy to dwell upon.

     Two points made in the article are worthy of discussion here.

     1) The first one has to do with a Friedman attack on the Bush Administration’s woefully passive attempts to do anything about our foreign oil dependency. He is “baffled” by the fact that W. would rather go “begging” to Saudi Arabia for a break in oil prices before asking the American people “to buy more fuel efficient cars ( --- ) that might actually help free us from our oil addiction.”

     He then goes on to chastise “the failure of Bush to fully mobilize the most powerful innovation engine in the world --- the U.S. economy (this could be put in doubt these days) --- to produce a scaleable alternative to oil”. This, according to Friedman, has caused “the rise of a collection of petro-authoritarian states, from Russia to Venezuela to Iran, that are reshaping global politics in their own image”.

     Bravo! I’ll drink to a lot of that, but one has to wonder just how Friedman defines a “petro-authoritarian” state? He just got through deriding president Bush’s groveling attempt to get Saudi Arabia, an iron fisted, hereditary regime with an Inquisitional personality, to lower oil prices, and yet --- it is not considered a “petro-authoritarian” state. The same might be said for the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait or Qatar, countries drowning in petroleum wealth, but drought stricken in democratic principles. One delving into these inconsistencies, cannot help but realize that Friedman’s use of the phrase “petro-authoritarian” is really just a euphemism for “petro-non-compliant” states, that is, non-compliant to the dictates of the United States. It is not really a world full of “petro-authoritarian” or “non-authoritarian” states, but a world full of “petro-compliant” or “non-compliant” states.

     But Friedman’s hypocrisy is even more patent when one considers his initial backing of the Iraqi adventure. It didn’t take long for him to become a strident critic of the war, but only for the way it was carried out.

     When one such as Friedman, someone who favored this war, begins to complain about the Bush reluctance to make us more energy independent, there is something out of tune here. It smacks of trying to cover one’s tracks. It wreaks of someone who would jump in the first lifeboat and leave the women and children behind. “Who me? Nah, I had nothing to do with this”.

     Considering the well recognized geo-political expertise of the famous New York Times columnist, and in spite of the creamy chocolate icing people like him tried to cover this cake with --- democracy, liberation, an evil dictator, ad nauseum --- one would suspect Friedman had some idea that oil was a major player in this gambit. Hey! --- he’s a smart guy. And now he is bitching about our government’s energy dependent policies?

     He should have done his bitching long before this war ever became a reality.

     2) That leads me to the second blurb of great significance from the Friedman piece, because it ties in neatly with the kind of jaded point of view he represents.

     Not too long ago, Hugo Chavez, president of one of those “petro-non-compliant” countries and an institutional bad guy of Yanqui journalism, decided not to renew the broadcasting license of one of the traditional news organizations of Venezuela. He replaced it with a new media outlet more to his liking. (I repeat, he did not shut it down, he handed its expiring license over to someone else, something that is, theoretically, possible in America too.) Quite naturally, in the United States this was considered an act of totalitarian brigsmanship worthy of swine like Chavez, a strongman’s use of brute force not in harmony with the democratic principles of a free and open yadda, yadda, blah-blah-blah, an outrage!

     One must remember (or realize for the first time) there is no free and objective media voice anywhere. All media has a point of view, and up until very recently, the only media with the resources to effectively mount an apparatus capable of disseminating a global point of view, has come directly from the developed world. Both the now more prevalent private, but still relevant public media sources of the United States and Europe push their vision of the world. They trumpet a socio-economic concept they claim brings prosperity, progress, freedom, enlightenment, and a general all around level of well being for all to enjoy.

     But the message monopoly seems to be coming to an end.

     For the peoples of the third world, who’ve lived for many generations with their necks under the boot, it would be logical to assume that their outlook, their point of view, their general way of looking out at the world and seeing what they do, might not coincide with CNN’s vision of things. Friedman quotes from a book called “The Post American World”, by one Fareed Zakaria, described as the editor of Newsweek International. “Today, India has 18 all news channels of its own, and the perspectives they provide are very different from those you will get in western media. They now have the confidence to present their own narrative”.

     This is what Hugo Chavez is trying to do in Latin America. This is what Al Jazeerah is doing in the middle east. Undoubtedly, a fledgling Chinese media voice is also arising. These are third world voices with enough financial clout to spread their message, or, as Zakaria so perfectly says, to present their own “narrative”. The “news” is not simply a day to day presentation of events, it is an ongoing story more similar to a novel than what we call daily journalism. The author of this story controls the narrative, gives it the tint and direction it deems fit. Do you think these third world “novelists” see the Iraqi war through the same prism Wolf Blitzer does? Do they relate to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the same way the Fox group does? Do they see Fidel Castro as the villainous butcher the station Chavez put down surely saw him as? Is the Tibetan thing seen as the huge international crisis western media has made it out to be? Is the Burmese government looked upon as the murderous, totalitarian thugs the BBC sees?

     A new drama is beginning to unfold and the “good ol’ boys” might be losing a grip on the script. Unlike Thomas Friedman, who looks upon this as a threat, I say bring it on. It will, in the long run, make us all better off.

     That brings me to --- see essay “Comments On Commentary: Garrison Keillor”.        

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Email: JerryG@postcman.info