Monday, January 31, 2005

The Yin and Yang of British reporting






Iraq confounds the prophets of doom
Opinion, The UK Telegraph



Hope your sitting down because this opinion column will knock your socks off! We hear so little positive journalism from British print media overall, despite the fact Blair is a staunch ally.

The today's opinion commentary in the Telegraph is nothing less than mindblowing. It demeans those hoping for post-election failure merely to justify their anti-war, anti-Bush stances. It looks back at history, drawing parallels to South Africa's first election. And it minces no words, directly accusing the continued doom'n'gloom broadcasts as "coming perilously close to siding with jihadi murderers.".

A worthy read in it's entirety. Bravo, Telegraph. Bravo.

That elections are a better thing than tyranny seems a truth so obvious as not to be worth stating. Yet such were the passions aroused by the Iraq war that many Western observers now find themselves hoping, disgracefully, that that country's first free poll will fail.

Left-wing commentators, in Britain as in much of Europe, have focused disproportionately on the difficulties that any state must undergo during a transition process. To many of them, every terrorist bomb, every murdered election official, every sign of heightened military alertness - even the loss of a British aircraft - makes a nonsense of Iraq's democratic aspirations.

(snip - highly recommend continued reading at above link)


Of course, Brian Whitaker is the yang to the yin here. The Guardian commentator is the quintessential profile of those which the Telegraph's opinion speaks.

In his
"Fig-leaf freedom" column today, Mr. Whitaker parrots the same idiot'ology uttered by MSNBC's Chris "Lob Ball" Matthews. Both seem to believe that an election means life should change overnight. They believe it is already rife with influence from interest groups and the wealthy, place undue import upon the violence, and gnash their teeth over the plight of the minority Sunnis.

So far it sounds like a healthy democracy in growing stages to me.

Dare I point out that the USA didn't change the moment Clinton took over from Bush the elder? Nor will changes be immediate when Bush yields office to his successor.

And does anyone remember that the few Founding Fathers, who designed our Constitution, were the wealthy and influential of early America? Despite the fact that Whitaker would most likely consider them wealthy, capitalist pigs, they sure did a great job of creating the ultimate role model for democracy and economic growth.

For the naysayers, praying for failure in Iraq is redemption to their years of abusive journalism for the war. It's always something they must decry as failure. They have been proven wrong about the election, so they look further to hype on the next obstacle of doom they can see.

I'm with the Telegraph... but considerably less PC about it. The doom'n'gloomers *do* side with the jihadists. They just do not have the integrity to proclaim their quiet allegiance. This puts them one step below the terrorists on the human scale. For while terrorists are indeed scum of the earth, they at least do not deny who they are.

3 comments:

Alia said...

What a great read, Mata! Thanks for posting it.

MataHarley said...

'Tis my pleasure and honor to be partner'd with such an illustrious one such as yourself, mon ami.

Glad you enjoyed it. What a contrast, no?

Alia said...

:) You always say the nicest things. However, aren't we both glad to be out of CA ? I think Arnold is doing well considering he's attempting to Conan the Barbarians. Egads, he's quite a man.! The CA Dems are... well, cute to call them girlie-men. They are deludinoids. Guess what? Just read an article that the Oak Grove Middle School is, like, way below the proficiency level. Oh, the shock and horror, no?