Tuesday, July 2, 2013

This is why so many newspapers are called "The Mirror"

Kevin Willaimson has a remarkable essay about the Gosnell abortion-murders, and the press cover-up.

No Job Too Small 
A blind spot in the media's all-seeing eye.

Excerpt:

... There is no context in which the grisly serial murders of a still-uncalculated number of newborns is not news. The horrific case of Kermit Gosnell of Philadelphia has been the subject of something very closely resembling an intentional media blackout by a great deal of the major media. When Washington Post writer Sarah Kliff was pressed on her refusal to acknowledge the story, she sniffed that she covers “policy, not local crime.” To which National Review’s Robert VerBruggen replied: “Similarly, national gun-policy people do not cover local crime in places like Aurora or Newtown.” Strange that we all know about such local-yokel crime stories as the St. Valentine’s Day massacre, in which the relatively modest number of seven mobsters lost their lives. 
Our country is trying very hard not to think about abortion — about the physical reality of abortion. Earlier this year, the Colorado Supreme Court upheld a ban on the use of what critics insist on calling “graphic images” — but what is in fact simple photography — in abortion protests. Similar attempts to suppress free speech on the subject of abortion crop up regularly. Abortion is a strange issue in that it is the allegedly secular and materialist side of the debate that finds itself taking refuge in metaphysics, in this case the fiction of “personhood” that suddenly descends upon a human being at some point. The other side, thought to be populated mostly by religious cranks, is content to address the physical reality of abortion, the facts that cannot be denied but may be ignored. 
The Gosnell case is shocking, but only because it makes visible and explicit what had been hidden and implicit. Every abortion is a shocking act of grisly violence — against the baby, who is murdered, and against the mother, whose body is converted into a crime scene. Taking some account of the moral reckoning of what our country has been up to for the past 40 years is a task of great scope and complexity. It is a job that is too big for the mass media. But willfully ignoring the story is a job that is not too big for them, even though doing so reveals our mighty newspapers and television networks to be smaller than we had thought. If this is what American newspapers have to offer, then they do not deserve to survive, and they will not. But the culpability is not theirs alone: There is a reason that there are many newspapers called The Mirror.

The Gosnell cover-up, and the horrendous crimes and legal acts against children that the media covers up, isn't merely an indictment of the mainstream media. We watch and read what these people spew. The American public keeps these frauds employed. We provide their advertising revenue. These hacks and anchors and executives make tens and tens of millions of dollars, their fraudulent "journalistic" corporations make hundreds of millions of dollars in profits, happily paid by us

A substantial portion of the American public doesn't want to know about abortions and infanticide, or countless other crimes like Constitutional outrages against freedom of speech and religion and against the right to keep and bear arms and against the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, or massive debts that will impoverish our children and that will never be repaid, or gross foreign policy incompetence that borders on treason, committed by our secular elites. 

Most Americans are not "victims" of our dishonest journalists. They are complicit. As Williamson wryly notes, that's why so many of our newspapers are called "The Mirror". 

9 comments:

  1. Excellent article. Excellent post. Kudos, Doctor.
    Unfortunately, I think this is a disease of mind and morality that infects the vast majority of the civilized world.
    People need to stop subscribing. Cut off the money and let the spin doctors and rumour mongers find a real job.

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  2. Our supposed "free press" is failing us. They can't be bothered to report the news.

    Here was the frontpage story in my local newspaper yesterday.

    http://www.masslive.com/living/index.ssf/2013/07/us_marbles_champ_of_1963_springfields_jimmy_red_donohue_remembers_remarkable_summer_including_appear.html

    Apparently a local man was once won the US marble championship in 1963. He's still around and he still has his marbles.

    Front. page. news.

    There's nothing else going on like, let me see...the economy, Afghanistan, Benghazi, Syria, IRS-gate, EPA-gate, Snowdown, the NSA, snooping on reporters, abortion.

    Nope. Just marbles.

    TRISH

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Reporters are pretty useless. Every once in a while, a reporter will come along who actually feels like covering the news, like Sharyl Atkisson, for example. Then she will be disciplined by the brother of a senuior White House staffer who just happens to be her boss and have her computer hacked.

      I think you misspelled Snowden.

      JQ

      Delete
  3. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyJuly 2, 2013 at 7:51 AM

    Every Catholic Mass begins with The Confiteor, a confession of one's own imperfections. It's a rebellion against the Cult of Self-Esteem, the "you will be like gods" religion, which is the Original Old Time Religion.

    In part, The Confiteor goes like this:

    I have greatly sinned, in my thoughts and in my words, in what I have done and in what I have failed to do...

    It is that last phrase which describes so much evil.

    My spouse lived several months abroad in Ceaușescu's Romania, a leftist Paradise. She was doing research, and in the libraries the government had simply excised the truth and historical fact from the historical record (newspapers, etc). They lied through a failure to tell.

    Today, the American press lies through a failure to tell. It's no different in principle than what the Communists did, but it is more efficient. If the truth is never printed or spoken, it never has to be excised.

    But it is still evil.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The media are basically the fourth branch of the government. This administration doesn't have to tell them what to write. They can use their own best judgement. That which embarrasses the administration gets deep-sixed.

      What a sorry, sorry institution it is.

      JQ

      Delete
  4. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyJuly 2, 2013 at 10:53 AM

    You're right, JQ. What was once a feisty press has now become a quango (quasi non-governmental organization). And, as you observed above, this regime has ensured it's riddled with nepotism.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Adm. G Boggs, Glenbeckistan NavyJuly 2, 2013 at 11:01 AM

    Risible Comment 'O The Day (Victim Category)

    First Lady Michelle Obama on Tuesday described living in the White House as like being in a “really nice prison.”


    Awwww. That's so sad. [snif] I blame racism.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Except the two of them can leave ANYTIME.

      Delete
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    Beauty And Wellness reviewed by Haute Living

    ReplyDelete