Willard Wirtz was "tired of it" — the way the press wrote about the war, the riots, and "slum problems" instead of the achievements of "two magnificent Presidents unparalleled in the history of this or any other nation."
November 14, 2017
Why must the press emphasize "disenchantment, exhaustion, resentment, listlessness, terror, disorientation, suspicion, joylessness, and hate"?
The Secretary of Labor complained about the press 50 years ago today (reported in the NYT)(click to enlarge):
Willard Wirtz was "tired of it" — the way the press wrote about the war, the riots, and "slum problems" instead of the achievements of "two magnificent Presidents unparalleled in the history of this or any other nation."
Willard Wirtz was "tired of it" — the way the press wrote about the war, the riots, and "slum problems" instead of the achievements of "two magnificent Presidents unparalleled in the history of this or any other nation."
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14 comments:
Well, they were Democrats, the magnificent Presidents (Kennedy and Johnson). The press was less biased than it would be not long after, but all that negativity was not much in context. Nixon got far worse for less.
Nixon got the nattering nabobs of negativism, hat tip to Bill Safire.
At least back then they criticized Democrats once in a while. Now it's all GOP = evil, all the time.
https://hotair.com/archives/2017/11/14/msnbc-host-perfectly-logical-reason-not-covering-menendez-trial/
To natter or not to natter, that is the question.
Or, perhaps, there is a sympathy in choice.
"The Dom Giordano Program spoke with MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell who said he hasn’t talked about Menendez since charges were first brought, mainly because of President Donald Trump.
“If we had anyone else in the White House, if we had any other president in the White House, any other of the Republicans that were running for president, never mind, have Hillary Clinton as president, the Menendez trial would be a very big item in all of our coverage. But this is what Donald Trump has done to coverage; the trying to keep up with everything the president is generating on a given day is just overwhelming. Now you have a special prosecutor and that is more important case than the Menendez case. If it not were for the special prosecutor’s investigation and the congressional investigations and the Trump presidency, Menendez coverage would be much higher.”
O’Donnell goes on to say that the Democrats have a serious problem in Bob Menendez, but “they’re allowed to duck” it because the President is tweeting all of the time."
The 1960 Kennedy/Nixon debate and the 1964 Daisy Ad were the birth of TV's power in politics and the modern politics of fear from the Left.
Cut them some slack. In 1967 the Global Cooling and Ice Age was inevitable. That certainty of disaster puts stress on folks. And then along came Nuclear Freeze that finished them off....until the Russians saved the world.
But you tell me, over and over and over again, my friend, that you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.
There's a pretty good argument that the combined JFK-LBJ presidencies are among the most disastrous in American history. Wirtz, a Harvard lawyer and whiz kid, was a principal architect and enforcer of the War on Poverty, which failed to eliminate poverty and had a large part in the erosion of American family structures, especially African American families.
In 1967 we were one year away from the Tet Offensive in Viet Nam. We were one year away from a president so unpopular over his prosecution of the war forced to go on national television to announce that he would not run for reelection. We were one year away from an assassin’s gunfire deciding that there would only ever be one President Kennedy. We were one year away from the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and American cities being burned. We were one year away from the riots in Chicago during the Democratic Convention and the consequent political comeback of Dick Nixon.
And just before the end of the year I received my induction notice.
In 1967 it certainly felt as though we were on the eve of destruction.
I agree with Wirtz. Why do we men have to suffer through these endless reports of women whining about sexual assault, intimidation, groping and creepy behavior? Why can't the media feed us more stories about female hearts going pitter-patter over our irresistible sex appeal and suave courting techniques?
And just before the end of the year I received my induction notice.
Me, too.
"Why can't the media feed us more stories about female hearts going pitter-patter over our irresistible sex appeal and suave courting techniques?"
That would be Penthouse fantasy letters and Playboy advisory. Or maybe decades of Cosmo's technical articles with diagrams for the proper way to give blow jobs, hand jobs and anal sex. More recently Teen Vogue's instructions on the techniques and joys of anal sex.
The actual way to spread the word of one's prowess is by word of mouth. Women talk about this more than men with more detail. The benchmark isn't really the talk, it's how often you get asked back.
They're lefties, and hate, Hate, HATE Trump.
Back in the day when a march was held and the media declared the march was significant everyone then thought to themselves - "The march is significant." Or when an event like Kent State happened and the media said "This event is significant" everyone thought the event WAS significant. Or when Tet happened and the media said "this means the war is lost", everyone thought the war was lost. That was the Sixties and ever since then, group by group, people have ceased to believe the media. Some in the Nineties, watching the media defend Bill Clinton's rapes; some as far back as the Tet offensive, realizing that the media wanted the Us to lose and was lying to achieve this incomprehensible goal; some in this last year watching the media completely abandon all standards of journalism. But meanwhile the media began to believe in the Little Stories for Swamp Critters written by one Malcolm Gladwell. In these stories the media was able to swing elections by a slight slant in coverage, by a lifted eyebrow. When the media was not able to swing the 2016 election despite harmonizing their stories to a Mormon Tabernacle Choir level, they suffered a collective breakdown. They appear in reality on TV or in magazines but for them it's all unreal. That's why they are doing such a terrible job. Spiritually they are all in the sanatorium rec room drawing pictures with crayons called "What I Used To Do" and doing little plays on the same theme. They are all thinking of the crimes they covered up and all picturing Trump exacting vengeance. That's why they can't take their eyes or their attention off him; that's where the strain is coming from. For them.
I'm not depressed but I have concluded that what is evident about the media is also true of DC - much more than I thought. The Department of Justice is filled with Clinton loyalists and the same with the FBI. Sections of the government have been weaponized against the people. I think the problem this presents will be solved but meanwhile there no way for Trump's Attorney-General to know who would do a real investigation. Look at Mueller. You could never have persuaded me in advance that the ex-FBI director was at all likely to behave as Mueller is behaving. I think we'll survive as a nation but many reputations will crash. Polling. The media. Weinstein. Mueller.
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