AWOL in covering a scandal (Faux & RW talk radio)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/16841981.htm

The Walter Reed scandal was a story years in the making. A story that up until last week had been downplayed - censored, really - by the government and the military. A story kept from American voters by our pro-troop, pro-surge broadcasting Lords of Loud.

If the right-wing media had broadcast the story, hidden in plain sight, with half the energy they use to excoriate the ACLU, the right's water-carriers could have helped avert years of misery for many of our veterans.

Certainly the information was out there. All they had to do was talk to the minority Democratic Congress members on the Veteran Affairs Committee, who watched helplessly as House Republicans voted to increase veterans' medical fees and reject increased funds for veterans' health care, which, in effect, cut their benefits. How easy would it have been for, say, Bill O'Reilly, to expose this national embarrassment? Very. So why did the right's echo chamber choose to ignore this disgrace? A tough one to answer, especially when they spend so much time characterizing the left as the anti-soldier cult.

On talk radio or Fox News, it's been all Anna Nicole Smith, Britney's hair or lack of same, American Idol nudie pics, Al Gore's perfidious hypocrisy, Obama's connection to racist churches, Hillary's connection to Satan.

Do you see anything on that list that mentions the national shame that is Walter Reed Army Medical Center? Not when there was righteous indignation to be vented over Melissa Etheridge calling her partner wife at the Oscars.

[unpossibles]

1. agreed. It shames me that we have such disconnect from what is going on

and that it is very intentional. I think "they" know that many of the American people would be aghast over what's really going on, so they give us people like Coulter to love/hate, like throwing a rancid bone to a pack of starving dogs so we'll be too busy fighting over it to turn on the Master.

[louis-t]

2. Was forced to watch Faux at a restaurant.

Usually, I ask "do we have to watch this propaganda?" and see if they'll change it, but I didn't have any fight left in me that day. I counted 15 seconds of coverage every half hour, and a video loop of one small area of a ceiling with peeling paint. Seems Faux is trying to minimize the damage to bushco.