Reflections in a cardboard box:

[PCIntern]

As I've posted before, I moved my office a few weeks ago, packed up over 30 years of material, threw out mountains of trash and old records of people long gone from the practice, many deceased for over 20 years, but I did carefully pack two boxes of memorabilia.

These boxes contain magazines which I had accumulated, including, but not limited to: The New Republic, New Yorker, The Nation, The Journal of Irreproducible Results, Philadelphia Magazine, Time, Newsweek, People, and Spy. Whilst unpacking and finding a place for these in my new, cramped space, I scanned a few of the issues to see beyond the reason why I had saved them (9/11, the elections of Presidents, what-I-thought-were-important-articles-of-the-day (such as New Republic's piece on why Reagan would be a one-term President if that).

One thing became clear: no one from the left or the 'right' (which we would now call middle-of-the-road) published one iota of what was really happening to this country. Gross misinterpretations of trends, faulty evaluations of 'rationales' for certain posturings both diplomatic and military, inexcusably naive portraits of individuals who, behind the scenes, have assisted in the multilateral destruction of the American Dream and thus America the Nation, outpourings of praise for people who happened to be in the room at the time or were members of the Lucky Sperm Club or married to same, and much much worse were quite evident.

Just embarassing...it took me back many years to when the NFL on CBS used to end the pre-game show with Jimmy the Greek giving predictions. You never saw him on the post-game show explaining why he was just so wrong after he had been so emphatic in his tirades about who was going to win and why. Just once, I'd like to see Joe Klein or Fred Barnes or George Will or Mort Kondracke (in his previous incarnation he was a readable 'liberal') have to stand up, have their 1983 prose read to them and asked to explain in the same academic detail in which they conceived this claptrap, why they were so totally and absolutely wrong in almost every respect.

That's what I would want for "holiday season"...

[Cirque du So-What]

1. Accountability: what a concept!

None of these pundits will be held accountable for the codswollop they've promulgated over the years, and neither will their corporate media masters. It's become 'the American way' to lie your ass off, cover your tracks, blame somebody else & look out for Number One.

[formercia]

2. Do you feel like a Mushroom yet?

Kept in the dark and fed Horse shit.

Just like the 'American Dream', it was all a fantasy, foisted upon us by the Powers that be.

[DemReadingDU]

3. Apt term, mushrooms

[PCIntern]

4. I certainly didn't live the life of Wally and the Beav...

that's for sure.

[formercia]

11. Perhaps 'Father knows best?'

Life as it should be, or that's what we were told.

[dixiegrrrrl]

5. I had never heard the phrase "the Lucky Sperm Club"

what a wonderfully appropriate term.

However, it had become clear to me over the last decade that most of the magazines you mentioned were faulty in their coverage for a reason, which is why I avoid reading them.

someone sent me this source for a perspective of the USA in the press:

http://watchingamerica.com/News/

[PCIntern]

6. It's use was quite prevalent during the rain (sic) of W. n/t

[surrealAmerican]

7. The "published authors" were (and are) operating in the dark ...

... just like everybody else. They were not necessarily being dishonest, or trying to mislead their readers.

The comparison to Jimmy the Greek is particularly apt. The audience (or at least a large potion of the audience) knew just as much about football, but nobody could predict with any accuracy the outcome of next weeks game. He wasn't lying; he was trying to do something that was impossible, and his viewers either knew that, or should have been able to figure it out.

[PCIntern]

8. Actually,

The Greek was accused by many 'insiders' of lying deliberately - that people would make a last minute call to the bookie right before kickoff on Sundays, and his predictions were skewed to even out the betting, since the line was frozen earlier - someone once ran a summary of all of his 'calls' over years on CBS, and found that it was much much worse than guessing AND of course, he was referrring to the spread, not the outright winner of the game.

I think quite frankly, many writers deliberately mislead/misled their readers, and I would respectfully disagree with you on that point.

[surrealAmerican]

9. I stand corrected.

I did not know that about Jimmy the Greek.

Don't you agree, however, that a reader ought to know that predictions are not facts, and need to be approached with skepticism?

[PCIntern]

10. "Soitenly!" as Curly used to say...

but therein lies the rub: the columnist almost never ever states a priori: "this is based on certain assumptions and suppositions and if anything changes, or my suppositions are wrong/faulty, then this entire piece may be inoperative (to use the Nixonian term). Rather, (not Dan), they state categorically "THIS IS HOW IT IS - IF YOU DON'T AGREE YOU'RE IGNORANT"...

It's entirely up to you to be cynical, and that, as W. used to say, is hard work.