The media’s protection racket

Hugh Hewitt has more on John Kerry’s 1971 testimony to Congress. Hugh notes a strange (unless you experienced first-hand the radical movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s) tidbit in which Kerry testified approvingly about the “Indian nation” that had been established illegally on Alcatraz. Are there any period-peace leftist causes that Kerry didn’t embrace?
Hugh also adds an excellent discussion of the mainstream media’s unwillingness to examine Kerry’s radical period. Why, even as they comb through President Bush’s 1971 dental records, are they so relunctant to consider Kerry’s political past? (Tim Russert has allegedly said he won’t even allow the video of Kerry’s August 18, 1971 appearance on Meet the Press to be made available to the public for fear of its politicization). According to Hugh, the reason is that “most of the big names in the media of today threw in with the anti-war crowd of the late ’60s and early ’70s –either as participant or reporter– and the devastation that followed in the wake of the American withdrawal from southeast Asia is an inconvenient obstacle to the illusions of the nedia as to their own morality.”
I agree with this analysis. In a way, what is going on here is the perfect illustration of the phenomenon I addressed at length yesterday — the left’s ability to claim an exemption from examination of the real world consequences of the policies it advocates. As Hugh notes, the left (including the proprietors of this blog) advocated a “cut and run” approach in Vietnam. After a decade of carnage, it is perhaps understandable that we took this position. But in doing so, we allowed wishful thinking to obscure the fact that a holocaust was almost certain to follow. And now, instead of either defending our position even given its consequences or else admitting our error, many rely on the professed nobility of our intentions, the indulgence of the media (our surrogate parents), and the power of nostalgia to evade responsibility.
What, at this time, is Kerry’s responsibility? In light of the virulent anti-Americanism of Kerry’s post-Vietnam comments, I again agree with Hugh: “Before [Kerry] becomes president or even gets close, he needs to sit down with a serious journalist –not an enabler like so many in DC with ties to the anti-war left of that era– and address his actions from the years that media seems to have forgot.”

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