Thomas Friedman of the New York Times – On Listening:
There was a headline that grabbed me in The Times on Saturday. It said, "Cheney Lashes Out at Critics of Policy on Iraq."
"Wow," I thought, "that must have been an interesting encounter." Then I read the fine print. Mr. Cheney was speaking to 200 invited guests at the conservative Heritage Foundation — and even they were not allowed to ask any questions. Great. Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein issue messages from their caves through Al Jazeera, and Mr. Cheney issues messages from his bunker through Fox. America is pushing democracy in Iraq, but our own leaders won't hold a real town hall meeting or a regular press conference.
Out of fairness, my newspaper feels obligated to run such stories. But I wish we had said to the V.P.: If you're going to give a major speech on Iraq to an audience limited to your own supporters and not allow any questions, that's not news — that's an advertisement, and you should buy an ad on the Op-Ed page.
There's a lot of that going around with this Administration. Unfortunately, the pro-war folks can't tell the difference between 'strong statements' made in the fashion of true cowardice via controlled, criticism free environments as opposed to actual real debate of issues that affect the lives of REAL living, breathing Americans. Giving rah-rah preaching to the converted speeches at Heritage doesn't quite qualify as bravely confronting criticism. We have a word for that – its called propaganda.
Link courtesy of a coworker.