When I first started this site, I did not plan on putting political news coverage on here. There are many more sites that do a better job. I was surprised this weekend, however, that very few of my friends and family knew what was going on with the Karl Rove scandal. Truthfully, this is a very important event because it has severely damaged the reputation of the Bush administration. This has led to a very important phenomenon occurring: reporters are asking hard questions again. This has not occurred since 9/11. I do not, however, expect anyone to start reading the New York Times. Instead, I urge you to please go to the following if you do not know about Rovegate. I promise you they are both entertaining and informative.
1) The Daily Show did a wonderful episode that covers the Rove controversy. (wmv, flash) It is very entertaining, but it also describes the situation very well. Please do not write it off because it is on Comedy Central. During the 2004 elections, a vote taken at the Columbia Journal Review ranked Jon Stewart as the fourth best reporter covering the campaigns.
2) NPR had an interview last week with Helen Thomas, commonly referred to as the First Lady of the Press. During the interview, she puts into perspective why the Rove scandal has become so important to reporters. Helen has been covering the white house for 62 years and early during Bush’s office, they stopped letting her ask him questions when she asked him a hard one and he could not answer it.
Please, feel free to leave comments.
Update: Hey ho! Found the original episode the Daily Show did of Rove and updated the link above. Here’s the previous episode posted that deals with follow-ups.
July 25th, 2005 on 1:34 am
if no one you know has heard of this issue, how can u claim it has damaged the reputation of the bush administration?
that statement sounds like its trying to achieve the result it claims
July 25th, 2005 on 1:42 am
That is a very good point. I think that my experiences were with people who did not pay attention to any news sources. It has been front page on many popular new sources (NYT, Washington Post, CNN) for almost two weeks. Here’s Google’s search.. But what you say might bring us to a bigger problem. Perhaps, the media has been so lack luster since 2001 that no one cares to pay attention? And perhaps that since the country has been so divided for the last 4 years, people are tired of the polarization?
July 25th, 2005 on 2:52 am
1 – lackluster is one word.
2 – silence can be a form of consent – if ppl dont care enough about government to stay informed, their apathy will lead to a non-popular government. but whats to be done? u cannot make someone consent to a particular form of government. the federalist papers warn about apathy – it will always threaten democrasy. but democrasy is no particular virtue unless the people desire it anyway.
3 – depending on what you see the goal of government to be, people not caring to inform themselves could indicate that people arent fit to govern themselves. point being, i dont understand why u call this a problem.
4 – i have yet to click on either link from the orginal post. it would be foolish to think this fact reflects on my interest in politics.
July 25th, 2005 on 7:56 am
Great links, Juice… I found another one which I think is really great: The Wilson-Plame-Novak-Rove Blame Game over at FactCheck.org. It’s a great even-handed run-down of the events.
Oh, and I was wondering, A, is ‘democrasy’ some hip, l33t way of writing “democracy”?
July 25th, 2005 on 10:01 pm
The top post is not logical. Since when does “no one you know” = “everyone”?
As an INFP, I value logic, and above all, correctness.
I was going to comment on the third post, the one about apathy. But I found I simply didn’t care enough about it.
July 26th, 2005 on 12:48 am
seeing someone else use the abbrv. INFP is surreal to me. i never thought i would hear that phrase again
i didnt mean that the people snr. brennan knows comprise the entirety of society, simply that his claim to a damaged reputation was clearly not an orginal observation, but rather an unverified claim trasmitted to him through some third party which he chose to pass along. i was surmising that he did so because he approved of the perceived damage.
in short, i was not reading for content, but rather to observe the writer.
the incorrect spelling of democracy was a joke – i was hoping herr brennan would correct me himself
alas
and apologies if my cyncism comes off harsh…
coughrachelcough