Time magazine's new issue (no link to the text is available) includes this weird explanation of how torture helped track down Osama bin Laden: Interrogators grilled 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed for details about the courier. When he pleaded ignorance, they knew they were on to something promising. Al-Libbi, the senior Al-Qaeda figure captured in 2005, also played dumb. Both men were subjected to so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, including, in Mohammed's case, the waterboard. As best I can tell, the argument here is that they got no information about the Al-Qaeda courier from torturing these two detainees–which was just the [...]
Apr
08
2011
Paul Ryan, Serious Numbers Geek (Aside From His Fuzzy Numbers)
By 61 Comments
The uncritical coverage of Paul Ryan's budget plan continues.In the new issue of Time magazine,Michael Crowley and Jay Newton-Smalltell us that Ryan is "the new face of federal frugality": Just 41 years old, with jet black hair and a touch of Eagle Scout to him, the House Budget Committee chairman unveiled an ambitious package of huge budget cuts designed to dig the country out of its crippling debt crisis. For Ryan, reining in spending is nothing less than an act of patriotic valor. Valor. Eagle Scout. Great hair! Ryan'scritics have notedthat his plan actually does very little about the "crippling [...]
Apr
01
2011
Joe Klein and the Palestinian Gandhi
By 18 Comments
There's a long tradition of U.S. pundits wishing for the day Palestinians finally decide touse non-violent means to protest Israeli occupation. Time magazine's Joe Klein weighs in on the subject this week: Ever since Israel won control of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, the Palestinian national movement has been defined by terrorism, intransigence and, until recently in the West Bank, corruption. It has never been known for dramatic acts of nonviolence. "If they'd been led by Gandhi rather than Yasser Arafat, they would have had a state 20 years ago," Kenneth Pollack of the Saban Center at the [...]
Feb
25
2011
What Americans Want to Read
By 24 Comments
The gallery of covers for Time magazine this week. One stands out, obviously.
Feb
03
2011
Joe Klein and the Rotten Fruit of Arab Democracy
By 22 Comments
Sometimes words fail. Joe Klein, writing in the new issue of Time, wonders: How on earth do we get saddled with such creepy clients as Karzai and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, over and over again? Yes, why do they keep doing this to us?! His piece is a pox-on-both-houses rant about U.S. foreign policy: The "realists" often end up coddling dictators, and the idealists don't understand how the world works. Of the latter, he writes: the tangible fruits of the Freedom Agenda turned out to be mostly rotten: elections in the Palestinian territories, which no one but Hamas (and Bush) [...]
Jan
14
2011
Time's Civility Panel–Featuring Glenn Beck
By 13 Comments
Earlier this week (1/10/11) I wrote, given how short corporate media's memories are, "Let's hope that when someone convenes a civility in media discussion in 2020, they don't ask Glenn Beck to weigh in." No need to wait that long. Time magazine has convened a panel to talk about civility in our public discourse. And the first contribution is from…well, take a look: Now in fairness, the listis alphabetical. But seriously– was Michael Savage too busy?
Jan
07
2011
Liberal Media Slams Boehner!
By 26 Comments
The Washington Post's account(1/6/11) of John Boehner's first day as Speaker of the House could have been a press release from Boehner's office. The headline was "A Modest Boehner Takes Congress's Most Powerful Office." Post readers learned that"Boehner tends to shun big moments such as these. He's more at home on the golf course with his rank-and-file buddies." He's just one of us! The Post adds: About 500 of Boehner's constituents, including family friends from the Cincinnati area, came to see him sworn in. Many of them, as well as some D.C. lobbyists, came through his office late Wednesday morning [...]
Jan
03
2011
Noam Chomsky, Time Magazine (Reader)'s Person of the Year
By 5 Comments
A letter in the new issue of Time magazine offers an alternate suggestion for Person of the Year (the magazine chose Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg):
Nov
12
2010
What–if Anything–Does Bush Know About the Iraq War?
By 22 Comments
Time magazine's Joe Klein has read George W. Bush's memoir, and has a few criticisms (11/11/10); for instance, he points out that Bush never stops to wonder if the UN inspectors, whom Saddam Hussein had allowed back into Iraq, were not finding weapons of mass destruction because, maybe, uh, the WMD didn't exist. That's a good question, but it's not surprising that Bush didn't raise it, sinceBushhas repeatedly claimed thatSaddam Hussein did not allow weapons inspectors into Iraq in the first place.As FAIR pointed out in an Action Alert ("Media Still Letting Bush Lie on Iraq Inspectors," 12/2/08), Bush peddled [...]
Oct
29
2010
Joe Klein's Bipartisan Advice: Obama, Embrace Nukes!
By 12 Comments
The conventional wisdom among corporate pundits has long been that Democrats have to move to the right in order to win. You're likely to hear a lot of this after Tuesday, but there's already plenty of advice being offered in advance of the Democrats' likely midterm defeat. Time's Joe Klein has his take in the new issue of the magazine (11/8/10). He writes that "with the prospect of a Congress tilted toward the right, Obama will have to figure out new ways to sell his wares, if he can sell them at all." Klein urges Obama to think big–and to [...]
