Today New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (12/21/11) gives readers a sense of what the Iraq War was all about:

Iraq was always a war of choice. As I never bought the argument that Saddam had nukes that had to be taken out, the decision to go to war stemmed, for me, from a different choice: Could we collaborate with the people of Iraq to change the political trajectory of this pivotal state in the heart of the Arab world and help tilt it and the region onto a democratizing track?

Huh. A collaborative effort with the people of Iraq? Friedman goes on:

But was it a wise choice?

My answer is twofold: "No" and "Maybe, sort of, we'll see."

Hmm.

Others remember a different Tom Friedman, interviewed by Charlie Rose on May 30, 2003.

"Now that the war is over," Rose began his question--a conclusion widely jumped to in the early days of the war. When asked if invading Iraq was worth it, Friedman responded that it was "unquestionably worth doing."

The war, back then, was an attack on the "terrorist bubble," which in Friedman's mind meant that "we needed to go over there and take out a very big stick... and there was only one way to do it."

He went on:

What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, and basically saying: "Which part of this sentence don't you understand? You don't think, you know we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we're just gonna to let it grow? Well, suck. On. This." That, Charlie, is what this war is about. We could have hit Saudi Arabia; it was part of that bubble. Could have hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.

The house-to-house, "suck on this" democracy campaign. That's how it's normally done.

I guess one great thing about being a Times columnist is that you not only  get to write about the present--you can also re-write your own past.

With the bad news we've been talking about on the public broadcasting front, it's worth pointing out a bright spot: On Monday (10/24/11), Charlie Rose featured a discussion of Occupy Wall Street with Chris Hedges and Amy Goodman.

Goodman made an important point about media coverage of the protests:

CHARLIE ROSE: Does it have anything in common with the Tea Party?

AMY GOODMAN: Well, it's interesting you ask that. When the people gathered on September 16 and 17--what, 2000 people--hardly any coverage they got. If it was 2000 Tea Party activists who gathered on Wall Street, I would dare said there would have been 2,000 reporters there, if not more.

Watch the segment on the Charlie Rose website. And you can leave a comment there--as others already have--noting that it's refreshing to see these voices on a show that doesn't usually feature such guests.

On the Daily Show on June 1, Bill Moyers talked about the types of outsider guests he preferred to interview on his TV show.

As he put it at one point: "The worst hour that I ever put on, was many years ago, with Henry Kissinger....  I vowed after that never to do an hour with any official. None."

Interviewing guests who challenge or question the conventional wisdom or the status quo is exactly what we should be seeing on public television. Two nights before the Moyers interview (5/30/11), Charlie Rose offered a reminder that we've got a long way to go.

He interviewed, for a whole hour, this guy:

The Charlie Rose show--which airs mostly on public television stations--has mostly skipped the protests in Wisconsin, one of the biggest labor stories of the past decade. This is not a total surprise--Rose seems to identify with The Bosses more than with the workers--so it was interesting to see how he finally approached the subject on his March 2 show.

The first guest was Time's  Joe Klein. He seems to identify with public sector workers, he knows they're not getting rich, but he doesn't like their unions: "Public employees' unions are a pretty questionable proposition," as he put it. The solution in Wisconsin is "to bring those pension plans and healthcare more in line with the rest of the public."

The next guest: far right Fox News host Mike Huckabee. He makes some jokes about raising the retirement age, then zeroes in on the pension problem:

So what I think the governor in Wisconsin is doing is what he has to do.  A teacher in Wisconsin puts in $1 for the retirement fund.  The fund puts in $57.  I don't know too much people who have a retirement plan.

That would be a remarkably lopsided pension plan. Where does that number come from? There seems to be little trace of it in the debate over Wisconsin. Some commenters at the right-wing Free Republic message board caught Huckabee's appearance and were excited to have a new anti-teacher talking point--only no one could seem to scare up data to support his claim.

General information about contribution rates for Wisconsin teachers can be found here--and you see nothing at all that would resemble Huckabee's formulation. And the Wisconsin pension system is relatively healthy, for the record--making this an odd focus of concern to begin with.

More importantly--what did Charlie Rose do when a guest made such a remarkable claim? He backed him up:

There is it seems to me a huge anger over the fact that people in the private sector see people in the public sector being able to retire with extraordinary benefits because they opt out at age 65.

People are outraged by public employees retiring at 65 with cushy benefits? This is not at all supported by recent polling data. You know what would help clarify things? Rose could consider an on-air clarification or correction. (Huckabee's been doing a lot of "misspeaking" as of late.)  Or he could challenge guests when they make such bizarre claims.

Or--here's an idea!--when the biggest labor story in some time is dominating the news, how about having some labor guests on the show?

There have been some interesting, informative TV coverage of Egypt.

And then there was last night's Charlie Rose (2/3/11), with special guests Tom Friedman and Henry Kissinger.

From the post-State of the Union discussion on the Charlie Rose Show (1/25/11):

CHARLIE ROSE: With respect to his base, where are they tonight? They listened to him move to the center--

JOHN SUNUNU: On the Upper West Side.

JOHN HEILEMANN: Drinking heavily on the Upper West Side.

(LAUGHTER)

The discussion went on to explain how the progressive base either really likes Obama, or won't have anyone else to vote for so it won't matter what they think.  Such discussions are a lot easier to have when you don't invite any actual progressives who might disagree with the Upper West side jokes.

With Chinese leader Hu Jintao in Washington, you got some of what you might expect in right wing  media outlets--Rush Limbaugh doing a fake Chinese accent, and Bill O'Reilly opening his Fox show last night with crack about a Chinese dinner that wasn't take out.

Meanwhile, on public television's Charlie Rose Show, the hour was spent with... Henry Kissinger. I had to go back to the Extra! archives to remember the Kissinger/China connection, which includes most notably his defense of the Chinese crackdown on Tienanmen Square. From Extra!, 10-11/89:

In recent months, Kissinger has used his high media profile in a spirited defense of China. In a Washington Post/L.A. Times column ("The Caricature of Deng as a Tyrant Is Unfair," 8/1/89), Kissinger argued against sanctions: "China remains too important for America's national security to risk the relationship on the emotions of the moment." He asserted: "No government in the world would have tolerated having the main square of its capital occupied for eight weeks by tens of thousands of demonstrators."

Kissinger's defense of China and other repressive governments has sometimes raised eyebrows. What it has not raised is tough questions from TV interviewers about Kissinger's business ties to these same governments. In a column alluding to FAIR's study that found Kissinger to be Nightline's most frequent guest, the Washington Post's Richard Cohen (8/29/89) sounded an urgent appeal: "Will someone please ask Henry Kissinger the 'C' question?" The "C" stands for conflict of interest.

When he's not pontificating in the media about foreign affairs, he's engaging in foreign financial affairs through his secretive consulting firm Kissinger & Associates. The firm, representing some 30 multinational companies--including American Express, H.J. Heinz, ITT and Lockheed--earns profits by "opening doors" for investors in China, Latin America and elsewhere (New York Times, 4/30/89).

A Wall Street Journal article by John Fialka ("Mr. Kissinger Has Opinions on China--and Business Ties," 9/15/89) reported that Kissinger also heads China Ventures, a company engaged in joint ventures with China's state bank. As its brochure explains, China Ventures invests only in projects that "enjoy the unquestioned support of the People's Republic of China." The Journal article was unusual in exploring the private business interests behind U.S. foreign policy, not the media's strong suit--even when, as in Kissinger's case, they are rolled into one person.

Did Charlie Rose want to interview someone on China with skin in the game? That would be a strange standard for public television.

Last night's broadcast of the PBS NewsHour (11/29/10) offered a discussion of the WikiLeaks documents. Who were the guests? As Judy Woodruff announced: "We turn to two former national security advisers with extensive experience in making and carrying out U.S. foreign policy. " That would be Carter's Zbigniew Brzezinski and George W. Bush's Stephen Hadley. The discussion was about as illuminating as one might expect.

Hours later on the Charlie Rose show, guest host Jon Meacham featured a typical Charlie Rose discussion: two reporters from the New York Times and former Clinton State Department aide Jamie Rubin. The Times reporters more or less retold stories they are reporting in the paper, so it was left to Rubin to hurl accusations against WikiLeaks:

I think the widespread dissemination of pretty much everything that the U.S. State Department does is an attack on the U.S. ability to operate in the world.  It's not on one policy, like I'm against Iraq War or I'm against the Afghan War.  It's an attack against the American government's ability to conduct its foreign policy, meaning America's being attacked in a cyber attack by a particular group of individuals who are trying to harm American foreign policy and therefore America, and therefore, in my opinion, harm the interests of the West.

Rubin went on to add:

And ironically, the State Department are the people who are trying to do the job that the WikiLeaks founder says he's trying to do, which is world peace.  It's not going to happen if the State Department can't make secret agreements sometimes with foreign leaders.

I wasn't aware that the State Department's job is to create world peace. But Jamie Rubin worked there, so he'd know better.

Counting tonight's episode, Charlie Rose has had five guests discussing the Simpson/Bowles deficit reduction plan, and all five have been right-leaning proponents of the plan's austerity measures. To call for a broader discussion, see FAIR's latest Action Alert. Please leave copies of your messages--or comments on the alert--in the comments thread here.

As you may have gathered by now, the deficit reduction plan offered by debt commission chairs Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles is pretty unpopular, particularly on the left.

But one place it was well-received: The Charlie Rose Show, a comfortable place for CEOs and insiders to pontificate. The fact that this show is a staple of public television stations around the country is part of the problem FAIR identified in our new report, "Taking the Public Out of Public TV."

The Rose show presented a discussion of the Simpson/Bowles plan on November 11. One guest, Harvard's Martin Feldstein, had this to say:

There is a lot to like in it.  I think that it is very bold.  Every aspect of the fiscal problem has been put on the table.   And yet when I looked at the numbers I thought it didn’t go far enough.

The other guest--David Walker of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation--countered with his take:

I think it was a courageous plan.  It was very comprehensive.  There were changes in every major aspect of the budget.  It  demonstrates that we are in such a deep hole that nothing can be off the table and you have to make some tough choices.  Frankly, I think he could have been even more aggressive with respect  to some of the reforms.

Walker went on to complain, "It is amazing how much controversy there has been, especially from the left, with regard to the Social Security reform proposals, because they are not dramatic or draconian."  He added:  "You get the far right and far left that are out of touch with reality, we need to come up with sensible center solutions."

And just to make sure viewers knew that the guests weren't outside agitators:

ROSE: Did both of you have an opportunity to wade in on this commission to make your views clear?

FELDSTEIN: I did have a chance to talk with some of the commission members about my views on this.

ROSE: David?

WALKER: I had a chance as well, plus it's my understanding that most if not all of them read my book Comeback America.

Public television, giving voice to the voiceless.