Hello again...

John Stossel is the new co-host of 20/20

Many, most of whom have an axe to grind, have suggested that Stossel was promoted for his conservatism. Nonsense. Stossel was promoted because he's one of the finest journalists in American history. Who but Stossel would have had the courage to dismiss environmentalists as out-there yahoos? Who but Stossel would have the temerity to tell us that Greed is good? And all the time maintaining integrity and honesty in his reporting. [/sarcasm]

I saw part of the program tonight and was, honestly, dismayed to see how the new anchor was treating a group of stand-up comics of Middle Eastern extraction. In his trademarked aw shucks just folks manner, he tells these folks they're really out there for making light of their ethnicities and what it means in the post 9/11 era.

He charges some of these as unpatriotic for such notorious crimes as this:
""Did you guys see this Dan Rather interview with Saddam Hussein on prime-time TV, right before we're trying to kill the guy, he's on prime-time TV, and he challenged President Bush to a debate. Did you guys hear about that? How unfair was that?," Obeidallah said. "Going right for our president's weakness — speaking English."
as well as for mocking the term Shock and Awe.
I don't remember having seen such trumped up nonsense since reading the chapter in Bernie Goldberg's opus Bias called Liberal Hate Speech.

In general, Stossel made a bunch of stand-up comics look like class acts in comparison to his example. Listen, these are tough times to be Arab, Muslim, or to appear to be Arab. I'm part Arab myself and I succumbed to a bit of anti-Middle Eastern hysteria- I once looked at four young men whom I thought to be Pakistani carrying a ton of luggage in a subway station and saw a terrorist cell. As much as the safety of our country may outweigh the feelings of those who "fit the profile," to try to make people feel guilty about exercising their 1st amendment rights by saying, "well, ya know, you wouldn't be able to say things like that in Iraq" is fricking stupid and offensive. What makes the US great isn't just the Constitution, it's the attitude.

If the only think protecting me from violence when I say "President Bush is a semiliterate boob" is the Bill of Rights, I'm in trouble. I want an America where people are allowed to challenge the powerful without having to fear for it.

John Stossel uses his media pulpit to preach common sense as he sees it, but common sense isn't always right, and what Stossel thinks is obviously true is often quite false. Stossel promotes, moreso than his conservative ideology, a conformist point of view. He serves up Conventional Wisdom, and, in the manner of the Bush White House, labels it Unconventional Wisdom. There are a few exceptions to this, but Stossel tends to reinforce easy and reassuring "truths." It takes no guts or insight to tell addicts that they're just weak willed and that addiction is a matter of choice. Stossel says:

"The message from the treatment industry is that drug users need professional help to quit. What they seldom say is that people are quitting bad habits all the time without professional help."

Where to begin... He says drug "users" need help to quit... am I wrong or should that be "abusers" or "addicts"? And, hey, you mean that people quit bad habits all the time by themselves? Amazing! Does that prove that addiction isn't an illness and is, in fact, a matter of choice? No, it doesn't. If you check Stossel's transcripts up on the ABC News site, you may notice, like I have, that Stossel's argumentation is full of "some studies" and "many experts" and other weasel words and methods.
It's a clever condensation of "just folks" homey affect and dishonest "research" that makes John Stossel what he is.

Now, I don't think John Stossel is Devil Incarnate or even Bill O'Reilly, although it might seem like that. I just believe him to be a shoddy journalist who was promoted to a position of authority because of his conservatism. I don't like the way Stossel masquerades his agenda as common sense, nor do I like the way he plays to the prejudices and the snap judgments of his audience. Stossel is a panderer, a demogogue of the CW, and in a time when we as a nation are being spoonfed lies, distortions, and simplistic moralism in the name of the Truth and Conventional Wisdom, we deserve better.

I don't care that 20/20 is a lousy TV newsmagazine whose bread and butter is meaningless fluff like Dallas Mavericks cheerleaders and Carnie Wilson's stapled stomach, it's still supposed to be journalism. And the last time I checked journalism's allegiances should be with the truth rather than the status quo.