Maybe it’s because Washington Post Managing Editor Phillip Bennett thought nobody back home would be reading it, but his interview by Yong Tang of China’s People’s Daily is one of most textbook examples I have ever read of the increasingly fuddy-duddy sclerotic pseudo-liberalism of much of our mainstream media. His old rhetoric about rifts with our allies and “not cooperating” has become so tedious (especially in the post Oil-for-Food era) it’s a wonder Bennett can say these things with a straight face. Does he actually believe this blather? And then he goes on about how the US is hypocritical because we’re opposing some tyrannies but not others (like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia). To the Chinese of all people! What a “progressive”! The truth is that people like Bennett don’t want to think that America has been promoting democracies because they are embarrassed they were not on board… that indeed they may not be the “progressives” but the reactionaries. Well, guess what, Mr. Bennett? It ain’t 1968 anymore and you are!
BTW: I don’t often use expletives on this blog, but the following excerpt seems to merit it. If you want bullshit at it’s most rarified (or should I say blatant?), how about this quote from Bennett?
We have a little bit different roles in newspapers compared with our counterparts in Europe and other countries. We don’t have any political point of view that we are trying to advance. We don’t represent any political parties. We are not tied to any political movement.
No “political point of view we are trying to advance”? To quote the great Moon Unit Zappa: “Gag me with a spoon!”
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