What the Heck was I Thinking!?

I heard the podcast interview that Glenn Reynolds and Helen Smith did with Orson Scott Card. I’ve loved his books and was not disappointed by the interview.
That led me to Mr. Card’s website www.ornery.org  where he writes columns each week. One in particular stood out at me, Civilization Watch - November 26, 2006 - Democrats: Let’s Save Some Lives - The Ornery American
He makes several observations that mirror my views about the recent election - it wasn’t the huge wave that some liberal democrats and many in the press want us to believe. He has several dire warnings and an urgent appeal to the new Democrat majority that deserve wider dissemination:

From this moment on, if we come to defeat in Iraq, it will not be President Bush’s fault. It will be, completely and exclusively, the fault of the Democratic Party. And it is the responsibility of the Democratic Party — or at least the saner members of that party — to speak up and do all they can to prevent that defeat.

He lays much of the responsibility (and blame) on the press:

The trouble is that the people of Iraq don’t know that. They only know what
our anti-Bush media tell them, which is that our election was an enormous
defeat for Bush’s war policy, and what their anti-American media tell them,
which is that our election was an enormous victory for Al-Qaeda and the Sunni
insurgents (a.k.a. murderers and terrorists) in Iraq.

The Sunni insurgents celebrated their victory by slaughtering Shiites.

The article is well worth reading.

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of the strong bias of the legacy press. In a news article in the Virginia Tech News, Jean Elliott writes,
News Story | Virginia Tech News | Virginia Tech   about a book by Jim A. Kuypers, titled “Bush’s War. Media Bias and Justifications for War in a Terrorist Age.”
Mr. Kuypers’ thesis is that framing, which he describes as,

“Framing is a process whereby communicators, consciously or unconsciously, act to construct a point of view that encourages the facts of a given situation to be interpreted by others in a particular manner,” notes Kuypers.

This sounds natural enough. We all do some of this, often calling it different things. But, Kuypers’ concern in the book is that,

This goes beyond reporting alternate points of view. “In short,”
Kupyers explained, “if someone were relying only on the mainstream
media for information, they would have no idea what the president
actually said. It was as if the press were reporting on a different
speech.”

Another professor, Dennis W. White, of Arkansas State University was quoted as saying about this book,

“This is a time of maximum danger for our country—a time of crisis. The
American people historically turn to the President during these times
for explanation, for comfort, and for exhortation to purpose. Yet, the
President does not speak directly to the people. His speech is
mediated; he speaks through the media, members of the media comment on
presidential speech, and others comment on the comment. Jim Kuypers is
the best in the business at explaining presidential crisis
communication and its relationship to the media.”

Maximum danger. We Americans will do well not to let ourselves be buffaloed by the press into doing something that is bad for us and the country.

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