Cowboy Confessional

Barack Obama is orating on the obvious … again.

He is on television as I type, saying what George Bush has been saying all along in regards to Iraq.  His position is that the time to leave Iraq is when Iraq is secure and capable of self-defense.  He molds this as a unique and bold initiative on his part despite it being almost word-for-word the administration’s long stated goals.  He then sloppily tries to tie this to opposing candidate John McCain’s position, which is basically the same.

It is bad enough to ape your political enemy’s positions, but it is worse to state the perfectly obvious.  Obama does both, which bodes ill for a presidency based on his lacking intellect.

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Language can be very instructive based on the commonality of meaning between certain words. Take the word ‘rank’. In one sense it represents the hierarchy of status for humans. It also means smelly or odoriferous. We routinely observe that people of higher social rank become more aromatically rank, confirming the shared origin of the word.

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Nancy Pelosi has defied the laws of physics, causing a body to accelerate downward faster than gravity normally allows.

Less than two years ago, Pelosi lectured the President on who supposedly had power. With a newly elected Democrat majority and her sagging butt cheeks in the Speaker’s chair, she proclaimed “There is a new Congress in town.”

This “new Congress” has made fast working of nothing except destroying its reputation, which it decimated with astounding efficiency. In 18 months since taking over, Pelosi and Company drove Congress’s approval rating down to 9%. Lower than used car salesmen. Lower than a drunk lawyer with a handgun. Lower than whale poop in the Marianas Trench.

Lower than George Bush on a bad day.

Ignoring the spike in Bush’s popularity after 9/11, it took Bush seven and a half years of nearly non-stop bungling to drop from a 55% approval to 30%. It took Pelosi’s crew one and a half years to go from 35% to 9%. Forgive me for boring you with numbers, but …

• Bush’s approval dropped 25 points, Congress dropped 26 points
• Bush’s approval dropped 0.3 points per month, Congress 1.4 points
• Congress’s downward slide was 5.2 times faster than Bush’s

Despite having the leadership skills of a developmentally disabled person (and by that I mean Jimmy Carter) Bush still scores 21% higher than Congress Critters. Pelosi was correct in claiming Congress has significant power. They simply have yet to wield that power in a way that makes voters happy. Indeed, they do just the opposite which will submerge their scores even further. Who knows, Pelosi may soon defy the rule of statistics as well as laws of physics by scoring negative approval ratings.

Right or wrong, the American electorate has a renewed appetite for oil drilling. Yet Pelosi’s posse hits the airwaves at every possible opportunity to argue against  public wishes, using arguments that are minus merit. Simple laws of supply, demand and speculation are obvious to Joe Six Pack but remain beyond Pelosi’s comprehension. This sets Democrats for a November collision with public sentiment which may have two unintended consequences: A reduced number of Dems in Congress and by proxy a drag on Obama’s campaign.

Keep up the good work, Nancy. You may accomplish what John McCain is incapable of doing.

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It never troubles me to call out a liar. When they work in the media it is a downright pleasure.

This tiny tale relates the troubled souls of the Oakland Tribune, two of their writers and its Gollum editor Martin Reynolds. Martin’s misdeeds are a case study in why old media in general and newspapers in particular are a dying breed.

In May the Trib ran an article penned in tag team by two of their journalist. I misuse the term journalist herein because what they wrote in no way resembles reporting. The topic of their corrupt correspondence was gun control, and the piece was proffered in advance of a mayoral campaign by a well known advocate of gun control. I will not accuse these literary desperadoes of prostituting themselves for a politician, especially one known as the “Bay Area Bagman” and under investigation by the FBI. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if these hacks turned a trick, bending over for an elected thief.

Their reporting was contemptible correspondence. This peculiar piece did not meet minimal journalistic standards and was beyond slanted. Any reporter with integrity would have sought balanced sources, multiple perspectives and dug under the issue’s skin. These folks didn’t bother to look beneath their own distorted and seemingly psychotic version of reality. They spoke only to representatives of the gun control industry, misstated facts, cited unreliable sources and quoted discredited researchers.

They may well have smoked their breakfast. After all, they work in Oaksterdam.

I popped off a tirade to the Trib, demanding they print a retraction. I knew exactly what I was asking and did not take my demand lightly. A retraction is an admission of guilt by a newspaper for printing something they shouldn’t have. In the case of this pile of journalistic dung, a retraction was in order. A retraction, an apology, several thousand Hail Marys and possibly even a human sacrifice — the Trib had two reporters who were worthy candidates for the latter.

Martin Reynolds, the editor of the Oakland Tribune, emailed me shortly thereafter, saying in part:

However, the points you have made from what I can tell don’t come close to constituting the need for a retraction. You may not agree with the tenor of the story, or agree with the way it was sourced and what information was not reported, but writing a story in this manner does not warrant a retraction. Not even close.

Martin conveniently missed the point. I never complained about the “tenor” of the piece. I complained that their reporters abdicated their responsibilities as journalist. Anyone even faintly acquainted the political football of gun control would agree that the Oakland Tribune’s reporting lay somewhere between negligent and fraudulent. Martin might not appreciate blunt assessments of his staff’s shortcomings as journalists and human beings, but he misrepresented the nature of the problem and complaint as slickly as his two reporters misrepresented everything.

He also did not bother to question his questioner. Had he performed two seconds of investigative journalism himself, he would have ascertained my position as one of the Bay Area’s top gun control policy experts (I even used my GunFacts.info email address, which should have been his first lead) and one who had published op/eds in his paper previously. This miscue became comically evident when he finished his email with:

And I don’t think you read the story very closely if you think the reporter equated guns shows (sic) with guns on the streets.

Silly me for not closely reading the article before demanding a retraction, and in the process detailing why the article was beneath the lowest of journalistic bars as well as contempt.

I fired off a reply to Martin offering that he or his minions contradict my observation. I suggested the Oakland Tribune serialize the article, having the original reporters interview criminologists with opposing views on the sources for crime guns, or at very least explain why they were excluded in the original story. I strongly suggested that his reporters at very least ask gun-owners rights groups for data that might counterpoint the sound bites they had blindly parroted for the Brady Campaign, the Violence Policy Center and the Joyce Foundation-funded university medical researcher they quoted.

Martin was unimpressed with my suggestion that his reporters commit work or journalism. He did take up my gauntlet, and replied:

As editor of this newspaper I endeavor to give voice to as many perspectives as possible. May I also suggest you write a letter to the editor, or a short 500 word opinion piece we call a “My Word” stating your views and concerns with the story. I would be happy to make sure it gets on our opinion page.

I emphasize the last sentence as prelude and the cornerstone of evidence that Martin Reynolds has no respect for his own integrity or that of his profession.

Most people would be intimidated by his offer. Being a writer, a gun policy expert and more than ready to lead public opinion back from the intellectual wastelands into which the Oakland Tribune led them, I sent off a piece within a couple of days. I did not attack the Trib, its writers or even Martin. I simply positioned the facts behind Oakland’s crime wave and how gun control was not the answer. As always, I tailed the submission with a small stack of citations from quality research and government sources. I sent the piece in reply email to Martin, copying his promise to publish. Then I waited.

And waited, and waited, and …

I gave Martin nearly a month to reply and/or publish, pinging him upon occasion, checking the Tribune web site and even resubmitting the op/ed through their online interface. Nada. I searched the Oakland Trib web site daily using both my name and various keywords to find my response to their journalistic lapse.

I finally gave up, rewrote the piece, submitted it to the San Francisco Chronicle. They printed it shortly thereafter.

Allow a tally:

• The Oakland Tribune published a piece of journalistic effluvium
• An expert on the topic complained
• The editor of the Trib promised to publish an opposing perspective
• The editor reneged on his promise

The price one places on their self-respect varies from person to person. The average man won’t sell his at any price. A politician or an Oakland Tribune reporter sells theirs at a discount. A street walker sells hers for spare change. But the editor of the Oakland Tribune gains not a penny for his - he cannot sell what he does not posses.

If you feel compelled to remind Marin that journalistic integrity is essential, feel free to pop him a note at mreynolds@bayareanewsgroup.com.

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