Thursday, September 08, 2005
MEDIA IDENTITY HOLDS MEDIA LINE
Washington-based UPI editor Martin Walker ticks every box during an Australian TV interview:
I’ve just been writing a column about the way in which Fallujah and New Orleans are looking to be twin towns in effect. They’re both been worked over by the Bush Administration.
Katrina was Bush’s fault. Check.
Remember that Bill Clinton, the last Democratic president, proudly announced the era of big government is over. And yet what I think Americans are starting to realise now is that there are times when the hurricane hits the fan when you do need a big government.
Big government would have stopped Katrina on account of being, well, just so big. Not like small government, which hurricanes are easily able to hop over. Check.
Almost all of the victims you could see tended to be black and this was, I thought, a pretty savage indictment of the way that things are clearly developing down in the American South.
There are poor black people in the South??!! What the hell?!? Check.
I think America’s image has taken an extraordinary battering internationally, not just over this, over Abu Ghraib, over Guantanamo, over the Iraq war in general. George Bush really has presided over one of the saddest periods for the American international image that I can ever remember.
Bush is Satan. Check. According to his biography, Mr Walker – upon whose head one could balance two fine glasses of beer – has “a reputation for getting tomorrow’s important international news today.” Here’s an example, from last November:
My guess is we could well be seeing Israeli war planes, with US support, hitting Iranian nuclear facilities within the next three or four months.
(Via Brian)