MDMD The Press

[Terrance]

I don't much care for TV. However, times being what they are, I have to
keep the boys amused.  And so I not only plugged in the Tube, got cable
TV service (Bloomburg etc.), I sat down slothfully, nearer my couch
(there being no room on the couch these days)  and watched, to my
surprise, Robert McNiel. I thought McNiel had retired. So soothing he
Canadian pronunciations of English, so smart, such a gentleman.   I was
not surprised that he was talking about the Press. Yes, the press. How
are they covering the Bush administration? Bill Safire was one of the 
guests  and a couple of other editorialists were there. They 
represented the narrow spectrum of political persuasion to the left and
the right of the "Moderate" Mr. Bush. Yes, that what the NY Times is
calling Mr. Bush. They all agreed, patriotically of course,  that the NY
Times had gone too far when they insisted that  Mr. Bush is now a
moderate. 

He's may not be as smart as Bill Clinton, as witty as the bearded Al, as
tall as Bradley...his pronunciation of the English language is often
poorer than the foreign heads of state who come to pry America's
bottomless coffers open during her time of need but surely, not a single
cruise missile has been launched yet, he must be  kinder and gentler
than his father. Or maybe his father's men, now his men, have persuaded
him that he may brandish his weapons of mass destruction, tack  "Wanted
Dead Or Alive" posters all over the Lincoln Bedroom, but he can't press
the red button until they tell him to. 
So now, in the Press, Mr. Bush is beginning to look more presidential.
On the Tube he   bobs and bounces about like a nervous baboon.  And  how
his expression often appears at
 odds with the seriousness of the crises he is claiming to  manage. How
he swaggers and squints like a parody of Texas law man.  How he searches
in his brain for a  profound polysyllabic to match the gravity of the
situation but only blurts out something like "evildooodooo economics." 

But in the Press, the printed Press, Mr. Bush reads like a President,
kinder and gentler
for the movement anyway. 


In any event, the Press and Adams and Arms. 



http://www.worldmag.com/world/olasky/centralideas/chap4.html

By 1730 the last British attempt to reassert licensing control
              over the feisty Puritans had failed, and Massachusetts
              journalism was generally peaceful. Editors such as
              Bartholomew Green, who succeeded John Campbell as
              owner of the NewsLetter in 1723, emphasized press
              responsibility to help readers know "how to order their
              prayers and praises to the Great God."[1] Local news
              continued to be reported in reverential context...

During the Seven Years (French and Indian) War of 1756 to
              1763, colonial newspapers were free to bring charges of
              graft against those supplying American troops; for
example,
              the NewYork Gazette and Weekly PostBoy reported that many
              of the guns purchased were out of date and practically
              useless, and joked that beef supplied for soldiers' food
was
              more effective than powder because its odor would drive
              away the enemy. That such charges, when wellfounded,
              could be made without legal repercussion, showed how
              firmly independent journalism was established in America.
              The colonists found themselves surprised, then, after the
              war, when England began to crack down. 

              Samuel Adams led the protests in Massachusetts...