Do you deserve the opinions you get?
In
an editorial on April 4, The Weekly Standard
came down heavily on the federal judges for citing “evolving standards
of decency” to save the life of Christopher Simmons who was earlier
sentenced to death by the laws of Missouri, and contrasted the logic with
Terri Schiavo’s case, arguing that the standards of decency were
not enough to save the latter’s life.
The attempt to draw analogies between two unrelated cases which are contextually
distinctive is continuation of a neo-conservative journalism tradition.
This is one which the conservative Insight magazine follows in its opinion
too, “Is Terri Schiavo's right to not be starved to death less than
that of a convicted murderer like Scott Peterson, who gets three square
meals a day on death's row?” A critical look as opposed to a surface
one, would prevail two fallacies: one, on content, the cases are entirely
different in terms of their unique histories, and two, countless anti-life
cry against Simmons/Peterson et al, doth not make one pro-life cry for
Schiavo right. The neo-rights have not come clear on the policy decisions
on life and death; they have merely tried to highlight the show with one
single incident.
Every section including Scrapbook, the Week in Review, or the debates
over moral issues, makes a harsh critic of the Left, and leaves no unturned
stones while siding with self-proclaimed and self-defined ‘family
values’.
The New Republic is all about how it has organized
itself online. There are four sections online for its search option: Economy,
Foreign Dispatches, Iraq and George W. Bush! Needless to say, its quite
influential considering its access to the high and the mighty of the country.
Along with The Weekly Standard, TNR is also the major content provider
to the White House from time to time.
And then there is journalism for the liberals (if not for the underdogs!).
The Nation leads since 1865. Commenting on
the current debate, Katha Pollitt writes, “In this transposition
of the abortion drama, Terri Schiavo is the defenseless fetus; her husband,
Michael, is the callous "convenience" aborter; and the Schindlers
are the would-be adoptive couple doomed to childlessness by tyrannical
judges.” Pollitt has, like her predecessors Bernard Berenson and
Clement Greenberg, weighed in within the art criticism an abstraction
of culture wars over funding and free expression. The Nation indeed has
pioneered the cultural criticism as an institution in the US. This apart,
the “unconventional wisdom” publishes ‘liberal’
opinions, certainly not leftist in nature. In the most recent issue, George
McGovern writes for The Nation, “There is a notion abroad in American
politics, carefully crafted by its proponents, that is both disturbing
and false…..What is the truth as I see it? I have believed since
childhood that my country is the greatest nation on the face of the earth.”
Even the Column Left by one of its editors Robert Scheer is at its strongest,
a scathing criticism of the administration, and at its feeblest, an opinion
generating no heat, letters or anger. Definitely not a magazine of the
Left.
On a final note on
the ideologues, I am sure, people deserve the kind of magazines they subscribe
to.
Saswat
Pattanayak
blog@saswat.com