Apocalypse Now in the News

Posted on November 17, 2005 in Journalists & Pundits

Maybe the Fundies are right. Maybe the Apocalypse is upon us. Or maybe we should turn to Yeats as the widening gyre renders us dizzy. Bob Woodward now half-admits that he has been a shill for the Bush Administration. Will the Washington Post fire him? They should.

Then there is the matter of false prophet Pat Robertson who receives major national attention every time he opens his mouth. Robertson, some suggest, has his private deity who not only defies Christian love but also the very facts of existence. Bishop John Shelby Spong was moved to write to a Faux News producer:

It is bad enough that his mind cannot embrace the thought of Charles Darwin from the 19th century, but Pat has yet to embrace the thought of Copernicus from the 16th century or Galileo from the 17th century. No educated person today believes that the earth is the center of the universe and that God lives above the sky, playing with low-pressure systems and planning revenge on those who are not believers in Intelligent Design. Indeed why would anyone be drawn to the demonic deity who emerges in Pat’s thinking and teaching?

The cantering trinity of the Four Horsemen rings loud in our ears as we contemplate the madness which gives Robertson actual air time for his errant views, but the story is not over. FAIR reports that LA Times columnist Robert Scheer was fired on 11 November 2005 in a so-called “revamping” of the paper’s editorial pages. Scheer, who has led the troops of Truth in factual criticism of the Bush Administration’s lies, said to Democracy Now:

What happened is that I had been the subject of vicious attacks by Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh…. I was a punching bag for those guys. I’m still standing, and the people who run the paper collapsed….The big issue here, I think, is that the publisher took over the editorial pages, a guy named Jeff Johnson. He’s an accountant from Chicago, doesn’t know anything about what newspapers are supposed to be about, and he made a decision to get rid of the column.

In a private email message, Scheer told friends:

The publisher Jeff Johnson, who has offered not a word of explanation to me, has privately told people that he hated every word that I wrote. I assume that mostly refers to my exposing the lies used by President Bush to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Big Media disintegrates as we watch, throwing itself out beyond credibility. Nothing is said about elections in Ohio. Nothing is said about the war in Iraq. Demogogues get airtime while the thoughtful find the sound turned off when they are speaking. Good men are punished by beancounters. Surely some kind of Second Coming is at hand, if not of God, then let us hope of the People. For Big Media, things fall apart. Surely this center cannot hold.