The Issachar Report<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
1 Chronicles <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />12:32
Dennis A. Wright, DMin.
 
 

The New York Times Blasts the President,

Or,

Why Should Anyone Listen to a Dinosaur?

 
"The President and the Cabinet in Washington are far behind the people," shrieks the New York Times.  "They are like a person just aroused from sleep, and in a state of dreamy half-consciousness."
 
Sounds all too familiar from The Grey Lady whose motto, "All the News that Fit to Print," might more accurately be rendered, "All the Mud that's Easy to Sling!"
 
In her article entitled, "The New York Times vs. America," Michelle Malkin summarized this mudslinging, documenting that, "2005 was a banner year for the nation's Idiotarian newspaper of record."  Malkin explains that "Idiotarian" is a useful term coined by popular warblogger Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs and Pajamas Media to describe stubborn blame-America ideologues hopelessly stuck in a pre-9-11 mindset.  The New York Times "crusaded tirelessly this year for the cut-and-run, troop-undermining, Bush-bashing, reality-denying cause," says Malkin.
 
For example, Malkin reports that the Times published a disgraceful distortion of a fallen soldier's last words on Oct. 26.  As reported in Malkin's column and in the news pages of the New York Post, Times reporter James Dao unapologetically abused the late Corporal Jeffrey B. Starr, whose letter to his girlfriend in case of death in Iraq was selectively edited to convey a bogus sense of "fatalism" for a massive piece marking the anti-war movement's "2,000 dead in Iraq" campaign.  The Times added insult to injury by ignoring President Bush's tribute to Starr on Nov. 30 during his Naval Academy speech defending the war in Iraq.
 
After Starr died, Bush said, "a letter was found on his laptop computer.  Here's what he wrote. He said, '[I]f you're reading this, then I've died in Iraq.  I don't regret going. Everybody dies, but few get to do it for something as important as freedom.  It may seem confusing why we're in Iraq; it's not to me.  I'm here helping these people so they can live the way we live, not to have to worry about tyrants or vicious dictators.  Others have died for my freedom; now this is my mark.'"
 
"Stirring words deemed unfit to print by the Times," says Malkin.
 
In another example, Malkin records that in June, "Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, pilot of downed American Airlines Flight 77, blew the whistle on plans by civil liberties zealots to turn Ground Zero in New York into a Blame America monument. On July 29, the Times editorial page, stocked with liberals who snort and stamp whenever their patriotism is questioned, slammed Burlingame and her supporters at Take Back the Memorial as "un-American" – for exercising their free-speech rights."
 
"Yes, 'un-American.'  This from a newspaper that smeared female interrogators at Guantanamo Bay as 'sex workers,' sympathetically portrayed military deserters as 'un-volunteers,' apologized for terror suspects and illegal aliens at every turn, enabled the Bush Derangement Syndrome-driven crusade of the lying Joe Wilson, and recklessly endangered national security by publishing illegally obtained information about classified counterterrorism programs."
 
Malkin wonders which side is the New York Times on.  "Let 2005 go down as the year the Gray Lady wrapped herself permanently in a White Flag."
 
The most recent attack upon the President revolves around his terrorist surveillance program (run by the National Security Agency), which the New York Times disclosed on December 16, 2005.  Writing in The Spectator, David Yerushalmi reports that much has transpired since the existence of the secret electronic surveillance program was reported.  "The most important of which is a Justice Department investigation into the identity of the person or persons who provided this information to the Times.  On its editorial pages, the Times argues that '[i]llegal spying and torture need to be investigated, not whistle-blowers and newspapers.'  The Times editorial should be understood for what it is: an attempt to lobby the public and government officials against a federal indictment charging the Times management, editor Bill Keller and publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., with violations of the Espionage Act.  They are running scared and have good reason."  Yerushalmi's article can be found at: www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=9236.  
The New York Times is but one species of dinosaur, there are many others among the Old Media --- or the Antique Media, as Rush Limbaugh has called them.
 
"You can call me anything you want, but do not call me a racist," said an indignant President George Bush on Dec. 12, commenting on the despicable, opportunistic suggestion that any inadequacies in the federal response to Hurricane Katrina were due to racism.  "But veteran network media giants Ted Koppel and Tom Brokaw don't quite see it that way," according to David Limbaugh.  "Indeed, they don't appear to see eye-to-eye with President Bush on much of anything if their joint interview with Tim Russert on NBC's 'Meet the Press' is any indication."
 
Limbaugh observes that, "Russert was uncharacteristically tame toward these two, offering them repeated softballs concerning the past year's main stories.  But the relaxed atmosphere gave us a clearer picture of the worldview these men share, which is doubtless representative of most of the Old Media players.  From race and taxes to health care and Iraq, they spoke in a monolithic liberal voice, accented by its familiar air of moral superiority."  You will want to read Limbaugh's entire column, which can be found at www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48099.
 
Oh, you say that you did not see that screamer about the President and his Cabinet as you perused the New York Times before placing it dutifully in the bottom of your parrot cage?  Not surprising since the date of that issue was in April 1861, and the President in question was Abraham Lincoln.  (Doris Kearnes Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, 365-366).
 
I suppose that as times change, the Times does not change very much at all!  Why should anyone listen to a dinosaur?  They shouldn't. 
 
 
 
Dr. Dennis A. Wright is Founder and President of Understanding The Times Ministries.  An accomplished writer and educator, Wright has spoken in churches and conferences all over America on spiritual counterfeits and Christian Worldview topics.  He can be emailed at [email protected] and his new website can be found at www.UnderstandingTheTimes.org.