Mike Wallace and Charles Pickering
(photo: 60 Minutes)
(photo: 60 Minutes)
Posted on 04/23/2004 3:33:31 PM PDT by Southack
Liberty Beat
by Nat Hentoff
Mike Wallace, the Redeemer
CBS's 60 Minutes takes the case, and judge Charles Pickering gets his reputation back
April 23rd, 2004 5:00 PM
Mike Wallace and Charles Pickering
(photo: 60 Minutes) |
n March 28, the 16.7 million viewers of CBS's 60 Minutes saw Mike Wallace engage in one of the most valuable acts of journalism. Too often, the multiplex media circulate character assassinations from politicians and other reckless sources without doing their own investigating to get the facts straight. Other journalists can be the last resort for the victims of the calumnies.
In his report, "Judge Charles Pickering," Mike Wallace clearly set the record straight on this maligned judge. He and others on 60 Minutes have done this before—a reason the program has such a large audience. People dig fairness.
For two years, this Mississippi federal district judge, a Republican, nominated by the president to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, has been charged with "glaring racial insensitivity" (a Charles Schumer rant). If Pickering could get an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor, he'd be confirmed, but he's been filibustered by the Democrats.
Leading these attacks are Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee—particularly Schumer, whose insistent contempt for the facts of Pickering's record, on and off the bench, reminds me of the temperament, though not the politics, of Joe McCarthy. Also vilifying Pickering have been national leaders of the NAACP and such summer soldiers of due process in judicial nominations as People for the American Way and the Alliance for Justice.
With very few exceptions, newspapers around the country, and most of broadcast and cable television, have routinely passed along these charges. The most egregious offenders have been the editorial writers of The New York Times.
(Excerpt) Read more at villagevoice.com ...
Despite the positive spin they put on Pickering in that interview, it was still a spin - and no cause IMO, for celebrating the inherent power of media which allows 60 minutes to paint Pickering as a saint. To continue the allegory from the above anonymous quote, just because they made an honest man look good (and the very same exception of that act as compared to most of the rest of their leftist drivel makes this special why???...) doesn't mean squat... Judge Pickering's acts and character stand on their own merits, and can be neither heightened nor lessened, nor their impact changed, by anything the media does.
60 minutes is still a paragon of psuedo-reason which the left hang their hats on (along with the likes of NPR, the Slimes, etc...) They are "self-anointed" (to use Sowell...) and 60 minutes is the medium for both their vision and their self-congratulation for being so smart and plainly so objective. What power they must feel!
That same power is used to sleight President Bush (by wood-proxy-ward) for his faith - accentuated by the grimaces, shoulder hunches and other rejecting body language that Wallace exercised in that interview - and only reinforces their arrogance that "they" can tell us what and how to think better than we can for ourselves.
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