Sunday, February 07, 2010

Editorial: Did she break a hip?

No one plays self-righteous quite like Amy Goodman. Probably that sour puss allows her to appear more convincing. Those who've watched her play Last Journalist Standing a couple of dozen times are no doubt scratching their heads these days at the weak excuse for "the war and peace report" she currently offers.

Remember June 9, 2005, when she was riding her high horse:

Now to the Downing Street memo. Coming on the heels of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's visit to Washington this week, momentum is building for a Congressional investigation into new proof that the Bush administration deliberately misled Congress and the UN in the months leading up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. The memo, as it is being called, is minutes of a meeting of Tony Blair’s top advisers from July 2002 in which they make clear that US officials have told them that the war was a foregone conclusion and that the US had begun escalating its attacks against Iraq, essentially beginning the air war, months before UN or Congress voted on the issue. Earlier this week, Bush was finally asked about it despite the fact that the memo was published more than a month ago by the Sunday Times of London.


Of course, the US never got that investigation and, no, John Conyer's Congressional Basement Party that same month didn't count (and didn't count for s**t). Back then, Senators John Kerry and Ted Kennedy were promising an investigation into whether Amemrica was lied into war. Didn't happen.

But did anyone grand stand as much as Goody? June 15, 2005, "Despite the explosive information in these documents, they have received very little attention in the corporate media in this country and Bush administration officials have only been asked about it a handful of times."

As segment after segment piled up on these memos and as Goody pushed an inquiry, some viewers and listeners might have mistakenly think that she gave a damn. (She did, after all, include the topic in her 2005 year-in-review.)

But it's put-up-or-shut-up time for Goody and she's decided to dummy up. The woman who could bore us all with Sundance, who could jet in and out of Haiti, and more in the last weeks alone, could never take her ass to London where, since November, the Iraq Inquiry has been holding public hearings.

Tuesday, Clare Short testified -- Clare Short whom Goody's had on her own show. As with Tony Blair before her, Short just didn't interest Goody. Nothing about the Inquiry has interested Goody, as Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "If It Stared In Her Face" pointed out last Sunday.


If It Stared In Her Face

Poor Goody. We hope she didn't break a hip as she fell off her high horse.

Forced, she'll include a few seconds in headlines but in November, in December, in January and now in February, she has never found or made time to devote a segment to the Inquiry.

It's strange because Chris Ames' Iraq Inquiry Digest has never struggled to publish, in fact, they have more to cover than they have time for. But it, the Iraq War and Iraqis mean so little to Amy Goodman that none of it rates a segment. Besides, there's another film festival on the horizon and she's got to hob-knob with her betters.