Maine Owl

Oh, jeebus, they're gonna cover the "controversial" Stephen King remarks on reading and opportunity...

Update: This was worse than expected. An indignant military commentator was given pretty much free reign to bash Stephen King on the Maine Public Broadcasting Network. Here's how it started, "A deputy undersecretary for the Department of Defense says Maine author Stephen King cruelly perpetuated an incorrect stereotype when he suggested last month that military service is a refuge for the illiterate."

Barbara Cariddi's angle is "repercussions." A. J. Higgins does the meat of the 4 1/2 minute piece, connecting postponement of a planned fund-raiser for Democratic Senate candidate Tom Allen to the "controversy." Higgins does mention that these "repercussions" are sourced from the likes of O'Reilly and Limbaugh. My sense is that MPBN follows the lead of these preachers in the halls of wingnuttia.

I suppose Higgin's angle on literacy problems in Maine is a bit of a counterbalance in Stephen King's favor. But I think you could have done a much better report on this important issue if the dose of "repercussions" for King had not been ladled on top of it.

The Pentagon spokesperson really did not deal with Stephen King's intended point, that lack of literacy limits options in life, instead tacking against what is essentially a red herring, the myth that the military is full of illiterates. I did not hear that at all in King's remarks and I certainly do not believe that to be true.

However, recruiting standards certainly have taken a hit in recent years. This was not investigated at all by MPBN, even though mainstream stories have been available for months, sourced from the Pentagon itself, including this February Bangor Daily News story blogged by Gerald at Turn Maine Blue (thanks, Gerald).

I would note that a problem amongst some troops may be a lower level of thinking skills with respect to understanding the consequences of displayed attitudes and actions, not necessarily "illiteracy." This comes out big time in the Winter Soldier testimony.

These consequences are significant and terrible for people in countries America occupies, and for America itself. See below. Previous posts on this topic HERE and HERE.

Here is the audio I promised (4 1/2 minutes):

How's the media follow-up to last month's major New York Times expose on Pentagon propaganda been going? Stone cold silence.

Important as Stephen King remarks? Not so much.


An email "error"? Or a cover-up? It's worth page C8

This is a follow-up to the item I posted Saturday. I literally spent 45 minutes looking for this thing in the paper. I knew I'd seen it in there. This ran in the Bangor Daily News on Wednesday last week, the same day the paper carried it's first story on Stephen King's remarks about limits to opportunity for people with low skills, "...if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don't, then you've got, the Army, Iraq, I don't know, something like that."

Wingnuttia was all over that—the King remark, that is. It does not matter to them if there is any easily-seen evidence—as the BDN did give Mr. King space to explain—that poor reading skills do limit opportunity, and military grunt jobs these days with very high risk for injury and death in this country's wars are often one of those limited options.

None of 'em give a hoot about the human wreckage of the war and they never did. It's a crazymaking. Christ! One thousand attempted suicides per month!? There is a permanent nightmare looming over our future directly because of this war. And they can't see it in wingnuttia. Their only comfort is to latch onto celebrity remarks perceived as "liberal" and wave the flag over them while throwing a tantrum. It's a damn shame that the Bangor Daily News takes this lead and plays along for days on the front page. This administration's real, consequential cover-up of the situation merits only one tiny item on C8.

Scoop! "Super-secret" transcript

Lately I have not been much of a consumer of National Public Radio's Morning Edition. Frankly, I've felt for a long time that NPR news reporting just isn't credible any more. But I did hear this recruiting pitch story about a 56-year-old Vietnam vet who recently has re-enlisted with hopes of being sent to the current wars:

The Impact of War
Vietnam-Era Vet Reports for Duty

Morning Edition, May 9, 2008 · Army Spc. Tom Owens first joined the military during the Vietnam War when he was 17. He earned two Bronze Stars before leaving the service in 1992.

But nearly two years ago, when the Army raised its enlistment age limit to 42, Owens decided to sell his landscaping business and volunteer to serve his country again — at age 55.

"Maybe some other guys … might see this and think, 'You know, the Army, maybe it's not such a bad thing,' and maybe they might come back." --Lt. Col. Dave Johnson

The "scoop" is a "transcript" of a story meeting the reporter, Kathy Lohr, must have had with her producer and "obtained" by NPR Check, a website I've grown to admire. Good blogging, check it out.

Weak in Review: Bangor author Stephen King remarks on reading skills and options in life, made "controversial" by wingnut bloggers, carry huge weight over Iraq/Afghanistan veteran suicide issue in Bangor Daily News

It was quite a week of war and veterans issues coverage in the Bangor Daily News. Was it their big, front-page coverage of the U.S.-backed killing and destruction in civilian neighborhoods in Sadr City? Nope, there was no such coverage. Was it their prominent story on the hearings in Congress and west coast court case on treatment of veterans and controversial actions by high officials at the Department of Veterans Affairs? Nope, they had just a tiny AP release buried deep in the paper on that.

What they had was THIS:

Stephen King fires back after blogger attacks remarks
By The Associated Press
Wednesday, May 07, 2008 - Bangor Daily News

BANGOR, Maine — Stephen King has fired back at conservative critics who attacked him over a remark he made a month ago at a writers symposium for high school students.

A blogger jumped on King’s statement at the Library of Congress about the importance of reading in which he suggested poor readers have limited prospects, including service in the Army.

"I don’t want to sound like an ad, a public service ad on TV, but the fact is if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don’t, then you’ve got the Army, Iraq, I don’t know, something like that. It’s not as bright," King said at the April 4 event in which he was accompanied by his wife Tabitha and son Owen.

Blogger Noel Sheppard likened the comment to former Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s remarks that if you don’t get a good education, "you get stuck in Iraq."

"Nice sentiment when the nation is at war, Stephen," Sheppard wrote.

The BDN continued coverage with an editorial and they did give the spooky author plenty of space to respond, but the angle was on the "controversy" of the remarks.

The story wouldn't quit, as some of the troop greeters at the airport had temporarily removed King items from the terminal area. The group leaders over there came to their senses and had the items replaced.

Meanwhile, consider that THIS outrageous story of officials covering-up the real challenges returning troops face is barely news up here:

An Outrage: V.A. Official Who Covered Up Veterans' Suicides Won't Lose Job
Greg Mitchell - Huffington Post - May 10, 2008

A week of hearings in Washington on the alarming spike in suicides among veterans of the Iraq war, and an official cover-up of the numbers, has ended with both the Veterans Affairs chief and the V.A. mental health director whose advice on the matter was "Shh," still holding their jobs.

Meanwhile, the returning soldiers "are dropping like flies." That's how one soldier characterized the spike in suicides among servicemen coming home from war, according to Greg Dobbs, who is completing a documentary on PTSD for HDNet and wrote an op-ed today for the Rocky Mountain News of Denver.

Dr. Ira Katz, the mental health official who ordered "Shh!" on revelations of the alarming number of suicides among U.S. veterans, won't lose his job over it, his boss told Congress. The poor fellow, like all of us from time to time, just wrote without thinking in an e-mail, V.A. Secretary James Peake testified.

Katz agreed that it was just a bad choice of words when he sent his colleagues an e-mail about suicide data that started out with "Shh!" in the subject line. The e-mail (which I covered in-depth last week) went on to admit that 12,000 veterans a year attempt suicide while under department treatment -- but this number should be kept from CBS News, which was studying the issue. "Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?" the e-mail asked.

For a bunch more, please read Alexander Cockburn's Counterpunch Diary for today, Real Clear Numbers: 101,000 U.S. Casualties a Year.

All this just shows how loathe to face the truth about this war are many Americans. People would rather pile on Stephen King for what I think is a valid observation: the military becomes one of the few options open to young people who have for whatever reason been ill-served by the educational system.

Some of us who have lived to my age, or maybe even a little older "we were so hopeful that this would never happen again, that we would never do this to another generation of young people…. And we’re doing it right now,… you know,… we’re doing it right now. We’re killing ‘em, we’re maiming 'em, we’re sending 'em home crazy. And we’re not doing anything for 'em when they get back. It’s the same thing again.
--Stan Goff, Orono, Maine, November 15, 2005

It's a hell of a problem for a nuclear power....


Matt Taibbi on The Great Derangement

I've appreciated Matt Taibbi's work since I found this column he wrote for New York Press in September 2003, discussing how the Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority had hired a figure from the Russian economic "shock therapy" period. At the time, the same thing, something they called "rapid privatization," was on the table for Iraq. Lot's of detail was archived HERE, due to a proposed U.S.-Iraq "business conference" then planned at the University of Maine.

H/T to Jazz from Hell for the video. I'll go along with Taibbi "is the best American journalism has to offer."