8626: Re: O'Grady Toiling Away In The Reactionary Vineyards (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Manus McMenany <manus@manus.freeserve.co.uk>

With all due respect to Fred Wardenburg, Mary O'Grady's article should not
be dismissed as 'right wing raving', 'not worth getting exercised about'.
There are so many innaccuracies in the piece that either the writer doesn't
have a clue what she is talking about or she is deliberately lying.  All of
these claims can be challenged. For instance, nobody can dispute that the
Human Rights situation in Haiti, as measured by the number of
'disappearances', has always been better when Aristide has been in power.
Similarly, the idea that 'even the hardened Columbian drug rings' are
leaving the 'inferno of terror' is too ridiculous for words. You could go
through the hole thing sentence by sentence and take it apart.

A more significant issue is why somebody who is so clearly ill equipped to
write on the subject is in such a senior position on the Wall Street
Journal. The United States does, after all, pride itself on being a
democracy with a free press, and the WSJ is one of its most prestigious
newspapers. So why are they publishing something so patently false? I
suspect that for journalists such as Mrs O'Grady knowledge of her
specialised subject is frankly irrelevant. What really matters is being able
to deliver the party line.