“I’d rather see Jackson in the Cabinet than any of the more than 100 characters in the Reagan-Bush administration who variously have been accused or convicted of wrongdoing, making it, in my view, the most corrupt administration in my [life].”
The quote is from a column that appeared in the October 17, 1996 Chicago Sun-Times. The columnist was Dennis Byrne, who at the time was a member of the Sun-Times editorial board. The quote was actually taken from a column that he had written a few years earlier that was in response to how upset Republicans were by the fact that then-presidential-candidate Michael Dukakis was considering naming Jesse Jackson Jr. to his Cabinet.
It’s no surprise that the GOP engages in the same type of high-minded hypocrisy today and that it’s magnified by sadistic amnesia, or at the very least an insidious form of ignorance. I was reminded of the quote when I heard that Republican Congressman Darrell Issa proclaimed that President Obama was “one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times.” Of course in the interest of self-serving civility he amended his original comment and said that he was actually referring to the Obama administration and not the President himself.
Mr. Issa’s remarks would be laughable if they were not so disgraceful and shameful in their disregard of history and truth. As Mr. Byrne mentioned in his column there were more than 100 members of the Reagan administration who had been either accused or convicted of wrongdoing. According to Wikipedia, “The presidency of Ronald Reagan in the United States was marked by multiple scandals, resulting in the investigation, indictment, or conviction of over 138 administration officials, the largest number for any US president at the time.” That bears repeating: Over 138 officials that served in the Reagan administration were either investigated, indicted, or convicted of wrongdoing.
But of course you wouldn’t know that from all of the worship and praise that Reagan received during the recent celebration and commemoration of his 100th birthday that took place across the nation. The media’s hyperbolic hugging of the man was so omnipresent that you could be forgiven for thinking that he had died, been buried, and was resurrected on the third day.
How can this be? How is it that a man who was at the helm of what has to be considered the most corrupt presidency in U.S. history be worshipped like a god in this country? I believe that the late Walter Karp- who was a journalist, historian, and contributing editor for Harper’s Magazine– can provide some perspective on how such a pervasive scope of malignant amnesty can be granted to the likes of a Ronald Reagan.
An article by Mr. Karp titled “All The Congressmen’s Men: How Capitol Hill Controls The Press” appeared in the July 1989 issue of Harper’s Magazine. Here’s an excerpt from that article:
On February 26, 1987, Reagan’s “special review board,” known as the Tower Commission, issued its long-awaited report on the Iran-Contra scandal. An hour’s reading revealed a President obsessively concerned with, and intensely curious about, Iran-Contra matters, and determined to keep those matters in the hands of close personal advisers. To the press, however, the three members of the commission said exactly the opposite. In public statements, interviews, television appearances, and private meetings with leading editors, they insisted that Reagan was victimized by a “management style” that kept him in complete ignorance of everything blameworthy. That disgraceful lie, which in effect accused the President of his own defense, was endorsed at once by Democratic leaders and duly became the day’s news, as if the report had never been written. When the Iran-Contra committees of Congress issued their report on the scandal, congressional leaders told the press at once that the whole sordid chapter was closed. The press did as instructed and closed the books at once on the most extraordinary abuse of power in presidential history. The report itself was ignored; a wealth of newsworthy information, impeccably “sourced,” sank into journalistic limbo. The report termed Reagan’s private war against Nicaragua “a flagrant violation of the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution,” but that grave charge, worthy of blazing headlines, was scarcely noticed in the press and ignored entirely by the Times. What rule of journalism dictates such base servility to the powerful? No rule save the rule of the whip, which political power cracks over the press’s head.
Again: The press did as instructed and closed the books at once on the most extraordinary abuse of power in presidential history.
Again: The report termed Reagan’s private war against Nicaragua “a flagrant violation of the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution,” but that grave charge, worthy of blazing headlines, was scarcely noticed in the press and ignored entirely by the Times. Mr. Karp is referring to the New York Times, the same paper with the motto “All The News That’s Fit to Print.”
I guess the fact that the president of the United States violated the very Constitution that he swore to uphold was not newsworthy or “Fit to Print”. It appears that the press (i.e. corporate media) has determined that it’s in their best interest to promote the worship of false gods rather than to expose the dangers of such worship. How does that saying about the blind leading the blind go again?
The Muse Minefield 