The Chicago Tribune Inhales Vigorously
I really don't know what to make of the Chicago Tribune. I've been reading it for as long as I've been able to read. But they just keep making it harder and harder to continue as a reader.
I understand they have financial problems, and the fact is newspaper readership continues to decline. But I think the Trib is trying to hasten its' own demise.
First I think I need to make a distinction between the news organization, which I think does stellar work, and the editorial board. If it was up to me I would fire every member of the board right now and start from scratch. It's not that I disagree with their positions. I've known my whole life that the Trib is a conservative paper, and I have nothing against conservatives per se. The reason I think they should be fired is because they are completely stupid. I mean S-T-U-P-I-D.
To a person, they have ceased to think. If you read the editorials, you will notice that these are not well reasoned ideas staking out and defending a conservative position. They are reprints from the White House press room. I think Tony Snow is ghost writing the Trib editorials. All you have to read is the series these hacks did back in November last year called "The Road To War". They wasted a ton of newsprint doing nothing more than justify everything this government did in the run up to the war in Iraq. It was a total embarassment to the profession. I wanted to post a link to it here, but I can't find it on the Tribune web site. It's possible that even they are too embarrassed, but I doubt it.
On the other hand. Last Sunday they printed "A tank of gas, a world of trouble", by Paul Salopek. If you haven't read it, you should. Do it right now, I'll wait.
Actually, this is one of the finest pieces of journalism it has ever been my pleasure to read. I wasn't familiar with Salopek when I started, apparently he has a Pulitzer on his mantle, but I think he deserves another one. I don't have enough superlatives to describe it, so I just use one. Stunning. Not only does he cover an important, complex subject in a clear way, but the quality of the writing is phenomonal. He manages to link everything that is happening in the Middle East to your favorite neighborhood gas station and shows the human cost on all sides. There are many little bits that stand out, but I'm just going to re-print one. This is describing the manager of a Maraton gas station/convenience store as she gasses up for her drive home after long day at work.
" She seemed worn and jittery. It was the end of an 11-hour shift. She was headed home to a house shared with two teen daughters and a 4-foot iguana--a place she would soon vacate because she couldn't make the rent.
The only perk for the station employees is free coffee. There are no discounts on gas. Vargo bought $40 of regular unleaded. She rubbed the heel of one hand tiredly into her eye sockets. With the other, clutching the pump nozzle, she touched a faraway sea. "
Did I mention this is stunning? "She rubbed the heel of one hand tiredly into her eye sockets. With the other, clutching the pump nozzle, she touched a faraway sea." I love the imagery. It makes such an elegant connection between the pump and the countries where we get our oil. The beautiful thing is the whole story reads like a screenplay. It's "Traffic", but about Oil instead of Drugs.
Please just do yourself a favor and read it. Tomorrow night WYCC is airing a companion documentary which may or may not be the same as the one posted on the Trib web site., but I'll be watching.
I understand they have financial problems, and the fact is newspaper readership continues to decline. But I think the Trib is trying to hasten its' own demise.
First I think I need to make a distinction between the news organization, which I think does stellar work, and the editorial board. If it was up to me I would fire every member of the board right now and start from scratch. It's not that I disagree with their positions. I've known my whole life that the Trib is a conservative paper, and I have nothing against conservatives per se. The reason I think they should be fired is because they are completely stupid. I mean S-T-U-P-I-D.
To a person, they have ceased to think. If you read the editorials, you will notice that these are not well reasoned ideas staking out and defending a conservative position. They are reprints from the White House press room. I think Tony Snow is ghost writing the Trib editorials. All you have to read is the series these hacks did back in November last year called "The Road To War". They wasted a ton of newsprint doing nothing more than justify everything this government did in the run up to the war in Iraq. It was a total embarassment to the profession. I wanted to post a link to it here, but I can't find it on the Tribune web site. It's possible that even they are too embarrassed, but I doubt it.
On the other hand. Last Sunday they printed "A tank of gas, a world of trouble", by Paul Salopek. If you haven't read it, you should. Do it right now, I'll wait.
Actually, this is one of the finest pieces of journalism it has ever been my pleasure to read. I wasn't familiar with Salopek when I started, apparently he has a Pulitzer on his mantle, but I think he deserves another one. I don't have enough superlatives to describe it, so I just use one. Stunning. Not only does he cover an important, complex subject in a clear way, but the quality of the writing is phenomonal. He manages to link everything that is happening in the Middle East to your favorite neighborhood gas station and shows the human cost on all sides. There are many little bits that stand out, but I'm just going to re-print one. This is describing the manager of a Maraton gas station/convenience store as she gasses up for her drive home after long day at work.
" She seemed worn and jittery. It was the end of an 11-hour shift. She was headed home to a house shared with two teen daughters and a 4-foot iguana--a place she would soon vacate because she couldn't make the rent.
The only perk for the station employees is free coffee. There are no discounts on gas. Vargo bought $40 of regular unleaded. She rubbed the heel of one hand tiredly into her eye sockets. With the other, clutching the pump nozzle, she touched a faraway sea. "
Did I mention this is stunning? "She rubbed the heel of one hand tiredly into her eye sockets. With the other, clutching the pump nozzle, she touched a faraway sea." I love the imagery. It makes such an elegant connection between the pump and the countries where we get our oil. The beautiful thing is the whole story reads like a screenplay. It's "Traffic", but about Oil instead of Drugs.
Please just do yourself a favor and read it. Tomorrow night WYCC is airing a companion documentary which may or may not be the same as the one posted on the Trib web site., but I'll be watching.
posted by 35th 'n Shields at 10:42 AM
5 Comments:
“35th ‘n Shields�:
When assessing the performance of the World’s Greatest Newspaper, don’t forget, either, that it was the editorial pages that, last November and December, published that god-awful “The Road To War� series.1 The very series in which, in its final installment, concluded that “every earnest tool of diplomacy with Iraq had failed to improve the world's security….Saddam Hussein, not George W. Bush, had demanded this conflict.�2
On the matter of what one very good writer calls “Washington’s oilpolitik,� which is a topic to which you’ve returned more than once in this weblog, perhaps your readers might benefit from consulting (I’m limiting myself to five, though I urge you to share more with your readers):
* Larry Everest, Oil, Power, and Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda (Common Courage Press, 2003), http://www.commoncouragepress.com/index.cfm?action=book&bookid=246
* Michael T. Klare, Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Petroleum Dependency (Metropolitan Books, 2004), http://www.holtzbrinckpublishers.com/henryholt/search/SearchBookDisplay.asp?BookKey=1417314
* Michael T. Klare, "Oil Wars: Transforming the American Military into a Global Oil-Protection Service" (as posted to TomDispatch.com, October 7, 2004, http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=1888 )
* Michael T. Klare, "Bush-Cheney Energy Strategy: Procuring the Rest of the World’s Oil," (as posted to Common Dreams, http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0113-01.htm )
* Michael T. Klare, "Oil, Geopolitics, and the Coming War with Iran" (as posted to TomDispatch.com, April 11, 2005, http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2312 )
No “conspiracy theories� here. (Please note well.) Just rational inquiry based on the evidence that exists into the most powerful institutional actors on the international scene, each presumed to be pursuing its interests and agendas as such.
Last, I happened to miss the WYCC documentary.—
Was it worth catching?
David Peterson
Chicago
1. “The Road To War,� Chicago Tribune, 2005, http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-iraqwarreasons-gallery,1,4177631.storygallery
2. “Judging the case for war,� Chicago Tribune, December 28, 2005, http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0512280311dec28,1,3003192,print.story .
David:
Thanks for commenting on my site. This is a link to the documentary on the Trib's web site. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/specials/broadband/chi-oilsafari-html,1,6933468.htmlstory?coll=chi-homepagenews-utl I would be willing to bet a shiny quarter that it is the same documentary that is running on WYCC tonight.
Thanks also for the links to further info. A year ago I didn't really believe that the Iraq invasion was all about oil. The optimist in me really wanted to believe in the concept of saving the Iraqi people and spreading democracy. What a dope I was.
Take it easy, but take it,
“35th ‘n Shields�:
Interesting to read about your conversion on the road away from what some three-and-one-half years ago used to known as Operation Iraqi Freedom.
But—consider these two points.
First, when, back on August 2, 1990, the regime in Baghdad sent its forces rolling into Kuwait, how many people—outside the Iraqi President’s inner circle, that is, and maybe his extended family in the Tikrit area—do you suppose didn’t really believe that the invasion was all about oil, but rather thought it about saving the Kuwaitis from suffering the same fate as fundamentalist Iran, and spreading Iraq’s secular, Westernized values instead?
Here’s how one of Associated Press’s many reports dated August 2, 1990 opened: “Iraqi President Saddam Hussein seemed determined to solve his financial problems and fulfill territorial ambitions by dethroning the government of neighboring Kuwait on Thursday.�
The title of this particular AP’s report? “Saddam Grabs Kuwait to Fulfill Territorial, Financial Ambitions.�
Second, to reproduce an exchange between Newsweek’s Michael Hastings and Chomsky back in January:
Hastings: Where do you see Iraq heading right now?
Chomsky: Well, it's extremely difficult to talk about this because of a very rigid doctrine that prevails in the United States and Britain which prevents us from looking at the situation realistically. The doctrine, to oversimplify, is that we have to believe the United States would have so-called liberated Iraq even if its main products were lettuce and pickles and [the] main energy resource of the world were in central Africa. Anyone who doesn't accept that is dismissed as a conspiracy theorist or a lunatic or something. But anyone with a functioning brain knows that that's not true--as all Iraqis do, for example. The United States invaded Iraq because its major resource is oil. And it gives the United States, to quote [Zbigniew] Brzezinski, "critical leverage" over its competitors, Europe and Japan. That's a policy that goes way back to the second world war. That's the fundamental reason for invading Iraq, not anything else.
So, “35th ‘n Shields.� We are in some very good company. Whether or not you recognize it.
David Peterson
Chicago
Postscript. My apologies, especially from an aesthetic point of view, for all of the clunker hyperlinks. They look good before I post them. But the second they’re posted—they go kaput. What is the trick to posting hyperlinks that remain active?
"35th 'n Shields":
Am taking the liberty of posting a follow-up to earlier posts about oil and American Power. See "Why Oil Prices Are Falling," Michael T. KLlare, TomDispatch.com, September 26, 2006, http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=124698 .
And by the way: A later post of yours at "Mother Jones" (August 31, http://ssirish.blogspot.com/2006/08/mother-jones.html ) was quite a nice use of this electronic medium.
David Peterson
Chicago
"35th 'n Sheilds":
For another in a long line of rational inquiries into the roots of the American war over Iraq (and beyond--both forwards and backwards), see Joshua Holland, "Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil," Parts I and II, October 16 - 17, 2006, http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101706K.shtml .
(And as always: Apologies for the poor aesthetic.)
David Peterson
Chicago
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