seuss
05-21-2009, 11:37 AM
Garrison Keillor's Prairie Torture Companion
By Rory O'Connor, MediaChannel.org
Posted on May 20, 2009, Printed on May 21, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/140156/
Garrison Keillor claims to be a liberal. He - and we -- should know better. Keillor has just joined the already large and ever-growing list of allegedly 'liberal' media figures who either advocate or apologize for torture.
In a recent column, (syndicated by the New York Times,) the National Public Radio mainstay (and author, storyteller, humorist, and musician,) allowed that "widespread waterboarding and other acts of torture carried out in secret CIA prisons are no small matter." He added, "The free play of sadism on the helpless in the name of national service is not to be ignored." He called for "a fair and thorough congressional investigation." He said we should "subpoena witnesses and lay the whole wretched business out on the public record. Look into the heart of darkness and meditate on it."
But when it comes to "criminal prosecution," and "holding the Bush administration responsible for torture," the Man from Lake Wobegon says we be going too far, that something is rotten in America: "I smell the sour righteousness of the victorious lording it over the vanquished."
That's right: the self-described "old museum-quality northern liberal" says that holding high officials responsible for the murderous torture they carried out in his -- and our --name would only yield "high political drama that would feed the media goat" and "sap the body politic." As a result, Keillor claims, "The health-care system would go unfixed, schools would crumble, basic public services would deteriorate, all so that the left could have at the right." (Wasn't it the right that let the health-care system go unfixed, schools crumble, and basic public services deteriorate in the first place? Oh, never mind)
Instead of squaring off "in a bloody battle over war crimes," Keillor proposes a new focus on infrastructure, music and foreign languages: "Let's return decent train service to the Midwest and test out the German maglev (magnetic levitation) system -- the 360 mph trains -- and connect Chicago and St. Paul-Minneapolis, Cleveland, Detroit, Omaha, Kansas City. Let's restore education to the public schools so that our kids get a chance to hear Mozart and learn French."
And instead of prosecution, Keillor's solution is that old bromide: "Let's move on."
After all, he says, there were extenuating circumstances that turned us into torturers:
"Remember that the country was in high post-9/11 jitters when the dreadful memoranda were written by the lawyers whom some Democrats want to haul into court. Apocalyptic visions were afloat of subway bombings, germ warfare, nuclear devices wiping out a major city -- I remember walking around Manhattan and thinking much too vividly about such things -- and in that atmosphere of painful vulnerability, the great bustling city practically indefensible, zealous men might consider desperate measures in the name of security. As Orwell said, 'We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.'"
So if those rough and ready torturer-men shouldn't be blamed, whom then to hold accountable? That's simple -- the rest of us!
"I think the American electorate knew who they re-elected in 2004," Keillor helpfully points out. " Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney did not run on a human-rights platform, they ran as rough men who would guard our sleep. So go talk to the voters of Ohio about war crimes."
Mistaking retribution for prosecution, Keillor says what is needed "is not punishment, but truth," since "retribution makes poor politics." But so too does historical amnesia, ignoring reality, normalizing the unspeakable - and "moving on" before ever determining the truth underlying what it is we're supposedly moving on from.
It's true that what we need now "is not punishment, but truth." It's also true, as Keillor wrote, that "The guy they really want to put on trial is the old brush-cutter of Crawford, or else the old grouse hunter of Wyoming. They're the guys who signed off on those memos authorizing torture. The buck stopped at their desks."
That's where the prosecution should stop as well - even if it means we'll have to wait a little longer for the maglev and decent train service to the Midwest!
Filmmaker and journalist Rory O'Connor is the author of "Shock Jocks: Hate Speech and Talk Radio" (AlterNet Books, 2008). O'Connor also writes the Media Is A Plural blog.
http://www.sltrib.com/portlet/article/html...&siteId=297
QUOTE
Keillor: Retribution makes poor politics --- let's move on
By Garrison Keillor
Salt Lake Tribune
Updated:05/01/2009 06:02:49 PM MDT
I sat next to Ted Stevens at a Washington dinner years ago and found him unpleasant in a raspy, cartoonish way, but I was happy to see his conviction thrown out. A muddy case, a friend doing work on the senator's house perhaps in exchange for favors in Washington, and I say, have mercy.
Let him go fishing in the cold, clear rivers of Alaska and examine his conscience, as we all do in our better hours, and let us all move on to something more promising.
I feel similarly about the Bush people whom some Democrats want to charge with war crimes. The widespread waterboarding and other acts of torture carried out in secret CIA prisons are no small matter. The free play of sadism on the helpless in the name of national service is not to be ignored.
What's needed is a fair and thorough congressional investigation. Subpoena witnesses and lay the whole wretched business out on the public record. Look into the heart of darkness and meditate on it. But don't round up a few symbolic suspects and throw the book at them and let all the others go free. Which is what would happen if we launch a criminal prosecution.
What's needed here is not punishment, but truth. When I hear Democrats talk about "holding them responsible," I smell the sour righteousness of the victorious lording it over the vanquished. The guy they really want to put on trial is the old brush-cutter of Crawford, or else the old grouse hunter of Wyoming. They're the guys who signed off on those memos authorizing torture. The buck stopped at their desks.
Holding the Bush administration responsible for torture would give us some high political drama that would feed the media goat for the next two years and also sap the body politic. The health-care system would go unfixed, schools would crumble, basic public services would deteriorate, all so that the left could have at the right.
I am an old museum-quality northern liberal and I know something about the righteousness of my confreres. I've been with old lefty friends who can get emotional about the Haymarket bombing in Chicago and the innocent men railroaded to the gallows, but dear hearts, it happened in 1886. Let's move on.
Retribution is not smart politics. That's part of what killed Rudy Giuliani's run for president, the voters' sense that he was possessed of a cruel urge to pay back old debts. He was meaner than we want a president to be. I agree with Senator McCain when he says, "We need to put this behind us, we need to move forward."
Remember that the country was in high post-9/11 jitters when the dreadful memoranda were written by the lawyers whom some Democrats want to haul into court. Apocalyptic visions were afloat of subway bombings, germ warfare, nuclear devices wiping out a major city -- I remember walking around Manhattan and thinking much too vividly about such things -- and in that atmosphere of painful vulnerability, the great bustling city practically indefensible, zealous men might consider desperate measures in the name of security.
As Orwell said, "We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." I think the American electorate knew who they re-elected in 2004. Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney did not run on a human-rights platform, they ran as rough men who would guard our sleep. So go talk to the voters of Ohio about war crimes.
Rather than square off in a bloody battle over war crimes, let's return decent train service to the Midwest and test out the German maglev (magnetic levitation) system -- the 360 mph trains -- and connect Chicago and St. Paul-Minneapolis, Cleveland, Detroit, Omaha, Kansas City. Let's restore education to the public schools so that our kids get a chance to hear Mozart and learn French.
I'm in Washington today for the Poetry Out Loud program, run by the National Endowment for the Arts. Your tax dollars spent to bring 53 high school kids (out of 300,000 who competed for the honor) to recite poetry (Shakespeare, Donne, Eliot, Billy Collins), the winner to get a $20,000 scholarship.
It's a beautiful event. Special Olympics for English majors. I would forgo the pleasures of tormenting a few malefactors for the rightness of hearing a kid from Newark stand up and give an impassioned recitation of "When in Disgrace with Fortune and Men's Eyes."
Garrison Keillor can be heard every weekend on National Public Radio.
By Rory O'Connor, MediaChannel.org
Posted on May 20, 2009, Printed on May 21, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/140156/
Garrison Keillor claims to be a liberal. He - and we -- should know better. Keillor has just joined the already large and ever-growing list of allegedly 'liberal' media figures who either advocate or apologize for torture.
In a recent column, (syndicated by the New York Times,) the National Public Radio mainstay (and author, storyteller, humorist, and musician,) allowed that "widespread waterboarding and other acts of torture carried out in secret CIA prisons are no small matter." He added, "The free play of sadism on the helpless in the name of national service is not to be ignored." He called for "a fair and thorough congressional investigation." He said we should "subpoena witnesses and lay the whole wretched business out on the public record. Look into the heart of darkness and meditate on it."
But when it comes to "criminal prosecution," and "holding the Bush administration responsible for torture," the Man from Lake Wobegon says we be going too far, that something is rotten in America: "I smell the sour righteousness of the victorious lording it over the vanquished."
That's right: the self-described "old museum-quality northern liberal" says that holding high officials responsible for the murderous torture they carried out in his -- and our --name would only yield "high political drama that would feed the media goat" and "sap the body politic." As a result, Keillor claims, "The health-care system would go unfixed, schools would crumble, basic public services would deteriorate, all so that the left could have at the right." (Wasn't it the right that let the health-care system go unfixed, schools crumble, and basic public services deteriorate in the first place? Oh, never mind)
Instead of squaring off "in a bloody battle over war crimes," Keillor proposes a new focus on infrastructure, music and foreign languages: "Let's return decent train service to the Midwest and test out the German maglev (magnetic levitation) system -- the 360 mph trains -- and connect Chicago and St. Paul-Minneapolis, Cleveland, Detroit, Omaha, Kansas City. Let's restore education to the public schools so that our kids get a chance to hear Mozart and learn French."
And instead of prosecution, Keillor's solution is that old bromide: "Let's move on."
After all, he says, there were extenuating circumstances that turned us into torturers:
"Remember that the country was in high post-9/11 jitters when the dreadful memoranda were written by the lawyers whom some Democrats want to haul into court. Apocalyptic visions were afloat of subway bombings, germ warfare, nuclear devices wiping out a major city -- I remember walking around Manhattan and thinking much too vividly about such things -- and in that atmosphere of painful vulnerability, the great bustling city practically indefensible, zealous men might consider desperate measures in the name of security. As Orwell said, 'We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.'"
So if those rough and ready torturer-men shouldn't be blamed, whom then to hold accountable? That's simple -- the rest of us!
"I think the American electorate knew who they re-elected in 2004," Keillor helpfully points out. " Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney did not run on a human-rights platform, they ran as rough men who would guard our sleep. So go talk to the voters of Ohio about war crimes."
Mistaking retribution for prosecution, Keillor says what is needed "is not punishment, but truth," since "retribution makes poor politics." But so too does historical amnesia, ignoring reality, normalizing the unspeakable - and "moving on" before ever determining the truth underlying what it is we're supposedly moving on from.
It's true that what we need now "is not punishment, but truth." It's also true, as Keillor wrote, that "The guy they really want to put on trial is the old brush-cutter of Crawford, or else the old grouse hunter of Wyoming. They're the guys who signed off on those memos authorizing torture. The buck stopped at their desks."
That's where the prosecution should stop as well - even if it means we'll have to wait a little longer for the maglev and decent train service to the Midwest!
Filmmaker and journalist Rory O'Connor is the author of "Shock Jocks: Hate Speech and Talk Radio" (AlterNet Books, 2008). O'Connor also writes the Media Is A Plural blog.
http://www.sltrib.com/portlet/article/html...&siteId=297
QUOTE
Keillor: Retribution makes poor politics --- let's move on
By Garrison Keillor
Salt Lake Tribune
Updated:05/01/2009 06:02:49 PM MDT
I sat next to Ted Stevens at a Washington dinner years ago and found him unpleasant in a raspy, cartoonish way, but I was happy to see his conviction thrown out. A muddy case, a friend doing work on the senator's house perhaps in exchange for favors in Washington, and I say, have mercy.
Let him go fishing in the cold, clear rivers of Alaska and examine his conscience, as we all do in our better hours, and let us all move on to something more promising.
I feel similarly about the Bush people whom some Democrats want to charge with war crimes. The widespread waterboarding and other acts of torture carried out in secret CIA prisons are no small matter. The free play of sadism on the helpless in the name of national service is not to be ignored.
What's needed is a fair and thorough congressional investigation. Subpoena witnesses and lay the whole wretched business out on the public record. Look into the heart of darkness and meditate on it. But don't round up a few symbolic suspects and throw the book at them and let all the others go free. Which is what would happen if we launch a criminal prosecution.
What's needed here is not punishment, but truth. When I hear Democrats talk about "holding them responsible," I smell the sour righteousness of the victorious lording it over the vanquished. The guy they really want to put on trial is the old brush-cutter of Crawford, or else the old grouse hunter of Wyoming. They're the guys who signed off on those memos authorizing torture. The buck stopped at their desks.
Holding the Bush administration responsible for torture would give us some high political drama that would feed the media goat for the next two years and also sap the body politic. The health-care system would go unfixed, schools would crumble, basic public services would deteriorate, all so that the left could have at the right.
I am an old museum-quality northern liberal and I know something about the righteousness of my confreres. I've been with old lefty friends who can get emotional about the Haymarket bombing in Chicago and the innocent men railroaded to the gallows, but dear hearts, it happened in 1886. Let's move on.
Retribution is not smart politics. That's part of what killed Rudy Giuliani's run for president, the voters' sense that he was possessed of a cruel urge to pay back old debts. He was meaner than we want a president to be. I agree with Senator McCain when he says, "We need to put this behind us, we need to move forward."
Remember that the country was in high post-9/11 jitters when the dreadful memoranda were written by the lawyers whom some Democrats want to haul into court. Apocalyptic visions were afloat of subway bombings, germ warfare, nuclear devices wiping out a major city -- I remember walking around Manhattan and thinking much too vividly about such things -- and in that atmosphere of painful vulnerability, the great bustling city practically indefensible, zealous men might consider desperate measures in the name of security.
As Orwell said, "We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." I think the American electorate knew who they re-elected in 2004. Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney did not run on a human-rights platform, they ran as rough men who would guard our sleep. So go talk to the voters of Ohio about war crimes.
Rather than square off in a bloody battle over war crimes, let's return decent train service to the Midwest and test out the German maglev (magnetic levitation) system -- the 360 mph trains -- and connect Chicago and St. Paul-Minneapolis, Cleveland, Detroit, Omaha, Kansas City. Let's restore education to the public schools so that our kids get a chance to hear Mozart and learn French.
I'm in Washington today for the Poetry Out Loud program, run by the National Endowment for the Arts. Your tax dollars spent to bring 53 high school kids (out of 300,000 who competed for the honor) to recite poetry (Shakespeare, Donne, Eliot, Billy Collins), the winner to get a $20,000 scholarship.
It's a beautiful event. Special Olympics for English majors. I would forgo the pleasures of tormenting a few malefactors for the rightness of hearing a kid from Newark stand up and give an impassioned recitation of "When in Disgrace with Fortune and Men's Eyes."
Garrison Keillor can be heard every weekend on National Public Radio.