Evil not a PR concern, as long as no pix

Re Trenton Loses Court Skirmish on Road Funds, by Josh Benson, New York Times, January 22, 2005:

Pity the U.S. patriot with old-fashioned notions of civic duty. If he relies, in his quest for insight into his government's doings, on one of the nation's most vaunted purveyors of news -- the hallowed New York Times -- his sense of enfranchisement is routinely rebuffed by news stories that seem to tell him: "Back off, old man. You aren't an insider. You're like the bums trying to crash the Bush inaugural without a ticket. This is the product we've got for your demographic. Now take it and shut up."

The above article is such story. It concerns political patronage, a familiar concept to the thinning demographic that still pays some attention to such issues. What is unfamiliar, however, is the absence of any intelligible protestations of innocence from the probably guilty parties -- in this case, the Bush administration.

Patronage, we recall, is a politician's use of his power to help his friends. "Friends" are usually people who donate piles of money to get the politician elected. The help the friends get in return also takes the form of money -- typically, being awarded government contracts for, say, building highways. The friends may not offer taxpayers the best price to do the job ... but they're friends.

There are, incidentally, less polite words than patronage, for example, kickback (the politician gives the friend a $100 million roads contract; the friend "kicks back" $100,000 in campaign contributions), or corruption. But given that such practices have always gone on and that they are legal, and thus represent a more or less sanctioned element of the democratic order, newspapers generally go along with the view that, in Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's phrase, "democracy is messy" (not just abroad), and strive to maintain a polite tone. A polite tone is important in the press's struggle to be less repellent to the crucial youth demographic, most of which is steeped in cheerful non-reality media. Politeness also has other benefits, since newspapers too are subject to politicians' various carrots and sticks.[1]

Patronage is perfectly ordinary and routine at the state and federal levels in the U.S. and is largely accepted, perhaps because it's part of hoary tradition. But there are rules! Since anyone with half a brain can understand that patronage essentially amounts to stealing taxpayers' money (and giving it to cheaters), perpetrators generally make at least a perfunctory attempt to clothe the practice in somewhat respectable garb. Thus, for example, Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, Halliburton, was awarded Iraqi reconstruction contracts without open bidding because, it was said, the work was urgent and Halliburton was uniquely qualified.

It is the apparent violation of this standing rule that makes this Times news report stand out.

The New Jersey state government issued what seems to be an enlightened order, a rule that would tend to prevent patronage. The rule is simple: political donors cannot be awarded government contracts. It seems like a wonderful rule for New Jersey taxpayers -- except that the Bush administration, in response, has levied a $250 million penalty against the state (by withholding that amount in federal highway funds which the state would otherwise have received). A federal judge has just upheld the penalty.

The bemused Times reader reads on, expecting to find the Bush administration's fig leaf. What is their story? How are they arguing that this attack against an anti-corruption measure is actually good for the public? And by what legal theory could the attack be upheld by a judge?

Here in full is everything the Times has to offer in answer to these inevitable questions:

[Judge Stanley R. Chesler of Federal District Court] several times cited arguments made by lawyers representing the Federal Highway Administration, which is withholding the funds. In particular, he expressed doubt that New Jersey's rules met a federal requirement that rule changes must make the bidding process more efficient.

The judge also appeared to lend credence to the Bush administration's contention that the executive order [establishing New Jersey's new rules] unfairly prejudged bidders who had made political contributions. He referred to the order as a "prophylactic device."

When a lawyer from the state attorney general's office argued that an "appearance" of impropriety arising from a political contribution could disqualify a bidder, the judge asked pointedly whether state law ever dictated that such a consideration should be a determining factor.

Can anyone divine a rationale for the Bush administration's position within this utter gibberish?

Are we to make the preposterous inference that, because a rule barring donors from bidding does not "make the bidding process more efficient" (since it presumably has no effect whatever on the efficiency of the bidding process), the rule is itself barred by federal requirements?

Are we to take seriously the argument that a donor has been "unfairly prejudged" because his donation makes him ineligible to bid on government contracts? And that this unfair prejudgement violates federal rules?

I would like to see that federal rule.

And yes, the order is a "prophylactic device." It's intended to prevent corruption. What point was being made there?

As to the judge "pointedly [asking] whether state law ever dictated that such a consideration should be a determining factor": What can this signify? Is there some unexplained inconsistency between the rule and state law?

The Times offers no answers here.

Every reporter knows that the news must be balanced. Can the New York Times be oblivious that there is an imbalance here? Has the badness of patronage become an esoteric insight? Or has the paper decided that the public is oblivious and that the administration knows it -- and that the administration therefore can't be bothered to respond on any issue so abstract as patronage?

Perhaps there is indeed no need for the Bush administration to bother equivocating about such matters. There are no pictures; so it'll never make it to TV; so it won't exist for the voting masses.

Frank Rich comments on another recent court case -- "the latest installment in our government's cover up of war crimes" -- and suggests one reason why Americans have ignored that case:

Since the early bombshells from Abu Ghraib last year, the torture story has all but vanished from television. If a story isn't on TV in America, it doesn't exist in our culture.

The military trial of Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr. was "Judgment at Nuremberg" turned upside down. Specialist Graner's defense lawyer, Guy Womack, explained it this way in his closing courtroom statement: "In Nuremberg, it was the generals being prosecuted. We were going after the order-givers. Here the government is going after the order-takers." As T. R. Reid reported in The Washington Post, the trial's judge, Col. James L. Pohl of the Army, "refused to allow witnesses to discuss which officers were aware of events in cellblock One-Alpha, or what orders they had given." There have yet to be any criminal charges leveled against any of the prison's officers, let alone anyone higher up in the chain of command.

Nor are there likely to be any, given how little information about this story makes it to the truly mass commercial media and therefore to a public that, according to polls, disapproves of the prison abuses by a majority that hovers around 80 percent. What information does surface is usually so incomplete or perfunctorily presented that it leaves unchallenged the administration's line that, in President Bush's words, the story involves just "a few American troops" on the night shift.

The role of pictures in TV news remains paramount, and there has been no fresh visual meat from the scene of the crime (or the others like it) in eight months. The advances in the story since then, many of which involve revelations of indisputably genuine Washington memos, are not telegenic.

There were no cameras at Specialist Graner's trial itself. What happened in the courtroom would thus have to be explained with words - possibly more than a few sentences of words - and that doesn't cut it on commercial television.

[Edited excerpt from On Television, Torture Takes a Holiday, by Frank Rich, New York Times, January 19, 2005.]

Everyone knows that TV has added much to our knowledge. We've seen tsunami wreckage, precision bombing, limbless children, wailing parents. What's less appreciated is how much TV subtracts from our knowledge. Words have become empty shells, opaque symbols disconnected from meaning. The pen may never have been less mighty. If you don't scream, splash blood or fart, then ... you have nothing to say.

The New York Times, being a words-oriented medium, is naturally less than comfortable with this state of affairs. But it is adapting.