Carl who?

Recently our local university rag ran a headline that read, "Famous Reporter to Give Lecture". Yeah, I was thinking the same thing you are: If you have to bill him as a "famous reporter", he must not be that famous.

So I read further and discovered it was none other than Carl Bernstein. Yeah, I was thinking the same thing you are: Why in the world would you need to bill Carl Bernstein as a "famous repoter"??

Okay, so the U is full of mush-brained kids aged 18-25. None of 'em got left behind - thanks to bloated school bureaucracies and insidious teacher's unions - because the standard has been lowered to prevent such tragedies. Yet it's still shocking that they don't recognize Bernstein's name.

Well I was discussing this with a colleague via argumentum smokebreakum and remarked, in an incredulous tone, "It's like not knowing who Edward R. Murrow is," to which she replied, "Uh, who's that?" (Insert comic strip drawing of me, eyes wide and mouth agape, with exclamation marks above my head.) Seriously, she had to ask another colleague after I refused to tell her.

It's easy - and tempting - to despise the Murrows, Bernsteins, Cronkites of the world for allowing their anti-American politics to influence the reporting of important news. But one thing they recognize: It's important news! Americans need to be informed, but we'd rather be entertained. And unless journalists (this was Bernstein's lecture focus) hold the line against info-tainment, they will have failed the nation a great responsibility.

I saw a newsbite some months ago (on Free Republic probably) about Walter Cronkite's statement that the press is failing its job of informing Americans for democracy. My first reaction was to chuckle and think, "Yeah, you old birds still think you can run this country from behind your news desks, dontcha? Well we're wise to you now, buddy!" But I read more of his remarks and understood he was trying to tell us the same thing Bernstein was: An uninformed electorate is ripe for tyranny.

Look, we may disagree on matters of politics, you and I. Or we may disagree with Bernstein, et al. But if we disagree, we can dispute, argue, debate and fight about it. Why? Because our republic guarantees us that freedom - for now. If we lose that protection to a tyrannical federal government, it won't matter a hill o'beans whether we agree or disagree.

We've already lost the titles to our property, thanks to a supra-constitutional ruling by the Supreme Court and a do-nothing Congress that offers us half-measure sedatives. We've lost the freedom to publicly criticize our elected representatives at the time it's most needed - election time - thanks to Senators McCain and Feingold, a power-hungry Congress, an admittedly-abdicating President, and a complicit Court.

And where's the outcry among the citizenry? Where's the daily pounding on the news desk? Where are the special reports on the dire straits in which our government has plunged the nation? Where's the press informing us of this scandalous Constitution-shredding and its dreadful impact?

"Do you honestly think anybody would tune in? It's the ratings, stupid!"

Look, the press can ride any partisan hobby-horse until its legs fall off when they want to, yes? And Bernstein's & Cronkite's politics aside, their point remains: An uninformed electorate is ripe for tyranny. And fascist tyranny is what Washington is selling.

Television sedates Americans like soma, while the government silences us and takes our property at the point of a gun. Aldous Huxley, meet George Orwell.