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November 20, 2006
Read a blog, save a mind
Dean Barnett, who blogs on Hugh Hewitt's site, participated in a series of phone conferences with the would-be leaders of the GOP House minority.
During the conversations, Barnett posed a question to each candidate, and the responses were -- and are -- troubling.
As was the case with three previous conference call attendees, I asked Boehner the question. To refresh your memory, I had asked three other congress-people the following:
What books have you read about Islamic terrorism against America and the West?
None of the three were able to name a single book. Boehner followed suit, saying that he had read books on the subject but that he couldn’t give me any names.
Okay, well, at least the congressmen are keeping tabs on the existential threat we face via something other than the MSM, right? Dipping a toe into the World Wide Web, mebbe?
One blogger asked Boehner what blogs he reads. Oddly, given the self regard of the blogging community (a phenomenon that I am hardly immune from), this was the first time anyone had asked any of the representatives such a question.
I thought it was a softball. I figured Boehner would say Powerline and Instapundit and of course the blogs represented on the conference call. Instead, Boehner responded that he doesn’t read blogs, but that he does have a member of his staff who reads them and periodically prepares a digest for him on what the blogs are saying.
The questioner then fired off a follow up: From where does the congressman get his news? Boehner told us that he gets his news mostly from the newspapers.
The newspapers? THE NEWSPAPERS!?
Jeebus, where's my scotch coffee? That means the Republican opposition leader is no better informed than my mother (Sorry, Mom.), who regales me with tidbits of wisdom she receives from the geniuses at the L.A. Times and the network news.
Just the other day, Mom was telling me about the great, impartial news titan Ted Koppel, who appeared on that non-partisan program, "The Daily Show," with Jon Stewart.
Koppel was explaining that George Bush joined the Air National Guard so he wouldn't have to go to Vietnam, and now he's gone to Vietnam so he wouldn't have to go to America.
HARDY-HAR-HAR! Oh, STOP it, will ya? You're KILLING me!
Sigh.
"But Mom," I said, "you do realize that Koppel's repeating a lie."
"What do you mean?"
"When Bush volunteed to fly fighters for the Texas Air National Guard, his unit was sending pilots to Vietnam. Therefore, to claim that he chose a path guaranteed to keep him out of combat is manifestly untrue. And if the joke is predicated on an untruth, then it's funny only to those who find scurrilous personal attacks amusing -- like esteemed members of the Fourth Estate such as Monsieur Koppel."
Needless to say, my comments were received with all the warmth due a fart in church.
During a memorial service.
In the moment after the final, "Amen."
But Barnett points out the greater issue at work here: the appalling ignorance of our political class, and why they don't seem to get it.
WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT, Boehner’s series of answers regarding his reading habits and the insight we’ve received regarding other members’ reading habits (or lack thereof) can help us make sense of a lot of things.
One thing most every reader of conservative blogs comprehends is the existential stakes of the current war. People who read blogs are high end gatherers of news. They’re outliers, but in a very good way. They’re people like my friend, Dr. (of medicine, i.e. a real doctor) Andy Bostom who reacted to 9/11 by learning everything he could about Islam. The product of his research was the thorough and seminal book, “The Legacy of Jihad.”
[...]
Now imagine if you didn’t read blogs and didn’t read books. Picture all the things that you know now that you wouldn’t know if you left your news gathering to the tender mercies of the mainstream media’s editorial decisions. You’d probably be unaware of the ghastly fate that awaits 200 French automobiles each evening at the hands of rampaging “youths.” You’d definitely be unaware of the youths’ affiliation with certain religious practices.
If all your news came from newspapers, you wouldn’t understand how numerous, determined and flat-out crazy our enemies are. You wouldn’t know how widespread the phenomenon of Radical Islam is because the New York Times, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal don’t report it. Every now and then you would stumble over an editorial or op-ed piece highlighting a particularly pathological incident, but you would have no concept of how massive the problem is.
AND THIS IS WHERE WE CLOSE THE LOOP. I’ve long wondered how our leaders can be so unserious about the fight we’re in given the existential stakes. Now I get it – they just don’t understand the stakes. The newspapers haven’t told them that we’re in a fight for our lives. Lord knows the intelligence agencies don’t get it. And now we know the congressmen themselves take either no or precious little initiative to educate themselves.
[...]
So what to do? If our congressmen have no interest in educating themselves, we must take it upon ourselves to do it for them. For too long our congressmen have been victims of the soft bigotry of low expectations. We’ve allowed them to skate by kissing babies and appearing on Hannity & Colmes without insisting that they actually bring themselves up to speed on the most pressing issue of our day.
So I’m thinking of creating a Congressional-level version of Oprah’s book club. Think of it as Deano’s Book Club. I would like to get a list of three books that absolutely every congressman must read, or at the very least have a staffer read and then explain it to him.
[...]
My vital three books are:
“The Looming Tower” by Lawrence Wright
Barnett's got it right. If you've got friends and family like mine, who never go online to get their information, those three books might be a good place to start.
Posted by Mike Lief at November 20, 2006 07:10 AM
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