Art Pottery, Politics and Food

Wednesday, April 09, 2003

Creepy Washington Post gossip columnist Lloyd Grove has an item this morning about 50,000 watt Clear Channel radio property WLW.

Clear Channel has been in the news recently for organizing pro war rallies in scattered markets across the United States and for its CEO’s relationship with the Bush family. This past Saturday, one day before the death of NBC News correspondent David Bloom, “Cincinnati radio host Darryl Parks thought it would be amusing to speculate on the question ‘Which embedded journalists should be put in front of a firing squad?’ Among the candidates were Fox News Channel's Geraldo Rivera, National Geographic Explorer's Peter Arnett and NBC News's Bloom. According to one listener, Parks and his co-host, nicknamed ‘Sensible Don,’ mocked Bloom, suggesting that he'd brought his personal makeup artist to Iraq. ‘They said he should be the next to die,’ our witness told us. ‘They got their wish, I guess.’
Yesterday Parks, 43, who doubles as program director of the 50,000-watt Clear Channel station WLW-AM, told us he was sorry. ‘I feel really bad about this,’ he said. ‘David Bloom was mentioned, but he wasn't the focus . . . The slant on it was embedded journalists making themselves the story and not covering the war. It was all done tongue-in-cheek. Looking back on the occurrences, I find the topic was ill-timed and certainly inappropriate.’ Clear Channel spokeswoman Michelle Clark gave us a ‘no comment.’”

Meanwhile, on the Canadian newspaper front, I found As battles rage, Cheney calls the Star-seriously interesting for showcasing Washington’s standard focus and Canada’s new attitude:
Seems that U.S. Vice-President Richard (Dick) Cheney did not say what The New York Times, the Reuters wire agency, Agence France-Presse, the Philadelphia Daily News, the Miami Herald, the Star and other news organizations said he said.
And yet, the other day, only the Times, Reuters, Agence France-Presse, the Philly News, the Miami Herald and, yes, the Star, all rated calls from no less a personage than Jennifer Millerwise, Cheney's press secretary, who was seeking corrections.
She got them.
We are being carefully watched, it seems…The point is Cheney, who some say — only half-jokingly — is the real power in the White House, did not offer up the "house of cards" metaphor when he suggested that the war on Iraq would be a cakewalk…What Cheney did say was, on the March 16 edition of NBC's Meet The Press, that, "The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but that they want to get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.
"My guess is even significant elements of the Republican Guard are likely, as well, to want to avoid conflict with the U.S. forces and are likely to step aside."
So, Cheney kind of said "house of cards" — but didn't…She explained that it was not a matter of "semantics" but something far more serious, adding that predicting the war would take "weeks not months" and that Iraqi forces would cry uncle was not the same as saying Saddam Hussein's regime would fall like "a house of cards."
A little later she (Jennifer Millerwise, VP press secretary) called me a second time to say that accuracy was extremely important "especially during times of war."
Amen to that. Lord knows, everything coming from Washington these days is the whole truth and nothing but.
And if you believe that, I've got a house of cards to sell you.
C-SPAN, this morning, reports that Mr. Cheney will leave the bunker sometime today to speak to a gathering of newspaper publishers…expect the Administration’s, radically altered by field commanders, battle plan to be spun as a triumph.

- posted by Sean @ 9:12 AM

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