It had gone largely unnoticed that former Los Angeles Times columnist and Georgetown law professor Rosa Brooks had been tapped by the Obama administration for a senior spot in the Pentagon.
Brooks, whose last two columns at the Times were “Bail Out Journalism” and “Bush’s Big Lies” is a pretty hard-line liberal who frequents the sets of Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann.
Her legal work, which focuses on international human rights law, includes stints with Amnesty International and the George Soros-funded Open Society Institute .
Her last diatribe against George W. Bush includes both scare quotes around “war on terror” and a Bush-Nazi comparison:
“How did such dangerously bad legal memos ever get taken seriously in the first place?
One answer is suggested by the so-called Big Lie theory of political propaganda, articulated most infamously by Adolf Hitler. Ordinary people “more readily fall victim to the big lie than the small lie,” wrote Hitler, “since they themselves often tell small lies … but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”
As I said, no neo-con is she. I suspect once she gets into a few staff meetings with actual military folks, she’ll go over like sand fleas in Mosul. Brooks’ boss, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michelle Flourny may have her hands full.
But what about the idea of bailing out newspapers?
But Brooks’ final piece at L.A. Times calling for a federal bailout of the newspaper industry had as a subhead “Other democracies pay for accurate reporting, so why shouldn’t the U.S.?” What’s breathtaking, though, is her suggestion that the government license approved news outlets and then fund their work.
“Years of foolish policies have left us with a choice: We can bail out journalism, using tax dollars and granting licenses in ways that encourage robust and independent reporting and commentary, or we can watch, wringing our hands, as more and more top journalists are laid off or bail out, leaving us with nothing in our newspapers but ads, entertainment features and crossword puzzles.”
Brooks won’t be setting media policy from the Pentagon, but this is another indication that the momentum for some kind of National Public Publishing is gathering steam in the new Washington.
We’ve already had the risible idea from Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., to allow newspapers to go tax exempt if they promise not to influence politics and lots of talk from nostalgic baby boomers like John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi about needing to hold on to old-fashioned newspapers.
I’ve spent my life since age 17 working for and loving newspapers. But the idea of a government-licensed press will destroy much of the innovation that will emerge from the creative destruction of the current media order.
Maybe papers can find a way to monetize content a la iTunes, or maybe they all have to be replaced by a million aggregated micro news outlets. Who knows, but we know that good ideas don’t come from government bailouts.
Have you seen the PUMA?
