What if they disclosed a torture memo and nobody cared?

[kentuck]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/03/disclosure-of-torture-mem_n_94984.html

<snip>
What if they disclosed a torture memo and nobody cared? This week, an 81-page memo, authored by John C. Yoo, who was a deputy in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice at the time of its creation, was declassified and made public. The memo, which, among other things, was used as the rationale for authorizing the torture of government detainees, has long been held to be a savage reimagining of the structure of the Executive Branch and its authority, hostile to the traditional checks and balances that circumscribe the President's authority. And that's stating the matter diplomatically. A less kind observer might conclude that the memo was a legal abomination which tortures the accepted body of Constitutional law along the way to glibly authorizing a Grand Guignol of authoritarian power that our nation's founders would find abhorrent. With these high stakes as the prologue, you'd have to imagine that the disclosure of the memo would be of pre-eminent importance to the media.

You'd be wrong. The extent to which this story, the questions it raises, and the impact it has on our lives failed to resonate in the sphere of the traditional media is distressing and disturbing. Non-traditional media did much better, but the fact that this matter did not acquire a portion of the mass-media megaphone makes one worry that by this time next week the matter will be forgotten. But in many quarters of the Fourth Estate, the waters of Lethe are already being poured.

On cable news, mentions of the memo's declassifications were few, brief, and undetailed. CNN's Headline News noted that the story was "one of the most popular stories at cnn.com," but apparently, that's not enough to warrant a lengthier report. MSNBC featured a brief mention on Morning Joe, and a near-noontime mention that was three sentences long and followed by a lengthy report on the hospitalization of an American Idol performer.

[OwnedByFerrets]

1. Its not that no one cares, its that

no one who has the power to do something about it is brave enough to do that thing.

[spanone]

2. why isn't congress investigating, this is our fucking constitution at stake not to mention war crime

[kentuck]

6. Because they have successfully distracted the population...

with the horse race we call the Democratic nomination process. It's Hillary and Obama all the time. Who has time for real news?

[magellan]

3. People would care

...if they were as well informed about it as they are political sex stings and celebrity melt-downs.

The PAID FOR PROGRAMMING called our "news" tells us whatever gets them ratings, not what we need to know.

[magellan]

5. P.S. -- And why isn't Congress up in arms about this?

PAID FOR GOVERNMENT, that's why.

[riverdeep]

9. Someone needs to put the word 'Sex' into every important news story.

Just work it in there somehow.

Headline: "John Yoo seen talking to co-worker of opposite SEX"

"...about a torture memo released that confirms the worst nightmares of..."

Headline: "John McCain's Iraq, and SEX"

"John McCain's grandchildren, a result of the sex he had with his wives, will probably see combat in Iraq due his desire for lengthy engagement, at 100 years or more..."

That's all America responds to. Our country is falling into the sea, and we're like 5th graders looking for dirty words in the encyclopedia.

[stellanoir]

4. Nobody cares about the sadism.

What about that aberrant or missing blond?

[Bright Eyes]

7. Unfortunately

If it doesn't involve Britney Spears or American Idol, most people couldn't care less.

[spanone]

8. kick

[lostnfound]

10. People are taught to look to authority (TV) to find out what should matter to them

In my opinion, the people in power are setting the agenda in the school system, as an endless series of isolated skills, heavy on disconnected facts taken out of context. We all spend twelve years getting told what to think about, for the most part. Anyone who tries to 'change the channel' during those 12 years of school is reprimanded.

The imagination has consequently been shrunk in a large part of the population, and "keeping up with current events" means looking at the TV news for 20 minutes a night to find out the important events of the day -- which TV is telling us is Hillary vs Obama, and some celebrity news.

The media spin of Hillary vs Obama is killing us. All of the moderates that I know of -- who voted for either one, and those who didn't vote in the primary -- are expressing disgust and exhaustion over 'how they are fighting with each other all of the time', not realizing that it is TV spin.

[Perry Logan]

11. Government malfeasance will be interesting to the media only when the Democrats are back in power.

When the Democrats are back in power, alleged government criminality will be all you hear about.