In This Issue
By Melissa Greene
Take your average T-Bone steak. Carve away the fat and the bone and the little that remains is meat. Take your average politician. Carve away the bluster and rhetoric and you just may find the truth…or not. In our T-Bone, we’ll look at political quotes that make us wonder where the meat is, closely examine their value and grade them just as a meat inspector might grade cuts of beef: Prime, Choice, Standard or Canner. Then we’ll serve it up to you for your consumption.
‘Prime’ Truth: Top shelf—Grade A goodness.
‘Choice’ Truth: Mostly true, depending on the bull it came from.
‘Standard’ Truth: Run of the mill bull—more gristle than fat, less meaty than most.
‘Canner’ Truth: Don’t eat this meat.
Recorded during a May 4 interview with CBS 60 Minutes reporter Steve Kroft, to air May 8:
“It is important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence or as a propaganda tool. That’s not who we are.” ‑President Barack Obama
It is often said war is hell, so common sense follows that photos of it aren’t going to be pretty. But we have a question. Why is it acceptable to publish photographs of fallen heroes returning in caskets to American soil, but withhold photos showing the death of the man responsible? The previous administration released photographs of Uday and Qusay Hussein, for example. The ban on news media coverage of flag-draped coffins at Dover Air Force Base was lifted Feb. 2009. 16 • The Pine Curtain
In its place, military families were given the right to choose if they wanted media coverage. While we applaud that decision in the name of the first amendment, one has to wonder about the logic behind Pres. Obama’s decision to allow one and not the other. But of course it took two years and a media frenzy before the president decided to release his birth certificate. While there is some truth in this quote, the logic behind it is questionable. Grade: Standard