With the publication of
"The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy" by the Kennedy School's Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer of The University of Chicago, we can witness the first stage in a game of opinion-molding in which a bit of genuine news is instantly surrounded by a bodyguard of Permissible Opinion.
The average American moron, you see, is so susceptible to neo-Nazi wiles, that he cannot be trusted with the contents of an academic paper arguing, according to today’s
New York Sun, that “a network of journalists, think tanks, lobbyists, and largely Jewish officials have seized the foreign policy debate and manipulated America to invade Iraq.”
No, the
Sun’s readers must be told, in a blaring first-page headline, that
“David Duke Claims to Be Vindicated By a Harvard Dean” and, in the story itself, that Duke is “surprised how excellent it [the report] is.” The move is almost risk-free, gambling (if one could call it that) that the congruence of Duke’s long-held views with those of a Harvard Dean will damage the latter’s standing rather than improve Duke’s – at least among Americans who want their neighbors to think well of them.
The cultural influence of academics is central to the story, yet for some reason the
Sun omitted to mention that
Duke has an earned doctoral degree from a major university system in the Ukraine, one that enjoys the highest academic accreditation.
But we understand: “balance” would require the
Sun to find some “authority” who has the social power to declare that the University has lost all credibility
just because it awarded that degree to Duke. Sort of the way Andrea Levin, mentioned in the Walt-Mearsheimer paper and who runs the
“Committee for Accurate Middle East Reporting in America,” blithely dismisses as “a thoroughly discredited lot” a group of Israeli scholars who are, shall we say, “revisionist” about Israel’s founding.
For even more “balance,” however, they’d have to mention that the Israeli government tried to get the President of the offending University to withdraw his candidacy from Ukrainian national elections. Unfortunately there are only so many cases of Zionist interference in governmental affairs one can reasonably be expected to cover in one article!
No, this is a conversation Zionists do not want to see in the major media which, by the way, have so far only whispered about the historical reality behind the Walt-Mearsheimer paper. They have whispered, even though there is material enough for dozens of those multi-part “special reports” that agitate the glands of the proletariat (e.g., the oil industry, bird flu, immigration, the eating disorders of teenagers, etc.). Perhaps the reality and the silence are mutually reinforcing.
Therefore, the
New York Sun wishes to reassure the average American moron:
(a) That the arguments are “hardly new,” but “the fact that these points are now being made by such establishment thinkers has raised concern among Israel's friends in America and cheers from their adversaries.” The relevant question, of course, is not the age of the arguments but their soundness. Also relevant is why they are not better known. Familiarizing Americans with them and their merits is the job of journalists.
(b) That even if the arguments are getting a more prestigious platform, their “content is not significant. . . . Those that don't know better would assume it has validity, when it doesn't.” Also sprach that great scholar and arbiter of significance, Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. (There are so many, they need a conference to coordinate their presidents. I guest the presidents of minor American Jewish organizations can fend for themselves.) Anyone who takes Walt-Mearsheimer seriously is wasting the talents God gave him on insignificance.
(c) That even if you think the arguments are both significant and deserving of greater publicity, the arguments facilitate evil, wittingly or unwittingly: any one who is attracted to the Walt-Mearsheimer thesis is a “nutsy” conspiracy theorist (New Republic editor Martin Peretz) and a “bigot” who retails “trash” (Harvard Law professor and Israel apologist Alan Dershowitz).
Again, if the arguments had been better known all along, if to be an “establishment” thinker did not mean that almost by definition you had to eschew inquiry into the proportionality of one particular group's representation, there would be no need to put down to mental deficiency or moral perversity the airing of the Walt-Mearsheimer thesis.
How much weight does being called a bigot by Dershowitz or a conspiracy nut by Peretz carry? Maybe none. Maybe that’s “significant.”
The
Sun’s exercise in “balance” is its own effort to defeat its enemies by trying to socially embarrass those who would investigate a subject. How? By declaring that in the matter of undue Zionist influence in America’s foreign meddling, there simply is no “there” there, and then by attempting to marginalize anyone who doubts that
pronunciamento.
Again, are foreign policy influence and the media silence linked? Perhaps we need a counterpart paper on the media. Meanwhile, read
"The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy." I highly recommend its
fully sourced version.
