Politics and geopolitics have been claiming less of my reading time, and I’m lingering over other subjects.

Like this ringing endorsement of journalism from Maureen Dowd, for instance, reported by the Harvard Crimson:

Despite forecasts that the age of print journalism is over, traditional reporting continues to play a vital role in holding public officials accountable, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd said last night at the Kennedy School of Government.

And how do journalists hold officials’ feet to the fire? By writing counter-fables to try to top the fables created by the PRopagandists^TM to the powerful, she suggested [e.a.]:

Political reporters take on the crucial task of creating a narrative that gives Americans a clearer sense of how well the government is doing its job, she said, and the importance of that charge will not wane, even as new forms of delivery emerge.

Note that Dowd doesn’t even pretend that mere facts can counter the PRopaganda^TM spun by the powerful. I agree with MoDo, who is not only one of the most powerful columnists in America; she is also one of the shrewdest and most fearless.

Dowd … said the Bush administration has sought to create an “alternate reality” by “spending hundreds of millions on self-aggrandizing propaganda.”

And the Fourth Estate has been central to holding the White House in check, she said.

True, but not quite the whole story. Every White House—and every presidential hopeful—spends an inordinate amount of time creating “self-aggrandizing propaganda.” But not every representative of the Fourth Estate is strong enough to counter that propaganda.

Far from it, as Ron Rosenbaum reminds us, recounting the story of how the Clintons recently rolled over GQ magazine. Read it for yourself, and take special note of this [e.a.]:

I think the Clintons have the right to exercise as much control as they can. That’s politics. But editors have the obligation to resist them. That’s journalism. Or used to be. It’s more the magazine editor’s spinelessness than the Clintons’ attempt at control that makes the skin crawl.

I take a lot of potshots at the media, but it’s not because I think they’re overstepping their boundaries. It’s because I think most “journalists” are uninformed idiots and brainless twits.

Do you assume that your rulers are likely to have evil intentions?

Andrew Sullivan assumes you do:

In the West, we assume that the intentions of our rulers are likely to be evil.

Really?

I assume that the intentions of my rulers are both self-serving and public-spirited. I assume that my rulers are likely to be deeply flawed, inconsistent, weak, and fallible—because, after all, they are mere human beings. I assume that power corrupts.

I do not assume that my rulers have evil intentions.

[update: I added a missing link]

Roger Cohen, a NYT reporter and columnist who has spent most of his career abroad, brings home a message: in 2007, America has a “diminished ability to influence people,” there has been “an erosion of American power” and at the same time a “solidification of anti-Americanism as a political idea.”

He suggests that the solution is for the U.S. to make Al Jazeera widely available:

Counterinsurgency has been called armed social science. To win, you must understand the world you’re in.

Comparative courses in how Al Jazeera, CNN, the BBC and U.S. networks portray the Iraq war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be taught in all U.S. high schools and colleges. Al Jazeera English should be widely available.

This is a good idea for those studying the media, or writing about it, or producing it—I’ve been saying so myself for a good long while. We do indeed need wider knowledge of the world, and how the U.S. is perceived.

That’s no reason, however, to call for making Al Jazeera’s propaganda widely available to an already credulous and ignorant public.

[update: I added a missing link]

There’s a new crop of Iraq movies. Audiences are staying away in droves. Here’s one theory about why:

Despite spend several million dollars on advertising and marketing, ‘Lions for Lambs’ will flop–just like ‘Rendition’ & and ‘Valley of Elah.’

They will flop because the human psyche, especially the American variety, prefers real heroes–like the original hero of the Valley of Elah, a young shepherd named David who killed Goliath then cut off the giant’s head.

In the latest round of war movies the heroes are not the Soldiers and Marines who every day fight and defeat a vicious and barbaric enemy–the heroes are reporters, lawyers and activists.

And since every story requires a villain, the real enemy–Mohammedan Jihadists–are replaced by neo-cons, politicians, Soldiers and Marines.

This substitution of the traditional mono-myth away from a hero who faces physical danger and conquers an enemy is a result of cowardice of the modern story tellers.

What a crock.

The problem with the movies is, first of all, their relentless darkness and pessimism. To go to the movies today is to be assaulted with horror, danger, fear, chaos, and anxiety—and that’s just while you sit through the trailers.

Then there’s the fact that today’s movies offer no redemption. No one who isn’t on antidepressants wants to pay to see the bottomless suffering of human beings again and again. There are only so many gluttons for punishment in the American movie-going audience.

Finally, there’s the empty-headed prattle, devoid of anything approaching a new idea:

But Lions for Lambs is not merely a silly, shallow movie about the war: Its ambitions are broader and more scattered. Not content to stay focused on its central issue, it dabbles and babbles hither and yon, tossing off sophomore term-paper opinions on such topics as Americorps, consumerism, student loans, and corporate ownership of the media.

When Roth complains to her editor that the government hawks are engaged in “Vietnam-era thinking,” it rings truer as a self-critique; she is, after all, the one who keeps bringing up Vietnam and the 1960s. Indeed, if you tug on the emotional threads of the film, they all lead straight back to that crucible of generational consciousness: the fiftysomething journalists worry that they’ve been co-opted by the system that they started out fighting against; the liberal professor is disappointed that his students lack the passion and fervor of his own youth. It’s on this last point that Redford is at his most patronizing. When, repeatedly, the film criticizes today’s kids for being more interested in making money than in making a difference, one is tempted to reply: Yes, Mr. Redford, what a lucky thing it is for all of us that when you were young you eschewed fame and fortune.