“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
Thomas Jefferson – 1787
Joan Swirsky is a revisionist, one who alters the historic record, sometimes based upon new discoveries and information, and sometimes based on adherence to dogma.
Sadly. Ms. Swirsky falls into the latter category. She is convinced that there is a plot on the part of 350 newspapers “in an orchestrated attempt to undermine President Trump.”
It seems that Steven Blank, editor and publisher of Blank Slate Media, is part of this cabal. Given the record of Trump and the press (fake news” and “enemy of the people”) one wonders who is out to destroy our democracy.
Is it our hypersensitive to criticism president or members of the 4th Estate?
Let us get specific. Swirsky states: “In the 1940s, the left-wing media concealed the fact of FDR’s infantile paralysis…”
Guilty as charged. But here’s the rest of the story.
The press knew that the country was coming out of a great depression and was about to do battle with Adolph Hitler.
The leader of the free world needed to be someone who could, literally and figuratively, stand on his own two feet and not be encumbered by heavy leg braces. So the press corps colluded in a conspiracy of silence.
This was done out of patriotism and without coercion. Keep in mind this was an era where there was much prejudice against persons with handicaps.
In the 1960s, Swirsky claims that JFK had “assorted liaisons.”
Again, she is correct, although if she wanted to find out why he defeated Nixon, she might look to the first presidential debate or the fact that his father’s money corrupted the process.
But the idea that the press turned a blind eye toward JFK’s peccadilloes and that is why he won does not comport with the facts.
It gets more ridiculous! LBJ is charged with lacing “practically every sentence with the N-word.
Again, I don’t dispute the charge, but isn’t this is the same president who signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed racial discrimination. Is this the LBJ who signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which guaranteed blacks their right to vote.
And is this the man who in the peroration of a televised address said “we shall overcome”? Sorry, Ms. Swirsky. You can’t present a partial truth.
That’s the real “fake news.”
According to Swirky’s version of history, we’re to believe that President Obama “trotted around the globe insulting America” and took a “teleprompter into a kindergarten class.” This doesn’t sound like the Barack Obama I campaigned for.
I would like to know the source of these statements and please don’t tell me it’s the pathological liar in the White House or a reputable scholar like Rush Limbaugh.
Dr. Hal Sobel
Great Neck
