The Ted Stevens Warehouse of Moldy Stenography

As the decades-old GOP machine in Alaska crumbles to the ground here, many of the most fascinating developments involve increasing questions about the ability of our Alaska press to deal thoroughly, honestly and competently with the relationship between business and our politicians. I’ve been watching this with growing interest since the first rumblings of an FBI probe into political corruption began to leak out late in the spring of 2006.

Well, actually, I’ve been watching the story develop since I first interviewed Sen. Ted Stevens for Cordova’s KLAM Radio back in the fall of 1973. At that time, Sen. Stevens was opposed to a concept our other senator – Mike Gravel – was promoting, the Law of the Sea Conference. Back in the 1970s, fleets of Soviet, Polish, East German and North Korean factory trawlers operated twelve miles off the Alaska coast. Gravel wanted a rational, UN-based worldwide solution to over-fishing.

Stevens wanted something different. At the time, according to my notes from 1973, his ideas seemed incoherent compared to Gravel’s. But, over the next 34 years I’ve been able to see how helpful his plan was, at least for his family.

Now, as in the case of so many Republicans nationwide, our congressmen seem to be caught up as much in their hubris as in their criminality. Nationwide, left-leaning blogs and progressive radio have followed these stories far better than have traditional media outlets. Blogs are doing a better job than even the progressive radio stations. This disparity is mostly structural. Blogs react as closely to real time as is currently possible. Newspapers, for example, can’t.

Outside the blogosphere, which can get overly self-referential, we have had a few courageous souls chronicling the lapses and possibly criminal activities of our political icons. The most important recent figure is, of course, Ray Metcalfe, who, long before Sarah Palin had discarded her political training wheels, was cycling circles around the Alaska print and broadcast media on the pervasiveness of political corruption here. By and large, Metcalfe was ignored by the print media and TV and vilified by right-wing hate radio.

Too often, credible journalists and opinion writers who showed not only a talent for describing the extent of corruption here, but attracted a following, have been dealt with peremptorily. Mike Doogan is the most well-known example. Where did Carrie Carrigan’s KFQD program go? Why won’t KSKA answer questions about the abrupt departure of Gilberto Sanchez soon after his community activism profile was heightened in other local media?

The shock of the most recent wave of Federal plea bargains and indictments of prominent GOP crooks seemed for a moment to put a little spine into The Anchorage Daily News, for instance. But their dropping of the Voice of the Times is being explained away by their editors as a coincidence. Many people were glad to see such recipients of wingnut welfare as Dennis Fradley and Paul Jenkins disappear into the obscurity they so richly deserve. Sadly, though, the solution to the empty space problem at the Daily News, as explained by editor Matt Zencey is to hire more hacks!

Zencey’s article in the Sunday May 27 edition of the Daily News, outlining the paper’s plans for the space formerly occupied by the Voice of the Times, announced a packet of mixed blessings for readers. Elise Patkotak is a favorite writer of mine. Many readers were hoping the Daily News would find a way to keep her viewpoints and opinions on their pages, and our hopes have been met.

Zencey’s characterizations of two writers in the new format beg further scrutiny. The Daily News will continue to carry Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer. Krauthammer’s life story is one of ascendant personal courage, professional medical breakthroughs and descending journalistic integrity. Dr. Krauthammer was on a medical team that established “secondary mania” as a distinct malady from “bipolar disorder.” He has won a Pulitzer Prize for his opinion essays.

Zencey claims Krauthammer “casts a skeptical eye on the doings of the Democratic Congress.” While that is true, Congress has been “Democratic” for only five of the past 149 months. I’m not quite sure which articles before January, 1995 Zencey is remembering, but to my recollection, most of Dr. Krauthammer’s life before that period was going to school, practicing and researching medicine, and working for notable Democrats such as Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale.

Krauthammer has been consistently wrong about the War in Iraq, dating back from at least mid-2002 to the present. He pushed dubious talking points about alleged links between al Qaeda and Saddam’s regime and about Iraq’s mythical nuclear arsenal harder and longer than anyone but Vice President Cheney. He characterized the invasion of Iraq as the “Three Week War, a revolution in world affairs.” Liberal journalist Matthew Yglesias wrote that "Krauthammer is very possibly the worst journalist working in America today, a relentlessly pernicious force, never right about anything, who feels his commentary should not be shackled by the small-minded bonds of accuracy or logic.”

Zencey characterizes KFQD talk show host Dan Fagan as a commentator who “loves a good argument.” Apparently, Zencey doesn’t spend much time listening to Fagan. Although this isn’t surprising, Zencey should know that Fagan routinely rants about unions, environmentalists and liberal politicians, characterizing many fairly mainstream activities and ideas as “Marxist-Leninist,” or “communist;” or when Dan wants to be nice, as “socialist.” He chastises liberals for not calling, but often when they do, he insults them.

I know how little Dan really “loves a good argument.” Last year, in the wake of ABC’s notoriously inaccurate “Path to 9-11,” Fagan erroneously claimed that in the aftermath of the Battle of Mogadishu, the subject of the movie “Blackhawk Down,” President Clinton had “cut and run” from Somalia. A caller disputed Fagan, saying that Clinton had wanted to stay the course, but the GOP-dominated US Congress had demanded a quick exit strategy. Fagan told the caller that he was wrong. I called, with a list of quotes by prominent Republicans demanding then that Clinton immediately withdraw US forces from Somalia. Fagan refused to allow me to read any of the short statements, hanging up on me in mid-sentence. Dan “cut and ran.”

On an earlier show Fagan had challenged a caller who asserted that during the Reagan administration, the US had actively supported Saddam’s chemical warfare programs. Fagan hung up on the guy, saying his claim was “nuts, just totally nuts!” When I called supporting the earlier caller, including the facts behind President Reagan’s veto of a 1984 Congressional Resolution condemning Saddam’s use of chemical weapons, Fagan hung up on me too, calling my claim “a wacko’s view,” after he had denied me a forum from which I might retort.

Fagan is also what some might term a homophobe. Most humorously, he related how bothered he was that one of his card-playing partners had seen the movie “Brokeback Mountain.” He kept on asking Sharon Leyhow “How can I even sit next to this guy after he’s seen that movie?” Sadly, Fagan was dead serious.

As with Charles Krauthammer, there are good things to say about Dan Fagan, but readers need to realize that both Krauthammer and Fagan have argued incessantly right up through the past few days that evidence of the abject failure of our president’s policies can and should be marshaled as evidence of the necessity of pursuing those failures endlessly.

The hiring of these two hacks is already so last month. As more information seeps out about Rep. Young and Sen. Stevens, the only established media interested in the glaringly obvious happen to be disreputable newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post. Not that Young has much more to say to the New York Times than he does to the Daily News or APRN or KTUU, but at least they got him to flip them off. Why is it that newspapers in Arkansas and Naples Florida and New York City can follow the most important local stories in Alaska history far better than we can?

The joke our Alaska media is becoming grows bigger by the day. While the Washington, DC-based web site TPM Muckraker is able to report on the egregious conduct of Sen. Stevens and Rep. Young on a daily basis and elicit comments from around Alaska, the USA and world on an hourly, if not minute-by-minute basis, our media continues to write puff pieces about both of these yet-to-be-indicted criminals as if nothing has happened. While the New York Times and Washington Post are able to haunt these crooks in the halls of congress and follow them on the stump, our Alaska reporters only appear to be showing up dutifully at the congressmen's pre-arranged photo ops and then dictate whatever the congressmen want.
My favorite very recent example is that at the same time the TPM crew is taking apart the absurd openness of these guys' criminality - I loved Josh Marshall’s layed-back "Ted Stevens' House Renovation for Dummies" piece Tuesday morning - the Anchorage Daily News can only come up with this incredibly lame puff piece:
http://www.adn.com/opinion/view/story/8947184p-8847185c.html
"[Whittier] Museum organizers apparently have a special interest in aviation and have a special surprise on hand for visitors: Two dozen photos from Sen. Ted Stevens' World War II years flying in Asia. The collection includes a charming photo of young Sen. Stevens, an Army Air Force officer, strumming a guitar."
Special surprise? Charming? Good friggin' grief! So I'm going to go down to Whittier to see a picture of St. Ted strumming a guitar sixty years ago? This was surely thought up in The Department of You Can't Make This Sh*t Up, where they have to work overtime, lately. How about getting Sen. Stevens to answer serious questions about what he's doing now, you hapless shills?
I wrote about this last year in regard to the paucity of in-depth coverage of Rep. Don Young:
http://www.insurgent49.com/munger_young.html
"This has been handled rather poorly, in most part, by Alaska media. Alaska editors and reporters need to begin connecting the dots very, very soon in a responsible and comprehensive way on the patterns of abuse of power by our sole representative in Congress. Should Young be re-elected and then indicted for his activities without a deeper coverage of his shortcomings by the Alaska press, Young’s indictment will also be an indictment of the Alaska media’s inability or unwillingness to fully do its job."
Words more and more true every day. Come on, Alaska media, start doing your job! At the rate things are going, especially in the Anchorage print media, within a couple of years, we'll be able to rename an empty Anchorage Daily News building "The Ted Stevens Warehouse of Moldy Stenography."