FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS

Know where the word “wake” comes from - the kind you hold when someone dies? During the middle ages, a third of Europe’s population died of the plague and they literally ran out of coffins. When they dug up the old ones for reuse they discovered, to their horror, that a significant number of them had scratch marks . . . on the inside. Apparently, medicine being fairly primitive, some people had been sent off to the next world before they were, you know, dead. The solution was to tie a string to the wrist of each new corpse, run it through a small hole in the coffin, up to the surface, and tie the other end to a bell hanging from a stick. People sat “awake” in the graveyard for 24 hours to see if the bell would ring. Crude, but effective.

Last night the new Bill Moyers Journal on PBS revealed how the Bush administration sold the war to America and buried democracy, and how the news media fell asleep with the bell ringing in the graveyard.

Here are four points I found the most interesting/alarming. First, questioning of the administration was severely inhibited by an understandable atmosphere of super-patriotism following the 9/11 attacks. On top of that, corporations that owned print and broadcast news outlets were financially vulnerable to both public and administrative reprisals.

Second, the administration was damn clever. They leaked a fake story to the New York Times; the Times printed it, for the reasons given above; then Dick Cheney went on Meet The Press and repeated the story, using the Times article as verification. Hey, it’s in the Times, it must be true.

Not everyone missed the story. Reporters from the Knight/Ridder news service saw through it from the beginning and wrote about it. But they had no outlet in Washington, D.C. or New York and simply were not taken seriously.

Finally, the one thing I found most disturbing was a 2002, presidential press conference. As reporters raised their hands to ask questions, the president checked his notes to determine who to call on next. I had assumed, as I think most people did, that this was some press corps seniority issue. Hardly. The whole thing was scripted: whom he called on, exactly what they asked, and exactly what he answered. The raised hands were meant to create the illusion of spontaneity. It was a sham in which members of the White House Press Corps apparently participated willingly.

What were the administration’s motives? Mr. Moyers did venture into those woods. To put the best possible face on it, I suppose the president and his crew may have truly felt that America was threatened, that the best course of action was an invasion of Iraq, and that a little fudging of the facts to insure patriotic support was justifiable. Or, they may have felt like, hey, we’re the smart guys, we know what’s best, and if we have to circumvent the democratic process by lying in order to get the job done, that’s justifiable. I suppose it’s also possible that they were simply out for personal or financial gain – it doesn’t seem likely, but it’s possible.

Not being psychic, I don’t know what their motive was, but whichever motive you choose, it’s hard to escape the arrogance and lying that surrounds it. Arrogance is not an impeachable offense, but lying to the Congress and the people is, and it is my opinion that the president and vice president should be impeached. Both honesty and the appearance of honesty are fundamental to the survival of a democracy. Without them, we are dead and buried - no bell to save us.