Fred Reed's take on WikiLeaks

The inimitable Fred Reed - who I consider to be the Internet's greatest curmudgeon - has weighed in on the WikiLeaks issue. And as is the case more often than not, he's saying the harsh truth that too many reporters, pundits and professional policy makers would rather the rest of us not think too much about (for our "own good", 'course).

Here's some of Fred's musings on the matter...

Two ways exist of looking at Wikileaks, the site that publicizes secret military documents and videos. The first is held self-interestedly by the Pentagon and by Fox News, the voice of an angry lower-middle class without too much education. These believe that Wikileakers are traitors, haters of America, who give aid and comfort to the enemy and endanger the lives of Our Boys.

Implicit in the Foxian view is a vague idea that the leaks give away important—well, stuff. You know, maybe frequencies of something or other, or locations of ambushes or, well, things. Important things. The Taliban will use this information to kill American soldiers. The notion is vague, as are those who hold it, but emotionally potent.

The other view, held usually by people who have some experience of Washington, is that the Pentagon is worried not about the divulging of tactical secrets, but about public relations. Wikileaks doesn’t endanger soldiers, insists this way of looking at things, but the war itself, and all the juiceful contracts and promotions and so on entailed by wars.

Which is obvious if you look at what the military (the president, remember, is commander-in-chief) actually does. Remember the military’s frantic efforts to suppress the photos of torture at Abu Ghraib, photos of prisoners lying in pools of blood while grinning girl soldiers play with them? These had zero tactical importance. They did however threaten to arouse the Pentagon’s worst enemy.

The American public.

Plenty more at the above link. If you've never had the pleasure of reading a Fred Reed essay, I've been told that it's quite like the literary equivalent to drinking several shots of Jack Daniels. Not that I personally know what that is like, mind ya...

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I knew he couldn't stay away forever

The greatest curmudgeon of the Internet - and probably the modern world - has returned.

Actually, Fred Reed has been back at it for over a month now from the looks of it. He announced in February that he was retiring... but nature does abhor a vacuum, right?

So Reed is at it again, and in his latest work he offers his unique insight regarding the death of the journalism industry.

Here's an excerpt...

A story once might have begun, “At midafternoon Thursday a house burned down at 112 Maples Street. Three children left unaccompanied inside escaped unhurt.” In the sensitive new journalism, the lead became, “Sally Harpooner, a single mother of three, saw a towering plume of smoke rising from her home as she returned from a community-sponsored drug-rehabilitation center. Her heart beat faster….” Before, a reporter would have said forget her heart, beat sally for being such a useless skell. Not longer. Stories began to appear about a kind old man who was giving hydrotherapy to his faithful dog Bowser who had hip displasia. The old crew had nothing against Bowser, but they didn’t think he was news.

The new crowd didn’t remember being blind drunk on ghastly Cambodia gin during the siege of Phnom Penh, running the alleys in rikshas by night and eating deep-fried pregnant crickets. They eggs made them creamy. Kipling would have understood. By day in Phnom Penh the ancient T-28s flown by the Khmer Air Force crashed because they pilots were trying to smuggle more sugar than they could take off with. The ragtag press corps—Cambodia was a sidewhoe--when not eating crickets, lay on rooftop patios with the full moon hanging above and the smell of flower trees making the air sticky-sweet and Chicom 122s whistling into the city from the marshes and taking out whole houses.

It was the last wheeze of the news game as it should be—raw, free, often eccentric. Then came embeds and newspapers run by accountants with green eyeshades. Advertising had always paid for papers, but now it became the paper’s reason for existence. The distance between a newspaper and a PR firm narrowed. Pleasantness became compulsory. The old hands hated pleasantness like poison.

One of these days, I'm gonna go through a whole bunch of Fred Reed essays the way they're prolly meant to be enjoyed: pissed-off mad and with several shots of Jack Daniels in my belly (and I'm not even a drinking man). One of these days, my friends. 'Til then, mash down here for the rest of Reed's newest article.

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Fred Reed, Internet's greatest curmudgeon, is retiring (for now)

This is a sad day for the very many of us who have faithfully followed the "scurrilous commentary" of Fred Reed. The renaissance man behind Fred On Everything announced yesterday that he is ending his regular columns, owing to upcoming surgery for a corneal transplant (as Reed puts it "this being the belated result of a largely forgotten foray by the US into military adventurism").

Reed shared his reasons for beginning his web-based column, and he speaks for many of us in conveying the biggest reason why a lot of us do this, in whatever way we can. He also admits some inevitable frustration with it all...

"My reasons for inditing the sucker were, first, to see whether a web column could work and, second, to get away from the strangling grasp of political correctness. A third reason, common I suppose to most columnists, was the hope that, however minor my voice might be, in combination with thousands of others it might engender pressure for slowing the rush into the high-tech medieval twilight that the culture has undertaken.

"This by now is clearly quixotic. The civilizational changes we now see are both irremediable and beyond control. The peasantrification and empty glitter of society, pervasive hostility to careful thought, onrushing authoritarianism, and distaste for cultivation are now endemic. I do not know where these lead, but we are assuredly going to get there. Fuming buys nothing."

As with everything else he has written that I've read over the years, it's a great essay. Our thoughts and prayers go out to him, and here's hoping that the Internet's best curmudgeon and best-known expatriate will be back in the saddle sooner than later :-)

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Two essays for those of us who are paying attention

The first one is by Matt Towery at Townhall.com, who ruminates on "Why More and More Politicians are Rotten to the Core". Towery echoes a lot of things that have been on my mind during the past year, which have led me to tell many people more times than I care to remember that "There is no faith to be had in politics".

And on the somewhat more ornery side of things, Fred Reed - the Internet's greatest curmudgeon - waxes eloquent in his piece "What Have the Bastards Done to My Country?".

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Fred Reed exposes hypocrisy regarding illegals

In his latest column, Fred Reed mocks the American government's schizo policy toward illegal immigration, in his own perverse style...

To grasp American immigration policy, to the extent that it can be grasped, one need only remember that the United States forbids smoking while subsidizing tobacco growers.

We say to impoverished Mexicans, "See this river? Don't cross it. If you do, we'll give you good jobs, a drivers license, citizenship for your kids born here and eventually for you, school for said kids, public assistance, governmental documents in Spanish for your convenience, and a much better future. There is no penalty for getting caught. Now, don't cross this river, hear?"

How smart is that? We're baiting them. It's like putting out a salt lick and then complaining when deer come. As parents, the immigrants would be irresponsible not to cross.

There's way more at the above link for you to read and enjoy.

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Fred Reed sez: American democracy is a sham

Democracy in America is not about government derived by the will of the people. Rather, democracy in America is about how deeply-entrenched political elites and the corporate press control the people. Such is the case articulated by Fred Reed in his latest essay, and it's hard to disagree with him...

To disguise all of this, elections provide the excitement and intellectual content of a football game, without the importance. They allow a sense of Participation. In bars across the land, in high-school gymns become forums, people become heated about what they imagine to be decisions of great import: This candidate or that? It keeps them from feeling left out while denying them power.

It is fraud. In a sense, the candidates do not even exist. A presidential candidate consists of two speechwriters, a makeup man, a gestures coach, ad agency, two pollsters and an interpreter of focus groups. Depending on his numbers, the handlers may suggest a more fixed stare to crank up his decisiveness quotient for male or Republican voters, or dial in a bit of compassion for a Democratic or female audience. The newspapers will report this calculated transformation. Yet it works. You can fool enough of the people enough of the time.

When people sense this and decline to vote, we cluck like disturbed hens and speak of apathy. Nope. Just common sense.

Much more at the above link.

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Fred Reed muses on smarts

Fred Reed talks about intelligence and all the problems that come with it in his latest column...

Generally intelligence has no effect on conclusions, which are glandularly determined. It just rationalizes hormonal inevitabilities.

Further, there's no point in knowledge, except to show off with in sports bars. If you are in Willie's Rib Pit to watch boxing and know about the Long Count (in the Cribb-Molineaux fight), then you amount to something. You do no harm, anyway. All other knowledge is suspect. At best, it is a minor vice, like crossword puzzles. At worst, it encourages people to do catastrophic things with a smug sense of fundamental rightness. The people who got America into Iraq were no end bright and could say impressive things like "Twenty-Seventh Caliphate" and "Theravada Sufism." Much good it did them. Or us.

Brains just allow you to be more elaborately and ornately disastrously wrong.

I've been wondering quite a bit lately: how is it that with supposedly all of these "smart" people that we think are running things in this country, we are still screwing things up... like in Iraq? Reed hits on it here: that these people have let intelligence come in the way of their sense of compassion and consideration. Or as I thought after reading his piece, they have enormous intelligence but woefully lack wisdom.

Personally, I'd rather have wisdom than intelligence. What say ye?

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Fred Reed laments the "New Improved America"

Fred Reed - master of the blunt truth and art of curmudgeonry - is spot-on as usual with his latest analysis of what is amiss in this country...

Something is wrong with the United States. I think most of us have noticed it. There is a mortal rot in the country, made manifest by many little rots that are hard to integrate mentally yet are, I think, somehow related. The change is grave, accelerating, probably irreversible, and fascinating. Things are not as they were...

...The Constitution really is going away, or has gone. It never did work as well as it should have, but few things human ever do. Habeas corpus is dead, right to an attorney, congressional right to declare war—it's not even worth listing the list. Joe iPod in the burbs doesn't care because it doesn’t affect him, yet. Git them Hay-rabs, ain't no draft, plenty sushi. Urg.

Hit the link above for more.

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On honor

Too many people in this country believe they're honor-bound to follow the orders of other people... who never gave a damn about honor in the first place.

Fred Reed - master of the fine art of curmudgeonry - has a surgically precise piece about the concept of honor. I dare not excerpt anything from it here: it really is best to take this one in whole. Suffice it to say, I think it's one of Reed's better pieces... and they all tend to be good.

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