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Hero-worship at 100 days, plus some disdain

Thursday, April 30, 2009

SO THE FOX broadcast network chose not to carry President Barack Obama’s 100 Days press conference. Are we surprised? Do we even care?

It’s only coincidence in fact, but it might have constituted satirical commentary (and cleverly sharp, too - way beyond the normal style of this Rupert Murdoch-owned network) that “Lie To Me” should be the show-title that Fox defiantly kept in its 8 pm timeslot - a new crime-drama series starring Tim Roth, an actor who specializes in weasel-ish roles, and in this part portrays, say the producers, "the world's leading deception expert".

 

But most of the White House press corps - in line with all those more respectful civic-minded media bosses who did air the event - behaved as if solemn truth were the only commodity being traded last night.

 

Certainly the always-significant CBS News - New York Times opinion poll, also pegged to the 100th Day mark (even if it was, for obvious publication deadline reasons, conducted around the 95th Day) indicated that the population at large is keeping pace with the media in still giving this fledgling presidency enormous benefit of the doubt. And for all the occasional and predictable examples of correspondent grandstanding in the East Room, little seriously-expressed criticism or incisive questioning cut through the President’s you-can-trust-me gloss.

 

It’s not hard to see why. Against the back-drop of his very positive polling, only a really poor performance on the night (which Obama didn’t give, of course) could have undermined his projected image of mastery.

 

That backdrop amounts to a series of what any politician could call “workable majorities”. In approval for his anti-recession actions, his progress toward an exit from Iraq, and his tax-relief plans for the middle-classes, a doughty slice of the polled population – over fifty percent on each topic – is with him.

 

Maybe more striking than any other bit of poll-data is the finding that well over fifty, in fact 59% of respondents, think Obama’s presidency has improved the US’s image in the world.

 

It sure looks like a nation hoping for a hero, and believing it has found one.

   

 

** EVERY WEEK CONNECTICUT'S NPR STATION, WHDD (ROBIN HOOD RADIO) AIRS A DISCUSSION BASED ON THIS COLUMN - Fridays at 7.35 am, and Saturdays at 4.45 pm.**

 

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AS WE KNOW, THOUGH, hero status will all too often prove ephemeral. One example of the species, sadly unsung these days, is General Thaddeus Kosciuszko (above right) whose name adorns roads, bridges, parks and schools across the nation, and whose statues proliferate in many a city. But exactly what he was ever a famous hero for is now little-known.

 

A pithy new biography out this week from journalist Alex Styorozynski serves to remind a once grateful nation that Kosciuszko was a vital leader of the American Revolution, performing the essential military role of Chief Engineer to the Continental Army. He was also, as emphasized by the book’s title The Peasant Prince – Thaddeus Kosciuszko and the Age of Revolution, a doughty fighter for democracy – devoted throughout his life to improving the lot of the have-nots, in the new United States as well as in his Polish homeland.

 

Fleeing what’s best described as a colorful past, he immigrated to Philadelphia in 1776 just after the Declaration of Independence and showed up on Benjamin Franklin’s doorstep offering his services as a military architect. He went on to design and build the fortifications that were crucial to the revolutionary side beating the British in the pivotal Battle of Saratoga.

 

Among the largely forgotten details of his contribution to US history is the fact that the blueprints for West Point’s defenses, which the infamous traitor Benedict Arnold was trying to sell to the British, were the careful handiwork of the French-trained Kosciuszko.

 

Some notable might-have-beens in history are also highlighted by author Storozynski (whom, I should point out in a spirit of full disclosure, I regard as a fellow of excellent judgement  -  he formed part of the New York Daily News’ Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial-writing team, before becoming the founding Editor of am New York newspaper, where he instigated this very THE MEDIA BEAT column).

 

His book poses intriguing notions like … how would the fabric of early nineteenth century America have been affected if Kosciuszko’s will had been enacted as he wished? He endowed his entire earnings from his war service (plus all the interest it accrued during the decades until his death in 1817) for the purpose of buying liberty for slaves. He hoped his friend, ex-President Thomas Jefferson - who called the Pole “as pure a son of liberty as I have ever known” - would execute the will for him.

 

But it didn’t happen. Jefferson’s own questionable feelings about freeing slaves played their part in this failure, as did what another Jefferson friend, General John Hartwell Cocke, called “prejudices to be encountered”.

 

It’s still sometimes arresting to recognize that a country that began with slave-owning Presidents (including Jefferson himself, who fathered African-American children in a climate that rendered such offspring scandalous – those unavoidable “prejudices to be encountered” once again) is now so evidently proud of its Chief Executive with his mixed African-American heritage.

    

 

I HAVE JUST ONE JOURNALISTIC FOOTNOTE to the predictably fevered “swine flu” coverage. Any death from disease is regrettable, and any serious epidemic needs assertive countering, but I know I’m not alone in thinking the Western media’s sense of proportion has gone AWOL in the current frenzy.

 

So far the number of flu-related deaths suddenly recorded in the Americas contrasts dramatically with an ongoing epidemic elsewhere - one which by comparison hardly gets reported. 

 

I'm reminded today by my statistician colleagues in the World Health Organization that the flu death-toll counted during the past week amounts to about one hour’s-worth of the daily massacre of Africa's children by malaria.

 

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