The Fraternity

The Fraternity
By David Glenn Cox



Fraternity: a group, a cadre of like-minded individuals banding together for the benefit of the group as a whole. College fraternities, trade associations, trade unions, civil fraternities, the Masons, the Elks, the Loyal Order of the Moose, the Kiwanis, all the civil business-networking organizations that allow business people to network through contacts with others in the business community. Some fraternities strive to advance the size of the group’s membership while others seek the goal of exclusivity.

President Bush and Senator John Kerry both belonged to the secretive Skull and Bones society while at Yale University, its members chosen from among the best or the brightest, or in the case of Bush and others, the best connected. Exclusivity is its hallmark, the members anointed to be fast-tracked through connections to past members. It's a self-perpetuating cycle of privilege begetting privilege, but in America’s wide and far-flung business and finance communities, the members' overall effect on the economy is marginal.

But there is another fraternity, a brotherhood and sisterhood whose masthead is quite public; they are public people and are even considered celebrities by some. They are rubber men and straw men, and they launch arrows of scorn and ridicule while hiding behind the McCarthyite shield of public duty. They set themselves above the rest of us by virtue of their high station gained through years of four AM hog reports and of covering high school basketball games. Their august training and their ability to run the corporate gauntlet will assure their arrival at the high alter of network anchor person.

In most industries success is measured by bringing in business; in sports, by scoring touchdowns or hitting home runs. In the anchor business you must just hang around and not screw up, then you will become the elder statesman, the mentor, the expert. Anchors such as Tom Snyder or Geraldo Rivera, who show too much emotion or connect themselves with goofy projects, find themselves jettisoned to late night or Fox News. Those who find themselves on the wrong side of the political spectrum fill the few spots accorded to centrists

Some disappear entirely, some quietly retire, and some quit because of the rat race. Because the competition comes from within, with infighting and the currying of favor to become the ultimate suck-up. So management never has to announce what it is that they desire, or that the thrust of the stories should have a conservative edge. Just as the starlet doesn’t need to ask what it is the producer wants in his office. They out-slither and out-slime each other to please the boss man, because this is trained monkey work. There are literally thousands who can do it, it requires no great skill or intellect, only a pretty face, a nice jaw line, a good hair cut and a vacant soul.

There was a local Atlanta network affiliate who, with great aplomb, cheered the new homeless shelter that opened in the city. They ran a feature story on the six and ten o’clock news and featured it prominently in the city's mainstream newspaper. Only the alternative publications pointed out that the city was closing a centrally located shelter with 250 beds, to be replaced by the new 150-bed shelter located far from the homeless downtown. The anchors involved had to know how intellectually bankrupt this story was, but they just didn’t care.

Their goal was to get that fraternity key, the network job. To move up the ladder, to lie to tens of millions at a time rather than just a few hundred thousand. There was a big story there to tell, but they didn’t want to tell it; the boss man didn’t want it told. That city and business leaders were trying to sweep the homelessness problem under the rug by warehousing them far from the glamorous real estate of downtown. The story quickly passed from sight, and they moved on to new lies as the boss man saw fit.

The reigning king of the corporate liars' heap is Tom Brokaw; you will never catch Tom on the wrong side of his corporate masters. I pick on Brokaw because he likes to put himself out there as some sort of touchstone of our times, as if reading a teleprompter every night makes one a Moses to his people. But perhaps because of his fraternity key he believes that he holds all knowledge and will deem to explain it to us lowly mortals. Thus he took up the mantle of author and began penning such puff pieces as “The Greatest Generation.”

Brokaw’s new tree-murdering epic for public aggrandizement is entitled “Boom,” where the great man of the small screen will explain to us the confusing maze of the 1960’s. Here’s a short preview, "Boom!: Voices of the Sixties" (Random House), a series of remembrances and reflections on the time. He tapped a diverse group of people for their thoughts, including famous names like Hillary and Bill Clinton, Rep. John Lewis (D-Georgia), conservative columnist Pat Buchanan, musician Arlo Guthrie and presidential adviser Karl Rove, as well as several ordinary people thrust into the decade's extraordinary situations.”

Wow! You hear that everyone? Several ordinary people’s opinions will be included! That’s you and me! I guess I need to carry my aluminum cans to the metal yard so I can buys me that book. Outside of Arlo Guthrie did you notice that they are all Washington insiders or fellow fraternity members? Are you waiting breathlessly to know what Karl Rove's opinion of the 60’s was? But that’s how the fraternity works, I scratch your back, you scratch mine. The pundits all appear on each other’s programs or write forwards for each other's books.

They'll say how authoritative or expertly written the work is and that it was awarded the highest award possible from the grand exalted altar of the circle jerk. More like awarded the silver medal from the fraternal order of the professional liar's association. It is the jackass backing into the room; it's not Brokaw pushing an agenda, its an agenda being pushed, and Brokaw is the celebrity presenter.

In 2002 Tom Brokaw asked, "Is there a real working relationship between Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein?" Correspondent Andrea Mitchell provides the answer: "To many Americans, the charge that Iraq was somehow involved in the 9/11 attacks is compelling, and one used by the president to build support for war against Saddam Hussein." This is not news reporting at all, not journalism, but out and out propaganda, a stage play disguised as a news broadcast. But complicity in a murder is murder. No better than a presenter for the American version of “Triumph of the Will.”

Oh, come let us adore him, this same great man who misspoke on the invasion of Iraq. “—We don't want to destroy the infrastructure of Iraq, because in a few days we're gonna own that country." Oops, better keep that on the down low, make it all about patriotism and heroism and avoid the whole pillage issue. “—Reporting from Kuwait with "a new band of brothers preparing for the first war of the 21st Century, with all this firepower and all these forces primed and ready to go, how long can they stay in peak condition?"

Tom had the war fever all right. It wasn’t him or his kids getting killed, so the more the merrier. This meant big ratings! Bonuses, awards, book deals! On the day of the 9/11 attacks, Tom had it all figured out, even before the dust had settled, telling Matt Lauer, "This is war. This is a declaration and execution of an attack on the United States." How could he be so certain so quickly?

Tom seems to have a habit of jumping the gate, doesn’t he? It would seem, in retrospect, a very imprudent thing to say before all the facts were in. But that’s one of the perks of being in the fraternity. You are never asked to explain yourself later, when the facts become clear. Politicians are called to account for things that they may have said or done decades before, but only the centrist politicians. But gee, did you read what Karl Rove said about the 60’s? Tom’s quote about owning Iraq has all but disappeared from the Internet.

Today we have a brand new story; NBC’s Brian Williams recently interviewed Brokaw. “But this president was determined to go to war,” Brokaw says. “It was more theology than it was anything else. It was pretty hard to deal with.” So “hard” that the media didn’t even try to “deal” with the “theology." NBC and others chose to focus on the “evidence” of WMD rather than the evidence that the administration was simply bent on going to war, WMD or not.

Or, it was just too hard to tell the truth; it was theology (whatever the hell that means). Is he equating it to a religion? Or is he saying he feared being excommunicated from the fraternity if he went against its dogma? In either case the explanations are lame and weak. He is backing the jackass into the room again by saying we lied but we couldn’t help ourselves, our careers were dependent on it. So we did it, tough! Brokaw continues with his “Band of Brothers” thinking with the comment that, “all wars are based on propaganda.”

This one statement puts him firmly in the Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh camp. It's all right to lie when we're doing it. It’s also seals his fate as a war criminal and war profiteer. Far from a great man, he is a lowly man, a stooge, a prostitute who would say anything for money, no matter who or how many might get hurt. He should be awarded the order of the busted ass and should be forced to interview the thousands of ordinary families who have lost loved ones and perhaps gain some perspective on what really is too hard.

Instead he will be shielded and protected by the fraternity faithful, none will pan his books as long as he tells the right stories. He will live a sumptuous lifestyle of Italian suits, luxury travel and million dollar homes. For you are never out of the fraternity unless you say the wrong things, unless it's telling the truth like. . . Scott McClellan. You see, that’s the only reason Brokaw is back in the media forefront now so he can participate in the fraternity beating of Scott McClellan. Brokaw should know, shouldn’t he? After all, he is the grand old man of American Journalism, isn’t he?