[img]1|left|||no_popup[/img]Isn’t it interesting that the sinking Los Angeles Times, scrambling to stay afloat, dutifully has been serving readers both sides of debatable issues in the Op-Ed section lately while merrily continuing to blatantly ignore this rudimentary responsibility in its news stories?
Formerly loyal readers are jumping overboard in sonic-boom droves.
The L.A. Times’ stone-cold abrogation of its mission — partially but crucially — explains why it, The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News, the Rocky Mountain News, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Boston Globe, all blindly reliable lapdogs for any breathing body from the left-wing, either have committed journalistic suicide already or are loonishly racing to the nearest graveyard.
When mainstream news organizations serve only from the left-wing, even in the Age of Obama, half or more of your readers will revolt, as indeed they have, followed closely by key advertisers. Shunning substantive, reasoned responses in favor of a one-track daily menu of — only — stentorian, foot-stomping left-wing anger and mockery quickly drains even the hardiest leftist partisans.
Just in time for the first day of Passover, the Times offered a revealing debate between a left-wing professor from the Chapman University Law School, Lawrence Rosenthal, and his boss, Law School Dean John C. Eastman, over whether the most hounded legal advisor from the Bush administration, John Yoo, deserves his one-semester visiting professorship on the Law School faculty.
Even peanut-gallery fans of the political merry-go-round may recognize Mr. Yoo’s name. For the last seven years, left-wing journalists and academics have devoted vast energies to demonizing Mr. Yoo, on leave from the U.C. Berkeley faculty, for supposedly advising President Bush that “torture” of certain War on Terror prisoners was constitutionally acceptable.
Yoo: Is He Notorious or Correct?
So far at least, only left-wingers think Mr. Yoo validated “torture” and should be harshly punished by any court in the world, including America, which isn’t interested, and Spain, which is.
In their own words, the argument between the elastically dishonest Mr. Rosenthal and the authentically honest Mr. Eastman illumines the main moral values that separate liberals from conservatives.
We are not going to determine in 1300 words here whether Mr. Yoo was excessive in his advice, broke the law and deserves to be prosecuted.
But we can succinctly illustrate the serious differences in reasoning patterns on the left and right.
It hardly is surprising that Mr. Rosenthal vigorously, shoutingly, opposes Mr. Yoo’s visiting professorship. His career left-wing bona fides are well established, starting with his apprenticeship for the farthest left voice on the U.S. Supreme Court, John Paul Stevens.
Beneath the insulting Times headline “Lowering the bar,” Mr. Rosenthal helpfully notes in his opening volley that Mr. Yoo is under investigation by the Obama Justice Dept. for the advisory memos on terrorists he wrote for the benefit of President Bush.
Yoo Reacts to Government Investigation
A month ago, the Orange County Register asked Mr. Yoo about the Justice probe. He told the Register:
“I wish they weren't doing it, but I understand why they are. It is something one would expect. You have to make these kinds of decisions in an unprecedented kind of war with legal questions we've never had to think about before. We didn't seek out those questions. 9/11 kind of thrust them on us. No matter what you do, there's going to be a lot of people who are upset with your decision. If Bush had done nothing, there would be a lot of people upset with his decision, too. I understood that while we were doing it, there were going to be people who were critical. I can't go farther into it, because it's still going on right now. I'm not trying to escape responsibility for my decisions. I have to wait and see what they say.”
Dear reader, we would not be entertaining this discussion if the revenge-seeking, coarse-thinking Mr. Rosenthal had not resorted, repeatedly, to a viciousness of tone and intellectual dishonesty that, sadly, has come to typify left-wing academics, covering perhaps 90 percent of the faculties of American high schools and universities.
Mr. Rosenthal may have plunged his bloody Yoo-intended dagger into his own disingenuous heart with his crooked path of reasoning.
His chest-banging arguments are so familiarly, unimaginatively left-wing. Instead of cleanly asserting that Mr. Yoo is unworthy of even a temporary seat on the Chapman Law School faculty because Mr. Yoo is laboring under a pretty black legal cloud, the insecure Mr. Rosenthal seeks to introduce himself as a moral virgin.
With the muscularity of a rhetorical, self-consumed bully, Mr. Rosenthal is determined to impress the reader with six proofs of his own modesty that, somehow, nobly, he has managed to surmount in order to bring the dangerous Mr. Yoo to the bar of justice.
He makes a claim, and in the same liquid motion, knocks it down. Sometimes, he maintains, his own supreme modesty needs to be violated, even six times, in the name of national security.
Let Us Hear Six Cheers for Me
Mr. Rosenthal says he normally respects client confidentiality, but…
• As a former federal prosecutor, “[n]aturally, I have enormous concerns about any investigation of an attorney for providing legal advice to a client, especially when the client is the U.S. government.”
Given his own impeccable record of integrity, Mr. Rosenthal says that usually it would be at least de classe to rip a peer, but, valiantly, he begs for an exception.
• “I am equally reluctant to voice harsh criticism of a colleague — collegiality is greatly valued in academia.”
When all other moral exits are closed, Mr. Rosenthal rationalizes in the manner that scoundrels historically have, justifying his breach by blaming the faceless many:
• “Yet the first obligation of the legal academy must be to its students. For that reason, I think it right to ask: Should Yoo be teaching law?”
Mr. Rosenthal, the mean-spirited former federal prosecutor, admits he is not armed with facts. But, are facts always necessary? he wonders.
• “I do not know all the facts relating to Yoo’s involvement in the memos that cause me concern.”
In his most flagrant betrayal yet of his squishy values, Mr. Rosenthal waves a large flag that proclaims “freedom.” But he argues that freedom has its limits when the other side disagrees with you. To wit:
• “While I yield to no one in my respect for academic freedom, the memos reflect a kind of tunnel vision that I would not tolerate in a student’s work, and certainly not in the work of any attorney for our government.”
Against his broad background of learning and teaching, Mr. Rosenthal certainly is entitled to believe that Mr. Yoo is as threatening to America as any terrorist lurking in the shadows.
But his fragile credibility shrinks, perceptibly, in every separate instant that he first presents himself as a moral giant, then begs us to make an exception to his giant-hood because the alleged crime in question is so hideous.
Mr. Rosenthal saves his most savage sucker punch for the end, resorting to his rawest locution.
• “Should incompetent or irresponsible lawyers be teaching law?” he asks, villainously.
Fear not. Slyly, he draws the set-up answer from his watch-pocket:
• “As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote: ‘The question answers itself.’”
Plainly, Mr. Rosenthal believes only left-wingers should inhabit the Chapman Law School faculty.
His worthy adversary, Mr. Eastman, an unapologetic conservative, won the debate on a knockout in the first sentence.
“When I became dean of the Chapman University School of Law almost two years ago,” he wrote, “I made a commitment to pursue ideological diversity at the school” that is known for its conservative history while residing in the bosom of a formerly heavily conservative county.
