Trial by Blitzer

I don't subscribe to cable or satellite television.  The reason for this is that I basically see no value in it.  Pay television doesn't really seem to offer me much.  For one thing, it's rife with advertising content.  Why do I have to watch ads constantly when I'm paying for the service?  Furthermore, much of the content available to basic cable subscribers is now available for free on the Internet.

However, cable news content is not entirely available on the Internet at this point in the game.  I'm really okay with that.  When I've had cable in recent years, for example last year when I was living at a residence where cable was included, I end up watching cable news.  This is regrettable because I really dislike cable news.

So, I'm happy that my exposure to cable news is limited to what I encounter on the Internet.  That's usually more than enough to remind me about how awful it is.

While it's easy to hate on Fox, the other networks are in many ways different only in degree and not in kind.  Case in point is CNN's Wolf Blitzer who recently engaged in this astounding display:

It's easy for me to hold figures like Anderson Cooper in contempt.  His typically pedestrian infotainment niche is papered over by rare, redeeming incidents like his reporting on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, but Cooper is, in a sense, just giving the people the show they want.  Not too heavy, plenty of witty banter with the equally easy-on-the-eyes Erica Hill.  It's a perfectly supeficial bedtime send-off after Larry King.

Blitzer's boffo brand of bullshit is something entirely different to behold.  The above clip puts this on full display.  Notice Blitzer's Fox-like use of ambiguous "someones" who supposedly put him up to this question.  It's utterly obvious, especially with Blitzer's attempted closing salvo, "I'm sure he will get a much fairer hearing than those 13 Americans who were brutally gun downed the other day," that Blitzer is sharply editoralizing here, but he's a complete and utter coward hiding behind the pretense of "journalism" and so slinks furtively behind contrived anonymity of unnamed persons.  This is exactly what Fox News does with their infamous refrain of "some people say."

Worse than this though is Blitzer's utter contempt for the very notion of American justice.  In Blitzer's estimation, Col. Galligan needs to morally justify the defense of Hasan because Hasan has, after all, been accused.  That's more than enough for Blitzer.

Due process isn't for people like Hasan.  His trial is to take place in the court of public opinion.  His should be a trial not with representation and by a jury of his peers, but a trial by CNN, the honorable Justice Wolf Blitzer presiding.

Blitzer is not only unconcerned, even superficially as a journalist, with due process, but views the notion that Hasan would receive it as disgusting.  The remedial explanation offered by Col. Galligan is frankly beneath anyone with even the vaguest notion of due process of law.  Blitzer's line of attack is no different than the equally vicious attacks against former Attorney General Ramsey Clark for his representation of figures like Milosevic and Hussein.

The presumption of innonence is not even a factor here.  How could it be that Hasan is innocent?  Why should there be a burden of proof on the government?  Why should Hasan even be represented?  It's unnecessary because Blitzer knows that he is guilty.  The justice system is nothing but a perturbing speed-bump on the road to revanchism for Blitzer.

Nor is it apparently important to Blitzer that we be able to hold up as just a verdict on Hasan's actions after the final gavel fall.  Given the sharp line of Blitzer's questioning, Hasan no longer even holds his military rank in Blitzer's eyes.  After all, why else would it be relevant to ask Col. Galligan how he, as a former member of the military, could possibly defend Hasan?  The only context in which this question even makes sense is to assume Hasan's guilt and thus strip him of his rank.

In Blitzer's mind, Hasan has already been convicted by a court martial.  Pests like Col. Galligan are not agents of justice, but intemperate fools to be goaded into standing out of the way of the inevitable "guilty" verdict.

Blitzer's entire modus operandi is precisely about stomping all over the very notion of justice.  Everything he says in this clip contributes to the difficulty that will ensue in this case in trying to carry out the due process of law.  Nothing that should be his concern as a supposed journalist, namely the facts of the case (which remain elusive) or the specific mechanics of due process in this proceeding, are of the slightest concern to him.  To the contrary, these are notions that he holds in utter contempt.

Wolf Blitzer shows us plainly here that he is not, in fact or in practice, a journalist, but rather a vicious shill against the very notion of American justice.