Every time I think that this administration has reached some sort of nadir of conduct, something else lands on me. While I'm not the first to see this story in Sunday's Washington Post, it should be posted on every street corner. Bluntly, this is sheer insanity:
The Bush team has expanded the use of "minders," employees or volunteers who escort journalists from interview to interview within a venue or at a newsworthy event...[snip]...Several reporters covering the [inaugural] balls were surprised to find themselves being monitored by young "escorts," who followed them from hors d'oeuvres table to dance floor and even to the bathroom.
That's right, the Republicans running the inaugural balls assigned teams of young republicans to follow around the reporters who were desperately trying to find something interesting to say about big, expensive parties where no knows really how to dance (this is non-partisan: I wouldn't want to go to Democratic Inaugural Balls either). What is the point? Why bother assigning someone to help the reporter navigate the anarchy of a dance floor? Unless, it really isn't about the reporter:
Their real purpose only occurred to me after I had gone home for the night, when I remembered a brief conversation with a woman I was interviewing. During the middle of our otherwise innocuous encounter, she suddenly noticed the presence of my minder. She stopped for a moment, glanced past me, then resumed talking.
No, the minders weren't there to monitor me. They were there to let the guests, my sources on inaugural night, know that any complaint, any unguarded statement, any off-the-reservation political observation, might be noted. But maybe someday they'll be monitoring something more important than an inaugural ball, and the source could be you.
Yup, the minders are there to keep track of whom the reporter talks to, and to remind anyone who might complain about anything that their words are noticed and recorded. What unmitigated, pathetic, power-hungry, partisan gaul. The Republicans have control of all three branches of government, just won re-election to the most powerful, and have advanced (at least in words) a profound agenda to move the country far to the right, and on top of that they feel the need to set minders on every reporter at the inauguration. Bush, after using poetic words to describe the benefits of freedom and liberty, has done just about everything in his power to remove those same ideals from this country. All right, that's hyperbole, but if people can't speak freely at the inauguration of Bush's second term, where can they?
I'm ashamed of my party.
Posted by baltar at January 31, 2005 05:15 PM | TrackBack | Posted to PoliticsNice post, Baltar. The title I had imagined for a blog on this was much less serious, though frightening enough: "George (hearts) Fidel" or something of that sort. The only places I've ever been (or heard such stories from) were totalitarian communist. I immediately thought of the old Soviet style tourism, and my recent visits to Cuba. There were several times where there were minders or "casual bystanders" who were keeping an eye on the foreigner's (standing in for the reporter of your story) interaction with the locals. In every case, there was never any projected threat to the foreigner, but the real sense of danger - often betrayed by body language or acknowledged directly - was to the local (the complainer in the ball gown) who would feel the consequences later.
The depressing thing is that I don't think a lot of people would really see why we would be so upset about this, and would think it was spin control or something innocuous. I'm sure they would think I was nutty to start talking about similarities between Bush and Fidel (I can hear it now, warming up arguments like the whole Nazi stuff that got aired during the election). However I've seen a police state first hand, and parts of it a lot like this, especially in regard to freedom of the speech and press. Who will be our Granma?
Posted by: binky at February 1, 2005 08:52 AM | PERMALINKThe story really hasn't made much of reaction, other than the left-wing blogosphere. Nobody seems to care, which (as you note) may be the most depressing part.
Posted by: baltar at February 1, 2005 01:01 PM | PERMALINK