Monday, September 10, 2012

Bad, Bad Putin

There's a fascinating tale in today's NYT that is written by a Moscow based journalist, Masha Gessen, who was recently fired by one of the world’s, she tells us,"oldest popular-science magazines, Vokrug Sveta (Around the World)."

She sort of blames Putin for her firing. I don't doubt the details of her story, but there are many underlying themes to the story that should be considered beyond the tale itself. The first theme is simply that governments are bad everywhere. When they get involved in a sector of the economy, they will run roughshod over it, if they choose to. In Russia, it can curiously include, Vokrug Sveta. (In the U.S. it can be a government agency such as the TSA which has taken over/created theater security at airports and beyond.)

A second theme is the continuing mainstream penchant for painting Putin in a bad light. The details of the Gessen story suggest that Putin operates with an advance team, the way President Obama and Mitt Romney most assuredly do. Naturally, Putin, Obama and Romney advance teams create photo ops.

Curiously though, that Putin operates with a photo op producing advance team is a story fit for NYT that paints Putin as a very bad, bad man for using photo ops. I mean the woman tells us that Putin posed with a bear that was heavily sedated! Odd, very odd. Can we safely conclude that the CIA propaganda team is well embedded at NYT?

2 comments:

  1. From Wikipedia: "Masha Gessen (born 13 January 1967) is a left-wing Russian and United States journalist and author. She holds both Russian and US citizenship..."
    Yeah, no wonder she has access to NYT and all.

    What pisses me off is the assumption by these "folks" that their reading audience is a dead-wood from the neck and all the way up.

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