Locals thank Germans for giving

by Dennis Ryan Pentagram staff writer December 6, 2002


Photo Dennis Ryan Spc. Michael Petrovich diagrams how he was trapped and escaped from the Pentagon on Sept. 11.

Teresa Russell lost her husband, retired Sgt. Maj. Robert E. Russell, in the Pentagon attack and didn't start to recover until she went on an all-expenses-paid trip to Germany with relatives and victims of the terror attacks.

The Kommerz Bank of Germany picked up the tab for 300 folks for two weeks. Russell and about 80 other family members and victims gathered at the Fort McNair Officers' Club Nov. 27 to thank a small contingent of German visitors with a Thanksgiving meal.

"It was so wonderful," Russell said. "My mind was totally devastated. It wasn't until I went on the trip that I started to recover."

Larry Shaw, Chief Operating Officer of Northern Virginia Family Service, spoke about how the Germans have helped in the recovery process.

"Our role is to put in place 16 case managers and 10 support staff," Shaw said. "We're working with more than 400 families. That translates to more than 1,200 people in 30 states and three countries. The German people through the German Embassy gave more than $600,000 to Northern Virginia Family Services. The Kommerz Bank wanted to help these families in recovery. They were randomly selected."

There were four separate trips involving 75 to 80 people each starting in May of this year and ending in October.

Christoph Schwarzer is businessman and volunteer firefighter in Bad Homborg, Germany, started to collect donations in his town when he saw the devastation wrought by the Sept. 11 attacks on TV. He raised $53,000 and donated the check to the children of New York Firefighters who lost their parent.

John Yates, a civilian employee at the Pentagon, spent two months in the hospital recovering from burns.

"The trip was wonderful," Yates said. "We had been through the one year anniversary. Everyday that goes by helps you to heal. It was good to get away from it all after the anniversary. I went home the Friday before Thanksgiving [last year]. We're totally enjoying these holidays. My physical recovery is progressing. Emotional, it's going to take longer."

Yates' wife Ellen talked about the trip.

"It was very helpful being with all the other people," she said. "Meeting young Navy wives who lost their husbands made me realize how lucky I was to still have my husband."

Betty "Doc" Maxfield, an Army demographer and her husband Kent are still dealing with the repercussions from that day.

"She was 15-20 feet from where the plane hit," Kent Maxfield said. "We drove by the Pentagon last October, going to a Redskins game," Maxfield said. "Betty started sobbing, 'why me, why me?'"

Betty Maxfield and several others are around largely due to the heroism of Spc. Michael Petrovich and a few other brave souls.

Petrovich had arrived at his desk in the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel office a little late that morning, when he overheard a radio report of the World Trade Center disaster.

He called a fellow soldier at NSA to tell him and then hung up the phone.

"The roof shook, the floor shook, the air rippled and I looked up and this orange flash shot up across my face and then went back the way it came," Petrovich said. "It was like this wave. Time kind of suspended itself. I got up and looked and saw my supervisor taking off. The power went out, smoke was coming in."

The husky Petrovich remembers thinking he wouldn't have to take his PT tests or pay any more bills before taking off his tie and acting.

"I told everyone to get down under the smoke and to follow me," he said. "We're crawling in circles. I'm getting panicky. I felt a door with the back of my hand. It blistered. I knew where I was then. We had to cross 300 feet of room. It was a maze of rubble. Stuff was dripping from the ceiling. Sprinklers were working in the middle of the room."

Petrovich was running out of breath by the time he crossed the room only to find a warped blast proof window.

"I took a laser printer and started beating on the window," Petrovich said. "Col. [Phillip] McNair's group came up and he started kicking the window. We got it open a foot or two. I dropped the printer on the first floor, they heard the printer crash. They yelled up to us. I started dropping people."

The specialist and the colonel continued rescuing people until Petrovich dropped himself down, while the colonel went to look for more people.

Pentagon says about 190 people perished in Tuesday's attack on military headquarters

By Robert Burns The Associated Press Published Thursday, September 13, 2001

WASHINGTON -- Approximately 190 people perished in the terrorist attack on the Pentagon, and the Army suffered the heaviest blow with 74 people lost, the Pentagon announced today.

In what it called an initial and preliminary estimate, the Pentagon said a total of 126 people who were in the Pentagon at the time of the attack on Tuesday were killed. All 64 aboard the hijacked American Airlines jetliner that slammed into the Pentagon also died, putting the death toll at 190.

The death toll was the first official estimate by the Pentagon. In a brief announcement, the Pentagon said that although search efforts were continuing, the final tally of deaths isn't expected to change signficantly.

Of the Army's loss of 74 people, 21 were soldiers, 47 were Army civilians and six were Army contractors.

The Navy lost 42 people -- 33 sailors and nine Navy civilians.

The Marine Corps and the Air Force believe they suffered no personnel losses.

The Pentagon said defense agencies, which it didn't identify by name, lost 10 people. One defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said seven of those worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency.

American Airlines says the hijacked plane was carrying 64 people, including crew, when it barreled into the Pentagon Tuesday.

As of this morning, about 70 bodies had been removed from the buckled section of the Pentagon as search-and-rescue workers toiled around the clock with little hope of finding more survivors. The operation has officially switched from a rescue operation looking for survivors to a recovery operation looking for remains, said Arlington Fire Chief Edward P. Plaugher.

Plaugher called it a "very arduous, long-term process. We're going to be there many, many days."

FBI crews worked side-by-side, looking for evidence and making their way toward the flight-data and voice recorders of the commercial jetliner that was hijacked by terrorists slammed into the Pentagon Tuesday.

"We're making inroads into the impact area foot by foot now," Fairfax County Fire Capt. Jerry Roussillon said today after search-and-rescue teams worked through the night stabilizing the damaged parts of the building.

The workers were evacuated this morning for about an hour following a telephoned bomb threat received by the FBI, officials said.

Search-and-rescue workers were shoring up unstable areas around the impact site and were hoping to be able to enter that area later today to search for more remains as well as the airplane's recorders.

Crews began removing victims' remains Wednesday afternoon but there was no word on how many bodies were recovered. By evening, crews had started tearing down unstable parts of the building to continue their search. They hoped to have enough demolition work done by morning to enter the impact area.

Arlington County, Va., fire marshal Shawn Kelley said searchers know "the general area within the building where they can find the black box," the plane's voice and data recorders, but couldn't yet get there.

A small American flag planted on the roof spoke to the Pentagon's determination to restore its spirit despite the horrendous breach of its famous walls.

The little flag was replaced late in the day by a huge one. A dozen firefighters held the banner aloft on the roof, in a display timed to coincide with a visit from President Bush. Then they draped it near the stricken section, a bold display of red, white and blue hanging two-thirds of the way down the wall.

Meantime, stories of harrowing, nick-of-time escapes emerged.

Army Spc. Michael Petrovich, 32, threw a computer through a window, then jumped out behind it, officials said. He has second-degree burns.

Army Lt. Col. Marion Ward, 44, jumped from a second floor window after the plane hit, and suffered smoke inhalation and a sprained ankle. Retired Navy Cmdr. Paul Gonzalez, 46, a budget analyst, got out through the hole in the wall just before the area collapsed. He was in serious condition with burns and respiratory distress.

First lady Laura Bush visited the three in a hospital.

Authorities did not rule out finding people in adjacent areas after a wrecking ball could be used to clear unstable debris, but they did not appear confident of that possibility.

"Anyone who might have survived the initial impact and collapse could not have survived the fire that followed," the Defense Department said in a statement.

Washington-area hospitals treated at least 94 people from the Pentagon, with a minimum of 10 in critical condition. Among them was Louise Kurtz, 49, who was starting her second day of work as an Army accountant. She had burns on about 70 percent of her body.

"I didn't recognize my wife of 31 years," said Michael Kurtz. "I saw a person who looked like a mummy. I'm mortified and shocked like the rest of the country."

Survivors, public try to cope

By Donna St. George and Avram Goldstein

Washington Post , September 24, 2001

---

WASHINGTON — His red-brick town house is draped with an American flag. Inside, the sofa is a soft shade of Army green, and the room is fragrant with roses. Two dozen in one vase, two dozen in another. Maj. John Thurman, still recovering from the Pentagon attack, has found new comfort in all of these things.

At night, it is harder.

In his dreams, Thurman sees the two colleagues he was with the day the Pentagon exploded, fellow workers who succumbed to the heat and smoke as he tried to lead them toward an escape route.

In his dream, his office mates are not missing or dead. They are unscathed, talking, sitting cross-legged on the floor.

"How was your weekend?" the conversation starts.

"How about those Dallas Cowboys?" someone says, laughing.

The dream is a soothing wish for the life John Thurman left behind, the way the world looked before Sept. 11, before he crawled on his elbows in utter darkness, choking on a dense, unbreathable smoke that ultimately claimed many lives. But not his.

That was the day that America watched the unthinkable unfold — mass violence from abroad descending on U.S. cities. More than 6,000 people dead or missing. Two American icons up in flames. And now, the specter of a protracted, vexing war.

It remains so great a trauma to the national psyche that experts say it is not just injured survivors such as Thurman who struggle with the implications.

It is the country at large — anyone who can imagine being seated on one of the hijacked planes, trapped inside a burning office, bidding goodbye by cell phone in the face of imminent death. It is not only those who empathize or grieve but also those who in small moments — dropping a child at school, leaving a friend, boarding a jet — find their confidence shaken. The ordinary is not as predictable as it was.

"We're all changed by this," said psychologist Ronald Wynne, president of Washington Assessment and Therapy Services, which has gone to 20 Washington, D.C.- area businesses to assist workers struggling with the emotional fallout.

In Washington, members of the clergy have become so overwhelmed by questions and anxiety that crisis training is planned for about 200 of them and a comparable number of mental health professionals, said Renee Lohman, executive director of Washington Behavioral HealthCare.

"Everyone is feeling inundated and not adequately prepared to deal with the questions they are getting," Lohman said.

These are questions that arise from shattered expectations, uncertain futures, amorphous fear, anxiety and anger. As so many people have observed, America will never feel as safe as it did before Sept. 11. The illusion of homeland safety is gone.

Perhaps no one knows this better than survivors of the terrorist attacks — those who got away. Many are only now being released from hospitals, going home. Like the rest of America, they struggle to move on, but many find themselves captive to the power of human memory and to the enormity of what has happened in the past 12 days.

Thurman, 35, does not shy away from the details. They are hard, and some, he says, still hurt.

The Army major was at his computer in the office of the deputy chief of staff of personnel at 9:38 a.m., when he felt a percussive WHOOSH, then a blast. Almost immediately the blaze was so intense that the only available air was at floor level.

At first, two colleagues crawled behind him in search of an exit. But when Thurman found a door, it was intensely hot-fire on the other side. By the time he made his way to an opposite exit, one co-worker had fallen silent. Then the other did.

He pulled on his colleagues. They did not respond. He was gasping for air, knowing he was about to collapse. He staggered out the exit and pleaded for help. "They're in there. They're in there. You've got to go get them." But by then, the fire and smoke made it too dangerous.

"I feel I should have been able to do something," he recalls telling one friend in recent days.

"Had you done any more, you would've been among the missing," the buddy reassured.

At his home in Washington, Thurman reflects on this: "That's hard to get to. Objectively, you can. But emotionally . . . I'm going to think about these people for the rest of my life."

In her gracious colonial in Mitchellville, Md., Lt. Col. Marilyn Wills is resting reluctantly, two days out of the hospital. Her skin is bruised. She has burns on her shoulder, and her left arm is injured.

But Wills wants to be back at the Pentagon. For days, she has been focused on the work she did not complete Sept. 11, when a staff meeting that dragged on too long probably saved her life. Her close friend, a co-worker whose desk was so close the two could almost whisper, is missing.

Her tortured push to get out of the building, head-to-toe in a human chain of fleeing colleagues, is still vivid in her mind. She very nearly died.

Still, the unfinished work is nagging at her.

"Don't worry about that stuff," colleagues have insisted.

But the work, the job, is a stretch for the old normalcy. The experts say that this is healthy. They say that when crisis strikes as intensely as it did Sept. 11, there are some predictable patterns of human behavior, in spite of many personal differences.

That goes for survivors such as Wills and for the country as a whole.

Once the initial state of emergency is over, many people grow numb, the trauma being too much to process. How do you understand what was once unimaginable? Often a little later, emotional realities bear down — feelings of sadness, rage, fear, horror, confusion.

"I call this the world of terrible knowledge," said psychologist Jeffrey Jay, director of the Center for Post-Traumatic Study in Washington. The rhythms of ordinary life, he said, are shocked by "a sense of vulnerability of oneself and everyone else."

Twelve days after the Pentagon attack, Michael Petrovich, 32, is out of the hospital, his body healing well from first- and second-degree burns on his face and ears. But he finds it hard to get over his anger.

"I'm getting very argumentative with my wife, my friends, everyone-and that's not healthy," he said.

An Army specialist who lives at Fort Belvoir in suburban northern Virginia, Petrovich works in the Pentagon's office of personnel, which was particularly hard hit. He joined the chain of workers trying to escape through the suffocating smoke and approaching flames. The dead included his car-pool buddy.

"I'm angry at myself for not getting this guy out I drive to work with every day. I'm angry at him for not getting out. I'm angry at the terrorists, for sure. And I'm angry at the people who don't fund our intelligence community enough."

He reflected, "I'm very angry at a lot of people — and some of them for totally irrational reasons."

His brittle emotions are more common than not — among survivors and much of the nation.

"People are just so raw right now," said Patricia Hawkins, a psychologist at Washington's Whitman-Walker Clinic who said the issue has come up in therapy sessions. "People are in a state of shock and disbelief."

Another attack in Washington is about the worst of possibilities for Racquel Kelley, 32, a mother of four who works as a civilian computer technician in the Army's Information Management Support Center.

When American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the Pentagon, the impact knocked the shoes off Kelley's feet. As she and two office mates held each other tightly and tried to flee, she cut her feet badly. She was burned, too — on one hand, her ears and a lip.

"I'm just grateful to God to be given this second chance," she said.

Still, as glad as she is to be alive, living itself is sometimes hard.

"At night I just sit up in the bed with my husband," Kelley said. "I'm just terrified. There's not much he can do but hold me and tell me it's going to be okay. He's been very supportive, but he can't make the dreams or the thoughts of the terrorists go away."

She worries that this may not be the end. "It's not over. There's going to be a lot more killing before this is over, and there are going to be innocent victims," she said. "I can try and hope, but I don't think I'll ever be normal again."

Lt. Col. Marion Ward is still on crutches. As he escaped from the Pentagon, in the human chain of workers crawling out of the personnel office, he finally was so overcome by smoke inhalation that he jumped to safety from a second-story window.

His left knee, shin and ankle were severely strained.

Now home in Springfield, Va. with his wife and three children, Ward cannot help but dwell on those who did not make it. He was at the staff meeting that Lt. Col. Marilyn Wills attended. Three of their colleagues, he said, are unaccounted for.

"I still wake up and try to remember where those three people were and why they weren't in the chain," he said. He knows others who didn't make it. "It keeps you awake at night, and when you open your eyes, there's invariably another question on your mind."

The way Ward comes to terms with the heartache, he said, is through his larger religious faith. It is what kept him going when he thought he might die.

And he offered his own belief: "There are two things to take out of this: Good wins in the end, and love is stronger than hate. We haven't seen the end yet, but good will win."

September 24, 2001

9/11 victim thanks hospital workers; Ex-officer treated at Georgetown for burns after Pentagon attack.

| The Washington Times

www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-118901727.html

Article from:

The Washington Times (Washington, DC)

Article date:

July 2, 2004

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Lt. Col. Brian Birdwell

By Frank Petrignani, THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Retired Army Lt. Col. Brian Birdwell returned to Georgetown University Hospital yesterday, not to be treated, but to thank the doctors and nurses who helped him heal in the aftermath of September 11.

Col. Birdwell was working in his Pentagon office when a hijacked airliner slammed into the southeast section of the military complex. He suffered burns on more than 60 percent of his body. Nearly half were third-degree burns.

"What I will remember vividly for the rest of my life is the smell of jet fuel embedded into him and his clothes," said Dr. Michael Williams, then director of trauma and critical care at Georgetown University Hospital in Northwest.

"The Lord puts us in the right place at the right time ... so we could stand here and say thank you today," Col. Birdwell with his wife, Mel, at his side, told Dr. Williams, who treated the retired soldier when he arrived.

The Birdwells presented the hospital with a quilt made by Mrs. Birdwell and specially designed commemorative coins to represent a debt of gratitude.

"When Brian was in the hospital, we received a lot of quilts and it was so nice to have something aside from hospital blankets," Mrs. Birdwell said.

Col. Birdwell recovered after undergoing more than 30 operations and months of multiple skin grafts, burn treatments and therapy sessions.

Since that time, he and his wife have written a book, "Refined by Fire," and founded Face the Fire, an organization that reaches out to burn victims and their families.

"When I go see the burn victims I tell them, 'You are going through a rough time right now. But you have the gift of life and that is the most important thing in the world.' "

Col. Birdwell, who lives in Manassas with his wife and son, Matthew, 14, realizes how fortunate he is to have survived the September 11 attack on the Pentagon.

"What an incredible gift life is," Col. Birdwell said. "A lot of people from 9/11 don't have that. I get to see my son grow up."

At the time of the attack, Col. Birdwell was working for the Department of the Army at the Pentagon as the executive officer to the deputy assistant chief of staff for installation management. He earned a Bronze Star during the Persian Gulf war.

CAPTION(S):

Retired Army Lt. Col. Brian Birdwell, who was severely burned September 11, visited Georgetown University Hospital with his wife, Mel (right), to thank nurse Debi Trichel. [Photo by Liz O. Baylen/The Washington Times]

Dark Minds: When does incredulity become paranoia?

By John Gartner
in Psychology Today

Alex Jones is trying to warn us about an evil syndicate of bankers who control most of the world's governments and stand poised to unite the planet under their totalitarian reign, a "New World Order." While we might be tempted to dismiss Jones as a nut, the "king of conspiracy," is a popular radio show host. The part-time filmmaker's latest movie, The Obama Deception, in which he argues that Obama is a puppet of the criminal bankers, has been viewed millions of times on YouTube.

When we spoke, Jones ranted for two hours about FEMA concentration camps, Halliburton child kidnappers, government eugenics programs---and more. When I stopped him to ask for evidence the government is practicing eugenics, he pointed to a national security memorandum. But I found the document to be a bland policy report.

Jones "cherry picks not just facts but phrases, which, once interpreted his way, become facts in his mind," says Louis Black, editor of the Austin Chronicle, who knows Jones, a fellow Austin resident. When I confronted Jones with my reading of the report, he became pugnacious, launching into a diatribe against psychologists as agents of social control.

Conspiracy thinking is embraced by a surprisingly large proportion of the population. Sixty-nine percent of Americans believe President John F. Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy, and 42 percent believe the government is covering up evidence of flying saucers, finds Ted Goertzel, a professor of psychology at Rutgers University at Camden. Thirty-six percent of respondents to a 2OO6 Scripps News/Ohio University poll at least suspected that the U.S. government played a role in 9/11.

We're all conspiracy theorists to some degree. We're all hardwired to find patterns in our environment, particularly those that might represent a threat to us. And when things go wrong, we find ourselves searching for what, or who, is behind it.

In his 1954 classic, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, historian Richard Hofstadter hypothesized that conspiracy thinking is fueled by underlying feelings of alienation and helplessness. Recent research supports his theory. New Mexico State University psychologist Marina Abalakina-Paap has found that people who endorse conspiracy theories are especially likely to feel angry, mistrustful, alienated from society, and helpless over larger forces controlling their lives.

Jones insists he had a "Leave It to Beaver childhood." I couldn't confirm such an idyllic past. When I asked if I could interview his family or childhood friends, he insisted his family was very "private" and he had not kept in touch with a single friend. When I asked if I might look them up, he became irritated. He doubted he could "still spell their names," and besides, I'd already taken up enough of his time. "I turned down 50 or 60 requests for interviews this week," he wanted me to know.

The number sounded wildly inflated. Conspiracy theorists have a grandiose view of themselves as heroes "manning the barricades of civilization" at an urgent "turning point" in history Hofstadter held. Jones has a "messiah complex," Black contends. Grandiosity is often a defense against underlying feelings of powerlessness.

Even well-grounded skeptics are prone to connect disparate dots when they feel disempowered. In a series of studies, Jennifer Whitson of the University of Texas and Adam Galinsky of Northwestern demonstrated that people primed to feel out of control are particularly likely to see patterns in random stimuli.

Might people be especially responsive to Jones' message in today's America, marked by economic uncertainty and concerns about terrorism and government scandals? "There is a war on for your mind," Jones insists on his Web site, infowars.com. He calls his listeners "infowarriors."

Information is the conspiracy theorists' weapon of choice because if there's one thing they all agree on, it's that all the rest of us have been brainwashed. The "facts" will plainly reveal the existence of the conspiracy, they believe. And while all of us tend to bend information to fit our preexisting cognitive schema, conspiracy theorists are more extreme. They are "immune to evidence," discounting contradictory information or seeing it as "proof of how clever the enemy is at covering things up," Goeftzel says.

Conspiracy theories exist on a spectrum from mild suspicion to full-on paranoia,
and brain chemistry may play a role. Dopamine rewards us for noting patterns and finding meaning in sometimes-insignificant events. It's long been known that schizophrenics overproduce dopamine. "The earliest stages of delusion are characterized by an overabundance of meaningful coincidences," explain Paul D. Morrison and R.M. Murray of the Institute of Psychiatry at Kings College London. "Jumping to conclusions" is a common reasoning style among the paranoid, find Daniel Freeman and his colleagues, also at the Institute of Psychiatry.

Indeed, there are no coincidences in Jones' world. In a scene from The Obama Deception, Jones dives "into the belly of the beast," the hotel where purported conspirators will be meeting. As he begins a telephone interview; the fire alarm goes off. "The bastards have set us up," he says.

Jones says that he has been visited by the FBI and the Secret Service but can't discuss the interviews. It may be that federal agents, in fact, wanted to evaluate whether he is a threat to the president. There's no reason to believe he is---but the same can't be said of his listeners. In 2002, Richard McCaslin, carrying an arsenal of weapons, entered the Bohemian Grove, a campground in California that annually hosts a meeting of the political and business elite. He told authorities he had been planning his commando raid for a year, after (he says) hearing Jones claim that ritual infant sacrifice was taking place there.

The "war" continues. In a video promoting The Obama Deception, Jones urges, "We know who they are. We know what they are. We know what has to be done."

JOHN GARTNER, a PT blogger: is author of The Hypomanic Edge and In Search of Bill Clinton.

Connect the Dots

How susceptible are you to conspiracy beliefs? Rate your agreement
with the statements below, from 1=strongly disagree to 5=strongly agree.

1) For the most part, government serves the interests of a few organized groups, such as business, and isn't very concerned about the needs of people like myself.
2) I have trouble doing what I want to do in the world today.
3) It is difficult for people like myself to have much influence in public affairs.
4) We seem to live in a pretty irrational and disordered world.
5) I don't trust that my closest friends would not lie to me.
5-11: weakly, 12-18: moderately, 19-25: strongly
(Adapted from a scale developed by Patrick Leman)

A nasty Randi thread
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=152892

Beck and the Mainstream

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 14, 2009 1:09 PM

It has become a familiar chain reaction: Talk-show hosts whip up a noisy controversy, which hits higher decibels as it spreads to the establishment media, which costs some unfortunate soul his job.

But now the middleman -- the journalistic gatekeepers of yore -- may no longer be necessary.

By the time White House environmental adviser Van Jones resigned over Labor Day weekend, the New York Times had not run a single story. Neither had USA Today, which also didn't cover the resignation. The Washington Post had done one piece, on the day before he quit. The Los Angeles Times had carried a short article the previous week questioning Glenn Beck's assault on the White House aide. There had been nothing on the network newscasts.

"Where is the press on this?" Beck asked in late August during one of several rants against Jones. But it turned out the Fox News host didn't need the big news organizations to claim his scalp.

Beck's rhetoric may have been over the top as he denounced Jones as a "black nationalist" and "avowed communist" (Jones embraced communism in the 1990s but said he later changed his views). Yet Beck also trumpeted information that forced Jones to issue two public apologies within days. The first was for calling Republicans "a--holes" in a February speech, video of which was posted online by Beck backers. The second, more serious offense was that he had signed a 2004 petition charging "that people within the current administration may indeed have allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext to war." Jones said he didn't agree with that view, but his signature was on the "truther" document.

Although he began firing at his target earlier, Beck intensified his assault after a group co-founded by Jones, Color of Change, launched a boycott campaign that has led dozens of advertisers to withdraw from his television show -- a detail that Beck neglected to tell viewers.

As a proponent of creating "green" jobs, Jones was a respected figure within the environmental movement. But he was sufficiently obscure as a special adviser to the White House Council on Environmental Quality that major news organizations basically ignored him. Only The Post ran a profile, in December, and a story last month on his government work.

Beck, by contrast, drew an avalanche of coverage for calling President Obama a "racist" who harbors "a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture" -- the remarks that triggered the boycott. He also raised the race issue against Jones, touting a videotape in which the activist said last year that "the white polluters and the white environmentalists are essentially steering poison into the people of color communities." The other cable networks, meanwhile, gave Jones scant attention, with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann assailing Beck's role in the attacks.

Beck, who also hosts a popular radio show, is enjoying a ratings surge, averaging 2.25 million viewers on Fox. He regularly tries to deflect criticism by describing himself as a recovering alcoholic and "rodeo clown."

During his Aug. 26 denunciation of Jones, Beck said: "I have told my audience for years, after I sobered up, I admitted, I was a dirtbag, man. I was a dirtbag! I have tried my hardest not to be a dirtbag anymore. I still make mistakes."

In a resignation statement released shortly after midnight on Sept. 6, Jones said he was the victim of "a vicious smear campaign." Liberal commentators accused the White House of caving to right-wing pressure. Blogger Arianna Huffington called Jones a "remarkable man," even as she allowed he was "completely wrong" to associate with the truthers. Beck, for his part, told viewers he deserved no congratulations: "I can go on and on and on about this stuff every night, but if you don't care and it doesn't connect with the American people, what I say doesn't matter."

As a provocateur, Beck sometimes seems to revel in going too far. He accused the communications director of the National Endowment for the Arts, Yosi Sargent, of wanting to steer federal aid to "a bunch of hippie starving artists, dope-smoking progressives" as "blatant propaganda" for Obama. (The agency reassigned Sargent.) And Beck relentlessly promoted the conservative "9/12" demonstrations in Washington and across the country, and broadcast live Saturday, interviewing Republican lawmakers and others at the protests. "I know the mainstream media, everyone, will make fun of me . . . but I have wept for my children's future," he said.

In the Jones case, there is little question that the traditional media botched the story of an Obama administration official who, wittingly or otherwise, lent his name to those who believe that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney deliberately allowed thousands of Americans to be slaughtered. Some conservatives accused journalists of liberal bias; it is just as likely that their radar malfunctioned, or that they collectively dismissed Beck as a rabble-rouser.

New York Times Managing Editor Jill Abramson told readers online that the paper was "a beat behind on this story" and that while the Washington bureau was short-staffed during a holiday week, "we should have been paying closer attention."

The followup news pieces focused on the administration's failure to vet Jones's background. Perhaps the media bloodhounds should be just as curious why they failed to sniff out a story that ended with a White House resignation.
Thumbs Down

Public respect for the media has plunged to a new low, with just 29 percent of Americans saying that news organizations generally get their facts straight.

That figure is the lowest in more than two decades of surveys by the Pew Research Center, which also found just 26 percent saying news outlets are careful that their reporting is not politically biased. And 70 percent say news organizations try to cover up their mistakes. That amounts to a stunning vote of no confidence.

The new wrinkle is that Democrats are increasingly unhappy with a profession long viewed as liberal, with 59 percent saying news reporting is often inaccurate, up from 43 percent two years ago.

Of course, many respondents view such matters through their own political prism. While 73 percent of Republicans say the media are fair to the Obama administration, just 25 percent said that about the Bush administration's coverage four years ago. For Democrats, 68 percent approved of the Bush coverage in 2005, while 54 percent say the press is fair to Obama.

A partisan split is equally evident in the assessment of news outlets. Among Democrats, 81 percent have a positive view of network news, 75 percent for CNN, 60 percent for MSNBC and 43 percent for Fox News. Among Republicans, 72 percent have a favorable view of Fox, 55 percent for network news, 44 percent for CNN and 34 percent for MSNBC.

While most weren't familiar enough with the New York Times to express an opinion, 39 percent of Democrats and just 16 percent of Republicans view the paper favorably.
Back to Earth

If you have the impression that President Obama is losing his media glow, you're right.

Although his coverage in the first 100 days was 59 percent positive, a new study says, that dropped to 43 percent positive -- and 57 percent negative-- in the next 112 days, through mid-August. In short, reporters have noticed that the candidate of hope has run smack into Washington reality.

Under the umbrella of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, researchers for George Mason University and California's Chapman University examined the nightly newscasts, the New York Times, Time and Newsweek. The president's policies drew the toughest scrutiny -- 42 percent positive coverage -- while in personal and other evaluations, the assessments were 68 percent positive. The administration fared least well on terrorism and Guantanamo Bay (26 percent positive) and best on the financial stimulus (47 percent positive).

The most favorable evaluations appeared in front-page Times stories (61 percent positive), while ABC's "World News" was the most positive newscast (53 percent positive) and "NBC Nightly News" the least (45 percent positive). Separately, the study found that Obama's coverage was just 23 percent positive on the news segments of "Special Report," Fox News's Washington newscast.
Obama Hatred

David Corn has a theory, at Politics Daily:

"I believe I may have an insight into why so many conservatives crazy-hate Barack Obama: He's a liberal. A true liberal. An unabashed liberal. Yes, there's a liberal in the White House -- and most Americans aren't disgusted by that. In fact, most approve of him. (His approval rating is on par with that of Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan eight months into their presidencies.) Worse, he's a liberal with an ambitious liberal agenda. And even worse, he might just succeed in enacting it. . . .

"It must painfully frustrate right-wingers to watch Obama pull this off. It must drive them nuts -- the way that Ronald Reagan aggravated liberals with his ability to drape hard-right views with folksy popular appeal. While trying to win over independents and moderates on Wednesday night, Obama offered up a full endorsement of liberalism. And it worked. No wonder conservatives can't stand the guy."

Gee, but many on the left don't seem all that happy with him at the moment.
Obama the Orator

The president also seems to be getting under the skin of National Review's Rich Lowry:

"Everyone marvels at Barack Obama's rhetorical prowess. But don't be overly bedazzled. With these 13 easy steps, you, too, can give a Barack Obama speech.

"1) Create a false center. In his speech to a joint session of Congress, Obama positioned himself between the Left's calling for a single-payer system and the Right's agitating to end employer-based health insurance. Presto -- he's the very definition of a centrist. Anyone advocating almost any position can benefit from the same insta-centrism.

"2) Scorn ideology. Obama warned against 'the usual Washington ideological battles.' Message: He has no philosophical commitments himself. He's pushing a Great Society redux only as a matter of practicality. Superficial pragmatism is the ideologue's best friend.

"3) Talk about your openness to ideas from opponents. The more you do this, the less you have to adopt any of their ideas. 'I will continue to seek common ground,' Obama said. 'I will be there to listen. My door is always open.' While he does all this common-ground seeking, he will be whipping up the Democratic votes to pass a massive, liberal reordering of the health-care system. But he'll be listening!"

Maybe. But Republicans aren't exactly acting like great compromisers these days.
Back in Kenya

The Boston Globe has an interesting piece from Obama's native country on attempts to cash in:

"The price of land here has skyrocketed because of rampant speculation about an Obama family museum that the Kenyan Ministry of Tourism has promised to build. And there have been some modest, but tangible, signs of progress that seem tied to the village's new notoriety. Within a week of Obama's election victory last year, the government began to pave the main road to town. It also brought in an electricity and water lines to Obama's step-grandmother's compound.

"Some relatives have also set up foundations, trying to raise money for development projects using the Obama name. And strangers are suddenly a common sight in the market, attracted by safari companies that advertise heritage tours about the first African-American US president. A tourist hotel is planned.

"But what is missing is a direct infusion of cash from Obama or the U.S. government, say local residents and members of the extended Obama family, some of whom say they have relayed funding requests through e-mails and letters to Washington."
Digital Democracy?

If you're enamored of that idea, you might want to check out this NYT piece, which recalls what happened when administration officials created an online "Citizen's Briefing Book" for people to submit ideas to Obama:

"They received 44,000 proposals and 1.4 million votes for those proposals. The results were quietly published, but they were embarrassing -- not so much to the administration as to us, the ones we've been waiting for.

"In the middle of two wars and an economic meltdown, the highest-ranking idea was to legalize marijuana, an idea nearly twice as popular as repealing the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy. Legalizing online poker topped the technology ideas, twice as popular as nationwide wi-fi. Revoking the Church of Scientology's tax-exempt status garnered three times more votes than raising funding for childhood cancer.

"Once in power, the White House crowdsourced again. In March, its Office of Science and Technology Policy hosted an online 'brainstorm' about making government more transparent. Good ideas came; but a stunning number had no connection to transparency, with many calls for marijuana legalization and a raging (and groundless) debate about the authenticity of President Obama's birth certificate."

The people rule -- sometimes badly.
Stossel's Switch

Glenn Reynolds on John Stossell jumping to Fox News:

"That's too bad, though I'm sure he'll find Fox more congenial. I don't think he was appreciated at ABC, despite the stellar ratings he brought. . . .

"A couple of readers wonder why I think the move is 'too bad.' It's because with Stossel at ABC, some viewers might be exposed to non-conventional (at ABC) views. I very much doubt that ABC will replace Stossel with someone of similar libertarian inclination, though I'd love to be proven wrong. Fox viewers, on the other hand, will appreciate the quality of his work, but it's not likely to be the same kind of wake-up call it is to the Barbara Walters crowd."
One Harsh Headline

In the grand tradition of contrarian magazine covers -- you know, like "Why Hitler Wasn't So Bad" and "Toxic Sludge Gets a Bad Rap," Newsweek comes up with "The Case for Killing Granny."

In reality, however, the article is distressingly reasonable, with Evan Thomas describing the struggle he had with his ailing mother.

Arlington Fire Captain Scott McKay

Arlington Fire Captain Scott McKay speaks to reporters on a hill southwest of the Pentagon. McKay was attending an anti-terrorism class in the district when Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. Photo by David Holloway