Our wires and airwaves are bloated with the braying and trumpeting of self-important pundits, hoisting their own petards against the walls of fact and logic. It’s all harmless fun, really. No one is getting hurt because Rush said that Obama’s mother is a unicorn. Rachel Maddow isn’t spending her free time waterboarding Tea Party activists (not that I’m aware of, anyway). The bulk of the bandwidth is filled with rhetoric; while inflammatory, it certainly isn’t considered dangerous. There is, however, a small but growing contingent of writers and journalists whose offerings are so bizarre that they imply something deeper, darker. Case in point: CNN’s post Don’t be nosy about Fast and Furious . . .

The headline tells you that Writer L.Z. Granderson has jumped on board the Crazy Train, paying his fare to Conspiracyland.

Don’t question our government about Operation Fast and Furious, the ATF program that enabled the sale of some 2000 weapons to drug cartels, trace-free? Guns used them to intimidate, torture, rape and murder hundreds of Mexican civilians and end the life of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry?

Granderson’s “Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain” polemic is a long read. So let me save you some time. Here are LZ’s bullet points, in context:

* Americans are inherently nosy because we are “spoon fed other people’s private business”

* Because of this, we think that if someone withholds information, they are hiding something.

* When our government tells us, “That’s none of your business,” we should accept that they are not hiding anything incriminating.

* Fast and Furious is a Bad Thing, but we shouldn’t snoop in such sensitive matters of security and diplomacy.

* Fast and Furious is no different than previous gun-running schemes (in fact, Project Wide Receiver and Project Road Runner were earlier versions of Fast and Furious).

* Even though we know if these projects were ineffective, they kept America safe.

* The Iran-Contra scandal is similar to F&F; Ollie North “took one for the team” back then, and Holder will likely do the same. Holder will be made out to be the villain in all this.

* The “Team” is us, the US Americans, from Miss South Carolina to the Tupelo Flash, and we’re just hurting our freedom by investigating when “the federal government deems it necessary to get its hands a little dirty in the hopes of achieving something we generally accept as good for the country.” (Yes, he really said that.)

* Hey, we didn’t release all the gory details when we got Osama, so why should Holder release anything?

* What’s new about us giving guns to Mexican criminals? We’ve been doing it for years.  Matter of fact, it’s “very American” to be “involved in killing innocent Mexicans.” (Yes, he said that, too.)

* We really really thought we could trace these guns to the head of the cartels, and those who died at the sharp end of these guns… “Collateral damage.”

* Don’t be nosy because you can’t handle the truth.

There are better men than I who have exposed the factual inaccuracies of Mr. Granderson’s editorial. The details and mechanics of this ill-conceived gun walking scandal are small beans compared to Granderson’s suggestion that Americans should trust their government, implicitly, without question.

In L.Z. Granderson’s world, everyone is secure and safe, thanks to our government. To question otherwise only makes things worse. So STFU. (Unless it’s a Republican at the helm.)

Granderson doesn’t get: if it’s a choice between freedom and security, most gun owning Americans will take freedom and responsibility for their own security. Which includes questioning their government to decide whether or not to replace it. That’s not being nosy. That’s being free.

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21 COMMENTS

  2. I just read this here yesterday, but it applies quite well:

    “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
    ― Samuel Adams

  4. From the priminister of propaganda goebbels AkA L.Z. Granderson, Don’t question our government. BS how carwardly can you get, Its the same folks at the head line news on cnn is when Kim Kardasian s**t last. Us citizens have to put up with stop and frisk, pat downs, being x-rayed when traveling, illegal wiretaps WTF? We have a duty and a right to know whats going on in our government and hold them to the same standards they hold us to, way back when reporters seeked to report on stories and hold our government accountable. But thats long gone now. Now their a accomplace and contributor to our governments corruption. What a AH!!!

  5. “Guns used them to intimidate, torture, rape and murder hundreds of Mexican civilians”
    — Perhaps the caffeine in my coffee has not kicked-in yet as the sentence above seems worded a bit strange.

    L.Z. Granderson is mostly a cheerleader for entrusting the concept of the big government nanny-police state, to being quietly respectful of those in power, and not to challenge them. Obviously he is not a supporter of the traditional role of the media to be the ‘watchdog’ of the government’s actions on behalf of society. LZG is not denying laws were broke, ethics violated, and innocent people killed. Rather, he is preaching not to hold those in power accountable who represent the integrity of the American people. LZG is advocating very dangerous, immoral, and irresponsible non-actions by American citizens.

    • I read “Guns used them” as a window in to how such minds work. Then I recoil in horror – don’t argue with a madman. Yet there are madmen everywhere. How’s a guy gonna cross to the other side of the street when crazy is everywhere? STFU and be ready, this is only the tip of one in a ocean of icebergs.

  6. So now we have CNN telling us not to pay too much attention to what our government is doing. Seriously, WTF?

  7. Granderson is a sports reporter, which means that he’s spent his career being a cheerleader. Why CNN felt the need to have him do a piece like this isn’t clear, but perhaps all the “serious” reporters were too busy screwing up the Supreme Court story in advance.

    To repeat the comment that I made on the CNN site, it’s the duty of journalists to act as a check on government power. That doesn’t mean that a reporter should pass along the current location of every U.S. soldier and intelligence agent. What it does mean is that when the government screws up or abuses power and then tries to hide the fact, journalists must shout to the high heavens. Send Granderson back to telling us about the love life of Tiger Woods, and get a real reporter on the job.

  9. I have long maintained that in this day and age, we (collectively) know too much. Projects on the scale of the Manhattan Project, where they literally built the city of Oak Ridge, TN, are unthinkable now because of the collective inability to keep a secret and the desire to be all up in each others’ business. Oak Ridge could never happen now because that one farmer that didn’t get what he wanted for his property would get the attention of the news, and all of a sudden the headlines would scream, “WHAT IS THE GOVERNMENT UP TO IN THEIR SECRET LABORATORY IN THE TENNESSEE HILLS?” I believe that things would be in large part be better if we didn’t know as much as we do.

    I also believe that nothing I just said applies when there is governmental abuse of power on the scale seen here.

  10. The government acted badly and people have died. This isn’t a politics issue this is an issue that someone was taking serious drugs and came up with a really dumb idea.
    The congress even if behind closed doors deserves to find out what happened and who was involved. If it is criminal then someone needs to be held accountable.

  12. Issa’s reading of the secret wiretaps into congressional record pretty much shoots huge holes in this guys thesis…

  13. The media-telecom sector (including CNN, Google, Microsoft, et al.) poured hundreds of millions into Obama-Biden. They wanted legislation and regulatory changes, over multibillion dollar issues, like spectrum reallocation and piracy laws. They do NOT want to see their man in Washington go down in flames.

    At any rate, Eric Holder is a fatal liability for Obama, in Novermber, on another issue:

    http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/20/us-usa-holder-mortgage-idUSTRE80J0PH20120120

  14. Old Grandstanderson’s rant is evidence of why fewer and fewer viewers bother with American Pravda aka the Communist News Network. wait for the network to be sold for a dollar – just like its ideological affiliates, the San Francisco Chronicle and Newsweek were.

    • Because it’s so effing stupid. It takes no account of Holder’s own testimony (admitting gunwalking after denying it) or the recently released wiretaps. Whitewash.

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