July 10, 2008
HONESTY LIKE THAT IS WHY THE BROTHERS VOTED FOR HIM AND WHY HE HAD NO SHOT:
Gramm: We need more leadership, less whining (CNN, 7/10/08)
Phil Gramm, a top adviser to Sen. John McCain, on Thursday stood by his comment that the country is in a "mental recession," and said he was trying to say the nation's leaders, not its people, were "whiners." [...]The comments came in a Washington Times interview published Thursday.
"We have sort of become a nation of whiners. You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline," said the former Texas senator. "You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession."
Gramm also said the media was responsible for fostering unnecessary anxiety over the state of the economy. "Misery sells newspapers," he said. "Thank God the economy is not as bad as you read in the newspaper every day."
No one actually wants politicians to tell them the truth.
Newspapers are the ones in the crisis and they'll toot from the hilltops that America's economy is just like the newspaper economy for anyone who'll spend the money to read it.
It looks like more and more are giving up the print for the web or nothing at all (tune out).
I foresee the day when there are no papers and editors/reporters form collective sites(or just blog their stories), collecting more money from advertisers than had they stayed at the crumbling papers.
Posted by: KRS at July 10, 2008 7:58 PMI don't see that happening KRS. Editors/reporters are not knowledgeable about the things they report. They are translators on one side and the gatekeepers on the other. The net has removed the need for translators, and the net already has far better gatekeepers in place. Think of how much better OJ is then anything the New York Times has to offer.....
Posted by: Robert Mitchell Jr. at July 10, 2008 9:05 PM
No man likes to hear someone else tell the truth about him.
An honest man, however, mulls things over and either changes or not. Alas, the mulling over rarely becomes public knowledge unless there is a change.
BTW - the loss of competiveness, the national decline stuff, is soooo 1980's. That is all I read in the 1980's, how other nations, especially Germany and Japan, were going to supplant the US economically.
How exactly did that work out again? I forget...
;)
Posted by: Mikey at July 10, 2008 5:58 PM