Well I’ve been away for over a month and have had the pleasure of a virtual news blackout. No media, no papers, no nothin’. What wonderful peace. Everyone should try it. You don’t even need to go away.

But I have to admit when I returned and started checking up on current events I was in hysterics. Nothing had changed.

There is still the requisite body count in Iraq, only now it’s the Iraqis that are getting counted. I wonder if more people aren’t killed in Philadelphia or New York or Los Angeles than in Iraq. Certainly Washington D.C. must be up there. I wonder why that isn’t a daily tally. Of course there wouldn’t be nearly as many deaths if the media wasn’t promoting the killing.

Then there was the usual Democrat Party… the “nothing to offer” party… still obstructing anything and everything, even things they should love. And the Democrats are still out there trying to destroy good and decent people while still encouraging the enemies of this country. They remind me of the commercial where the bobbin’ head doll is shaking his head ‘no.’ Duhhhhh, “No.”

And there are the usual attacks on American companies… those incompetent, corrupt boobs. Even good economic news is somehow bad.

Then there’s the lovable media still making things up and lying to everyone.

J-Lo and Go-lo are still enthralling the elite.

The Red Sox are still throwing at batters and fighting. What round was it? Oh innings… that’s right. Gotta love those peace loving blue staters.

Then there’s the continuing drumbeat of how bad America is.

All the while the Republicans still sit around in fear acting like cowards. They have the power. Why don’t they do something?

Let’s see… I’ll bet tonight’s headlines will be something like, “Iraq is a disaster. America is evil. The economy stinks. Terrorists, er sorry, insurgents are wonderful.

So there, you have the “news” headlines. Just more made up stuff. Save yourself some aggravation, turn off the media and go enjoy a barbeque with your family and neighbors. You and the world will be better for it.

I know everyone (including me) is justifiably all over Newsweek for their irresponsible reporting which “sparked riots.”

But it’s starting to get to the point of insanity. Check this out.

Afghanistan’s government said Tuesday that Newsweek should be held responsible for damages caused by deadly anti-American demonstrations after the magazine alleged U.S. desecration of the Quran, and it suggested that foreign forces may have helped turn protests violent.

…

Afghan presidential spokesman Jawed Ludin said Newsweek’s retraction Monday was a “positive step” toward clearing up concern about the report.

“But at the same time, we feel angered at the way this story has been handled,” Ludin told a news conference Tuesday. “It’s only fair to say at this stage that Newsweek can be held responsible for the damages caused by their story.”

We need to not forget that when we scream and yell that people be held responsible for their actions - as Isikoff and Whitaker should be - that there are also people here who actually rioted and killed people and broke things in their anger that resulted from the story.

One has to wonder where the outrage is from the governments of the impacted countries, that their citizens would react in such a reprehensible manner.

UPDATE 5/18: One has to wonder why this didn’t spark riots.

While Muslims have responded with deadly outrage to the now-retracted report by Newsweek of alleged Quran desecration by U.S. interrogators, there was little outcry three years ago when Islamic terrorists holed up in Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity reportedly used the Bible as toilet paper.

Catholic priests in the church marking the spot where Jesus was believed to have been born said that during the five-week siege, Palestinians tore up some Bibles for toilet paper and removed many valuable sacramental objects, according to a May 15, 2002, report by the Washington Times.

Larry Summers has come around.

Harvard University President Lawrence Summers, under fire for comments on women in the sciences, said the school would spend $50 million over 10 years to promote diversity on its faculty and reform the way women in science and engineering are treated.

James Joyner says:

They’re now going to spend $50 million in an effort to get people who would ordinarily not have made it into Harvard into the pipleline, hire faculty members who wouldn’t have rated a phone call, and otherwise lowering their standards.

Michael C., though, wonders if maybe they will add a few token conservatives!

Feministing seems to be buying it though…

Does $50 million get Summers out of the doghouse? It certainly seems like a step in the right direction to me.

From the Chicago Trib:

“Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Koran abuse at Guantanamo Bay,” said editor Mark Whitaker.

Ace coins “Al-Newsweek“:

Al-Newsweek’s reckless manipulation of the intelligence it received now has a bodycount, and untold consequences for US security.

The liberal media is very big on exposing hypocrisy– demolishing Bill Bennet’s reputation as a moral man, for example, because he went a little batsh– crazy when he saw the blinking lights of the slot machines.

It’s about time they dug into their own hypocrisy. They hold themselves out as truth-tellers and as professionals with a strong code of journalistic ethics that would never, ever allow them to run a story just because they’re on a deadline or just because it will get attention or just because it pleases them to believe its true.

As do others, Cam Edwards hopes for a firing. Not resignations or stepping down. Canned.

Michael Isikoff, Mark Whitaker, and everybody associated with this story gets canned. No “resignations”, no “stepping down”. Fired. Walk your butts out the door and don’t let the door hit it on your way out. This is not “Rathergate” where “only” an election was at stake. Lives have been lost. Costs must be paid.

LHM voices what some others have started asking:

Is Newsweek responsible for the deaths or shall we blame the instigators and the rioters themselves who are using this crisis to manipulate not only public opinion but their own political agenda?

Wallie announces a takeover bid! Hah!

Viacom/CBS announced an unsolicited offer to aquire all outstanding assets of Newsweek Corporation in a surprise takeover bid. Larry S. Kramer, the head of Viacom’s CBS News Division, explains:

“We felt like it was a natural fit. I saw Mark Whitaker’s[Newsweek’s Editor] comments come across the wire and I was immediately impressed. Mark said ‘We’re not saying it absolutely happened but we can’t say that it absolutely didn’t happen either.‘ Well, obviously that dovetails nicely with our newsroom motto of ‘Fake, But Accurate‘. It just seemed like a logical fit.”

And Bill Roggio backs up Ace’s claim that Newsweek is following (if inadvertantly) Al-Qaeda’s training manual.

The Newsweek staff is also guilty of being gullible enough to swallow whole al Qaeda’s tactics of crying abuse and torture. The tactics are directly out of al Qaeda’s training manual, and are designed to subvert western governments and their citizens, weaken their resolve and inflame the Muslim world against the West. The following is quoted directly from The al Qaeda Training Manual, Lesson Eighteen, PRISONS AND DETENTION CENTERS, which was seized in a raid in England by the Manchester Metropolitan Police:

1 . At the beginning of the trial, once more the brothers must insist on proving that torture was inflicted on them by State Security [investigators] before the judge.

2. Complain [to the court] of mistreatment while in prison.

Al Qaeda’s methods of crying foul while in custody and after released are common knowledge in government and media circles, yet the media consistently snaps up the opportunity to report these stories, without considering the real world consequences that may result.

Glenn Reynolds a couple of days ago observed:

These guys don’t understand the difference between covering a minor domestic “gotcha” story and national security matters. To them, there isn’t a difference. If they’re that clueless, it’s no surprise that they don’t know how to respond when they’re caught.

And he concludes:

As I’ve warned before, if Americans conclude that the press is, basically, on the side of the enemy, the consequences are likely to be dire.

Austin Bay responds to Andrew Sullivan.

Sullivan appears to miss the point of my original post. The Abu Ghraib debacle-Newsweek fiasco comparison rests on this: Newsweek failed to understand the global information grid– they were operating on a “print” template. Rumsfeld thought the England and other abuse photos were on Kodak paper; the Abu Ghraib abuse photos were on pixels. Rumsfeld didn’t understand the “information consequences” of Abu Ghraib photos, and how easily they are reproduced on the Internet. Newsweek didn’t understand the information consequences of its report, either, in a world where gossip moves at the speed of light. Rumsfeld and Newsweek were both handling terrible allegations with a restricted view of the audience (a 1970s, US-oriented template) and a poor appreciation of the allegations’ impact.

N.Z. observes that “Fake but Accurate” is so 2004.

Andrew Sullivan offers Newsweek some entirely superfluous assistance in their race to the journalistic bottom:

“Even if this incident turns out to be false, our previous policies have made it perfectly plausible.”

False but plausible: it’s the new fake but accurate!

Lots more going on, but you’ll have to dive into the rabbit hole from here…