Blame The Messenger and Shoot His Lawyer! - Vol. 3 Issue 25

During the dreadful period since the 2000 election, two of the enduring “scapegoats” for Republicans have been the “mainstream media” and the trial lawyers. In a pronounced fit of inappropriate umbrage, the rightwing has used the media and individual journalists as the focal point of its unhappiness over all news in our society that they in their superior wisdom consider, “bad.” This silliness would be intensely funny if it were not coupled with broader trends within Republican governance. For instance, these are the people who are FOR censoring the “secularists” and “left-wingers” in almost every form of public discourse. They view criticism and dissent as disloyal and unpatriotic. The Bush administration decries the supposed left-wing bias of the media, but then uses the very same media to leak information to damage its opponents or make it look good. So after we withdraw from Iraq, don’t be surprised to hear the media blamed for our “failure” there. The Bush administration and its “hallelujah chorus” of now discredited neocons and Christianists will need scapegoats. After all, it will be extremely difficult to rehabilitate their historical reputations without having a credible dialectic explaining how the disaster THEY caused was really the media’s fault ("If only they hadn’t been so negative!"). Similar to the absurd revisionist history of the Vietnam War (we “lost” because of the leftwing media bias and the pinko Democratic Congress), the Iraq War culprits are writing their excuses and getting ready to go on book tours.

In the second category of scapegoats are plaintiff’s lawyers and criminal defense lawyers. These are the lawyers who represent the underclass of our society and the hostility toward them is remarkable. This hostility is manifest in two related beliefs. The first is the belief that market economics is infallible, that government “interference” in the economy is ALWAYS bad and that the freedom to enter into any contract is sacred. These elements come together in the rationale behind so-called “tort reform.” Essentially, the Bush/Federalist Society policy prescription calls for simultaneously protecting corporations by limiting damages in tort suits AND limiting causes of action by plaintiffs. One need only read the Supreme Court rulings in the Guantanamo/detention cases, to see the pattern of the Bush Justice attempt to limit the right of counsel for defendants. Trial lawyers may be obnoxious, but every American citizen has a CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to have one in Court.

In the end, the attempts to change the subject won’t work. The messenger didn’t make-up the story and the lawyer is an essential element of our system of justice. So, here is to journalists and lawyers! The attempts to demonize them will fail because without them we will lose our freedom

Res Ipsa Loquitar,

Savant

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