Gilbert Cranberg: GEORGE BUSH, RICHARD CHENEY AND BRIAN WILLIAMS

Brian Williams, George Bush and Richard Cheney each had the same responsibility to report accurately about Iraq to the American people.  Williams misreported a few things, for which he apologized. Nonetheless his career is in tatters and he has been relieved of his job for months at NBC News.

George Bush’s reports about Iraq were NOT harmless. He massively misrepresented the facts, causing immense grief and loss of life. Neither he nor Richard Cheney, his partner in making war in Iraq, ever apologized. Nor did they correct the many lies they told. They were responsible for orchestrating a campaign of torture in conducting the war that brought the country into worldwide disrepute. Nevertheless, they lived happily ever after, country-clubbing, and living lives of comfort and respect laughing all the way to the bank to deposit their government pensions. Neither man spent a moment publicly regretting the catastrophe they caused Iraq.

The glaring contrast in the reactions to Bush-Cheney and Brian Williams is almost beyond belief. There are two words to describe it. The words are shameful and disgusting.

Gilbert Cranberg: HOLD THE SANCTIMONY ON BRIAN WILLIAMS

I came within inches of being killed by Japanese machine gun fire. The bullets came so close I can still hear the snap of the grass as the rounds passed just above my head.

I did not ever say that a bullet creased my helmet. Though I could well have, given how close I was to Japanese fire. Moving that fire inches closer, through my helmet, would have been a slight exaggeration but it would make a harrowing story better.

I bring this up now for the way NBC news anchor Brian Williams is being crucified for reporting that he was closer to a helicopter under fire in Iraq than he actually was. Williams did not claim bravery under fire. He simply claimed, falsely it turned out, proximity to the incident. It’s as though I had embellished my account of Japanese machine gun fire to make it appear that it was slightly more dangerous than it actually was.

I was drafted and ordered into combat. Brian Williams went voluntarily to a war zone. He deserves credit for that. We can do with less sanctimony and more understanding about the work of a talented journalist.

Gilbert Cranberg: THE MYSTERY OF COPCD

Mitt Romney has taken himself out of the 2016 presidential race, or so it seems. Count me among the skeptics. After all, I’m a follower of Harold Ickes, FDR’s Interior Secretary, who observed, “The desire to be president is a disease cured only by embalming fluid”. Note that Romney’s disavowal of an interest of the ’16 race was equivocal. Others have noted that if he really wanted to quit the contest he would have said so in less uncertain terms. Call it the residual effect of Chronic Obsessive Presidential Candidate Disorder (COPCD), the medical community’s shorthand for the condition.

Signs of the condition are unmistakable: the uncontrollable urge to plunge into crowds to manically shake all hands in sight; the fixed insipid grin; the shameless panhandling; the inability to resist a microphone. Romney had a virulent case of COPCD, which is seldom possible to shake cold turkey, as he attempted to do. So, look for a Romney relapse.

More research is needed into the causes and possible cure for COPCD. The possibility that it is familial should be explored. It can hardly be coincidence that several members of the Bush family are afflicted. But if it is genetic, how to explain that some members of the Bush family escaped being ravaged by the disease and seem to be living normal lives?

Herb Strentz: IOWA STRAW POLL KEPT ALIVE BY MONEY, PRESS AND RELIGIOUS RIGHT

Brace yourself: The Iowa Straw Poll, endorsed by the State GOP, will return this summer in its role as a quadrennial horror story. Given how the maligned Poll was brought back to life, perhaps Zombie Burgers will be catered in.

The Iowa Straw Poll, which even Republicans admit gouges presidential wannabes for funds for the State Republican Party, was thought — or at least hoped — to be dead. Republican Gov. Terry Branstad and others called for the end of the Straw Poll because it is so costly for Republican candidates, because the likes of Rep. Michelle Bachmann was the Straw Poll winner four years ago, and mostly because the Iowa caucuses had enough credibility problems without the Straw Poll threatening Iowa’s status as a harbinger of presidential election outcomes.

We should have known better. Those thinking the Straw Poll was dead forgot that no amount of money is too much to throw away in today’s elections; those thinking the Straw Poll was dead forgot how gullible the press is; those thinking the Straw Poll was dead ignored the clout of the religious right in Iowa politics.

This is consistent with political analyst Charlie Cook’s insights on the 2016 presidential campaign made during a visit to Drake University’s Harkin Institute last fall. Cook said American politics is now the “Wild West” with no real controls over campaign spending and no discipline in political parties.

So give a big Yippie-yi-yo-ki-ay and saddle up for the Straw Poll, partners.

The State GOP will again set up the cash registers and ring in the contributions from candidates who, with good reason, think they can buy their way into the presidential race by winning votes in exchange for contributions to the Iowa GOP.

The gullible press will give the Straw Poll all the coverage it needs to be taken seriously because — as reporters will tell you — “We don’t have anything else to do this summer.”

But even without the wild spending in today’s politics and even without a lapdog press, it should have been obvious that the Straw Poll would be resuscitated.

That’s because of the influence of the religious right in the Iowa Republican Party. The message effectively communicated by the Christian conservative Iowa Family Leader organization was “Go ahead and not have the Straw Poll. We’ll do it for you!”

Surely, if the Iowa GOP decided to distance itself from the Iowa Straw Poll, Iowa Family Leader or a similar constituency would have stepped in to meet the demands of the press and the desires of some candidates, and had a poll of its own. In that case the hundreds of thousands of dollars coming in would be under its control rather than the establishment GOP.

So much for all the GOP efforts to suggest to independent voters and moderates that the party is not driven by the social agenda of the religious right. So much for Iowa efforts to suggest that the Straw Poll welcomes all GOP candidates and not just those who pander to the religious right.

Small wonder that the governing board of the Iowa GOP had little choice but to continue the Straw Poll. There will be cosmetic changes in token response to those who say the Straw Poll is phony and counter- productive when it comes to informing voters about who is deemed qualified to heal the nation and get about the business of governing. But the Straw Poll will again be won by the best panderer to the religious right, the best gun-slinger in Cook’s Wild West.

Yippie-yi-yo-ki-ay.

Herb Strentz: IT’S THE FEAR – NOT THE PROOF-- THAT’S IN THE PUDDING!

In time we’ll likely enjoy the orange pudding, a gift from one of our daughters.

Or maybe we can have it bronzed as a reminder of the terror-filled age we’ve inflicted upon ourselves.

Whether it’s called pudding elsewhere or fruitcake in the U.S., the folks of the Transportation Security Administration, ever vigilant to its pledge — “Your Security is Our Priority ” — opened and sampled our gift labeled “Heston Hidden Christmas Orange Pudding” at an airport in Hawaii.

Perhaps that is all part of what TSA calls its “risk-based strategy.”

The so-called risk, in this case, may have been suggested by the word “Hidden”, or maybe it was in the warning in cooking instructions that “overheating may cause fruit and sugar to ignite.” (Although about anything you pack is ignitable.) Or maybe the TSA focused on the word “frenzy”, as the pudding maker in the United Kingdom referred online to the “…Internet and media frenzy about Heston’s Hidden Orange Christmas Pudding.”

For whatever reason, when we got back home and unpacked, one suitcase had the TSA “Notice of Baggage Inspection… for prohibited items.” That particular piece of luggage had already carried a label indicating it had been searched and cleared by the US Department of Agriculture inspectors who check all baggage leaving Hawaii for the mainland. (Further, the pudding had been purchased by our daughter who lives in Australia and, after a brief stay on the mainland, she brought the gift to the Island of Kauai as part of Christmas gift giving. So it already had cleared security checks, including the TSA, a couple of times.)

Even though the USDA at Lihue Airport spotted the pudding and cleared the little box — about 6 inches square and 4 inches deep — the TSA folks slit open the box, removed the bowl of pudding, unsealed a bit of the lid and, judging from an indentation in the pudding, sampled the stuff. Maybe they restricted themselves to a taste test; maybe folks in HAZMAT suits took it to a lab for a more in-depth analysis.

Having found the pudding to be pudding, the TSA resealed the bowl with crisscrossed duct tape bearing the TSA label but lacking a celebratory “ENJOY!” [See attached photo]

But why mess with an item already previously cleared by the USDA and other TSA workers?

Even our other baggage should have been more suspect, containing as it did bottles of liquid more potent than orange pudding/fruitcake.

But that’s the nutty world we live in today.

We may have moved past the cliché’, “If we don’t do this, the terrorists will win.” But we don’t fully recognize the threat in “Because we do this, the terrorists have won.”

Gilbert Cranberg: SOPHOMORES AT WORK AT THE TIMES

Tankers-full of ink were spent describing the protest march in Paris attended by heads of state from all over the world. Unless I missed something, the New York Times managed to cover the event by not expending a drop of ink reporting or explaining the absence of President Obama. While in no way comparable, to this reader the performance of the paper was reminiscent of how it dealt with the deaths of millions of Jews during World War II by pretending it didn’t happen. The paper subsequently made amends for its Holocaust non-coverage by apologizing and in effect vowing never again. Except now again it inexplicably botched a major news event – President Obama’s disappearance act in Paris.

The Obama administration issued a feeble mea culpa a few days after the march admitting it was a mistake not to attend. The Times ran that story January 13 on page 12. Times readers must have been mystified by the administration’s admission of error if all they knew about the march was what they had read in the Times. The paper’s story about the administration’s mea culpa made no mention of how the Times had ignored Obama’s role in the march.

The Times’ sorry handling of the story makes a mockery of its motto, “All the news that’s fit to print”, and everyone responsible for its sophomoric performance should be disciplined.

Michael Gartner: KU KLUX KLAN

The University of Iowa, in its wisdom, a few days ago quickly removed from public view a faculty member’s sculpture made of newspaper clippings about the Ku Klux Klan. The seven-foot-tall sculpture was in the form of a cloaked and hooded Klansman.

The university called the display “divisive, insensitive, and intolerant.”

President Sally Mason apologized to one and all. 

“For failing to meet our goal of providing a respectful, all-inclusive, educational environment, the university apologizes,” she said.

An apology was indeed called for. 

Mason should have apologized for removing the statue. 

It is not the university’s role to shield or protect students from what most people view as unpleasant facts, unpopular causes or unpalatable ideas. Universities are supposed to expose and expound and explain the unpleasant as well as the pleasant, the unpopular as well as the popular, the unpalatable as well as the palatable — isn’t that what Mason’s “all-inclusive” means? And that statue provided a great opportunity to do just that.

For the Ku Klux Klan is part of the history of Iowa.  An unpleasant history, to be sure.  But history nevertheless.

As World War I came to an end, the Klan rose in power throughout the South, burning crosses, lynching black people and spreading fear and hate — hate of blacks, hate of Jews, hate of Roman Catholics and hate of immigrants. It spread north, and it gained many followers in Iowa, in both the cities and the towns. It held parades in Des Moines and Ottumwa and other cities — long lines of hooded and white-sheeted men carrying American flags and the occasional cross, often at dusk. 

A handbill for a Klan parade in Des Moines on June 12, 1926, noted it would be preceded by a picnic at the Fairgrounds. “The public is cordially invited,” the handbill said. And photos show a crowd watching the parade move through town. It included hundreds of sheeted marchers. Proudly among them: Police superintendent John W. Jenny.

Klan members were active in politics in the nation and in Iowa. They were heavily represented at the 16-day, 103-ballot 1924 Democratic convention — it was derisively known as the Klanbake — and they defeated a platform plank to condemn the Klan. 

All this could have been a great subject for a campus forum or a history class or a public-radio discussion. Instead, President Mason is appointing a committee “to advise me on options including strengthening cultural competency training and reviewing our implicit bias training, as we move forward.”

 I don’t know what that means. But it doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement of free speech.