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Brad Warthen: A Colossal Waste!
It looks as though Brad Warthen has a new job. According to fitsnews.com ( http://www.fitsnews.com/2009/04/21/more-details-on-uscs-warthen-hire/ ) Warthen will be working for the president of USC. Perhaps he's found his new roost. We'll see. The contract is only for three months but I suspect that somehow there'll be a place made for him in return for his many years of noble ass covering service to the education establishment.
Warthen is the "brave liberal" who, for years as political editor at Der Staat, has stuck up for Lindsey Graham and the omnipotent corporate/governmental fascism that has crushed the economy and the Constitution. Instead of speaking "truth to power" Warthen has spoken "pragmatism to fascism" again and again. Warthen was fired from Der Staat--NOT for anything he did nor for any stand he made. The financial surgeons who own Der Staat cut him away along with other useless flesh that was dragging the company under.
Warthen had turned into the appendix of Der Staat. His opinions were vanilla-flavored reaffirmations of the fascist (neo-con/liberal) establishment. Essentially, Brad thinks that if the government and their corporate whore mongers want it, it must be okey-dokey. He only got his back up when an individual politician tried to change things or to show any sort of backbone against the PC crowd. That seemed to put him eternally at odds with the libertarian-Republican governor, Mark Sanford. Warthen's hatred of Sanford's actions is probably the best indicator of Mark Sanford's good behavior in the eyes of the Constitutional crowd.
Warthen is about as socialist as the "National Socialists" of 1930s Germany, that is to say, he is indeed socialist as were the progressives in early 20th century America. These socialists are the vampires that can't give up capitalist blood so they'll keep the half-dead corporations chained near their coffins and bleed them dry to fund their pet projects and their campaigns to keep themselves in power. The zombie corporations don't mind since the elites at the top of the financial food chain are themselves plentifully rewarded with money and power (including power of the political variety).
Unfortunately, both the vampires and zombies are going to feed off the taxpayers' sweat in the end. We are the ultimate victims in this horror flick. Our sweat in the form of money and property is going to be confiscated through inflation and taxes to feed these evil-doers who love us about as much and for the same reasons as a farmer loves his mules--for as long as they stay in harness and keep working.
The politically inbred public college system is hardly a "free market." Brad Warthen is being rewarded by the fascist system he did everything in his power to promote while at Der Staat. The South Carolina Elitists' Employment Service finding a job for Warthen is clearly a payoff. The good news is that, while at USC, Warthen won't have a newspaper to propagandize with. Now we won't have to hear that giant sucking sound in the air over Columbia every time Lindsey Graham or some other moderate fascist gets in trouble with the electorate and Warthen writes an editorial defending the buffoon.
ALTERNATE REALITY:
Let's consider for a moment what might have happened if Brad had, during his years at Der Staat, relentlessly pursued ANY politician who broke the law or showed obvious signs of corruption and deviousness. Who would not want to find out the latest info on such a crusade on behalf of the people of this state? Sunshine laws currently struggling to life would have been enacted years ago. Real, positive good could have come out of such a career. In addition, job security for Warthen would have been a foregone conclusion since Der Staat would have had a media sensation equivalent to Glenn Beck.
Can you imagine having a paper in this state that did not pander to one or the other aspect of fascist politics? If Warthen had been a tiger tearing into and exposing the corruption of any politician at any level of a government that runs on quid pro quo vote trading, brother-in-law property purchasing deals, funneling campaign money to mistresses, naming public edifices after politicians still in office, etc. the entire state might have benefited from his properly pursuing what is supposed to be the role of the press in this country.
We are, or should be, revolutionaries of the 1776 variety in this country. Our Founding Fathers set us up, in every possible way, to be an adversarial form of government. This even extends to the press which, Constitutionally protected now, had a critical role in establishing this country. Warthen apparently has not studied history enough to realize this fact and, in a small slice of poetic justice, was given the boot for not properly living up to his job. If he'd been a more exciting figure, the paper would have been cutting its own throat to let him go.
I don't think Warthen's failure has resulted because he is incompetent. His English, for one example, is not always perfect but that's from my judging from his old internet blog and everyone needs a proofreader (BTW: I don't have a proofreader here either so please don't be too hard on me for my occasional errors--especially word omissions-I see those missing words even if you don't). I would assume (giving him the benefit of a doubt) Warthen at least went through the motions at work and knew what the motions were even if he didn't pursue them with any particular enthusiasm.
Warthen's main failing could be that he is lazy. It certainly requires a lot of energy to pursue crooked politicians and their legal mechanisms for maintaining their power and corruption. I can sympathize since I certainly don't have that much energy but then I'm not an editor of a major newspaper in South Carolina. If this is indeed the case, Warthen was not the man for the job to begin with and would certainly be better off in an environment that attracts lazy people. Such a work environment has apparently been bestowed upon him by his benefactors.
Warthen took the easy way out when it came to defining a mission for himself and the paper. His role could have been one of hero. He chose instead to go along to get along. He happily flowed right into the role of useful idiot and apologist for the corporate fascists in our government at local, state, and federal levels. After many years of getting by, Warthen was finally discovered by his bosses to be useless. His opinions were deemed worthless and he was one of the first to go when crunch time hit. Very few will miss his milquetoast journalism.
More than anything, it is sad to see people who have wasted incredibly huge opportunities in their lives. Warthen, if nothing else, is a colossal waste of a man's career. Most editors are just hitting their prime at Warthen's age. Warthen has hit a brick wall instead. But it was a wall he built over many years of attempting to insulate himself from the desperate reality of our crumbling government and economy. If Warthen had instead studied the truth of our country's founding as a response against the police state set up by the British crown, he might have realized the fundamental problems with our current unconstitutionally intrusive and powerful central government. A man in such a position could have seen all this coming as so many others did and sounded a clarion call that might have been picked up all across the country. For such an experiment to be conducted, however, we would have needed a real man as editor of Der Staat. Unfortunately for all of us, we did not have one there.
wtc
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