CyberAlert -- 09/05/1996 -- Hillary the Foot Binder; To CNN U.S. & Iraq Equals

Two items today:

1) On CBS on Sunday John Leonard charged that "Our pathological fear of Hillary and any other uppity woman, whatever her politics, is a form of foot binding as well as a species of hate radio."

2) CNN's Bernard Shaw, discussing the U.S. strike on Iraq, says his network doesn't "support any particular government."

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MRC news analyst Steve Kaminski caught this bit of insightful analysis in John Leonard's commentary about First Ladies. From the September 1 CBS Sunday Morning: "Nancy pushed Ronnie into an arms treaty with the Russians because she wanted him to win a Nobel Prize. So maybe astrology was healthier than whatever the rest of the nuke-Managua-globo-cops were smoking in the Reagan White House. That Hillary should talk to Eleanor Roosevelt bothers some of us less than the fact that her husband obviously doesn't.

"Elizabeth Dole has promised that if her husband is elected, she ll go back to work and stay out of the White House so as not to make mischief. One remembers the 1992 campaign, when Hillary was told to make cookies instead of policy. Isn't it amazing that women have invented or designed or discovered the prototype computer, nitrate fertilizer, penicillin, integral calculus, food refrigeration, space helmets, atomic parity, automatic flight control, pulsars and even DNA, not to mention square-bottomed bags, ice cream cones, vacuum canning and the gardenia. And yet we're still afraid of what they'll whisper into the ears of their powerful husbands.

"Might we at least concede that the people we'll marry say more about us than the people we select for the second place on the ticket of our glory-hounding selves; nobody elects vice presidents, either. Our pathological fear of Hillary and any other uppity woman, whatever her politics, is a form of foot binding as well as a species of hate radio."

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During a live interview Tuesday morning with CNN's Bernard Shaw, Iraqi Deputy Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz told Shaw that Peter Arnett would be allowed into Iraq "if you promise that you will give candid, objective, fair coverage of the situation, then you are welcome." As recounted in Wednesday's Washington Post, Shaw shot back:

"Mr. Minister, as a professional journalist, as an employee of CNN, and as a colleague of Peter Arnett, I don't think that CNN's objectivity, our candor or our fairness or our sense of balance can be questioned by any government. We have not only had this live interview with you by telephone, but we have been carrying excerpts from President Saddam Hussein. We have no axes to grind, we don't support any particular government. Our only objective is to report fairly and objectively and we would greatly appreciate it if you would give Mr. Arnett and other CNN personnel permission to enter your country so that we can report both sides of the story."

But CNN's not above accepting free speech protection from the U.S. government. -- Brent Baker

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