So tonight, I'm sitting in bed reading Graham Greene's "The Comedians" which has totally enraptured me immediately on many levels ("The End of the Affair" is one of my favourite books), and I'm listening to George's show and a band called Arkells come on and play "Whistleblower" live, and then they explain the song's meaning.
I don't often put an excellent book down in order to randomly jump up and research a band I've never heard of before because of their political lyrics, but I am doing this now. The song is about David Barstow, an investigative journalist who has won the Pulitzer twice.
To quote Wikipedia:
"In his award-winning story in The New York Times, headlined "Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon's Hidden Hand", Barstow reported that the Department of Defense recruited over 75 retired military officers, some with undisclosed ties to defense contractors, to appear on major news outlets as military analysts commenting on the Iraq war and the case in its favor. He wrote, "Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse—an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks." Although the Pentagon initially issued a statement exonerating the program, the Pentagon inspector general's office later said it was flawed, and the statement was withdrawn."Right?
Every once in a while moments like this happen to me so that I continue to get out of bed each the morning.
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