Selective Indignation
Two years ago when Senate Democrats were blocking the nomination of Miguel Estrada to the federal court of appeals, the Tribune ripped their conduct as a “shameless display of partisanship.” There was no way to write this editorial without allowing that Senate Republicans had acted the same way (actually worse) when Bill Clinton was president. GOP senators “have gained a reputation as procrastinators,” the Tribune had said back then, wagging a finger and looking stern. “Such stalling is an affront to citizens who expect the federal courts to perform their vital functions in a timely fashion.” The kind of heartfelt rage that calls someone shameless would have to wait until the Democrats became stallers too.
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The other point many papers wanted to make was that whatever happened, it had to have been an accident. This needed to be stressed because Sgrena, who’d survived a month as the captive of Italy’s enemies only to have her head almost blown off by its friends, said afterward she suspected the Americans wanted to kill her. “Rashly charged,” answered the Philadelphia Daily News. “Outrageously said”–Chattanooga Times Free Press. “Absurd”–Houston Chronicle. “Absurd”–Cleveland’s Plain Dealer. “Absurd”–Washington Times. “Outlandish”–Chicago Tribune.
In mid-January program director Mary June Rose resigned from WGN radio, and later that month Mark Krieschen, that station’s vice president and general manager, disappeared on “indefinite leave.” Something was up at Chicago’s biggest radio station, and though nobody inside was talking, the Sun-Times’s Robert Feder wrote early and often, teasing out what he could. Krieschen was said to be in trouble, Feder reported on February 1, “because of allegations made against him by Mary June Rose.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Mike Browarski.
