Transcripts

Transcripts are a wonderful tool that we have been using since the advent of the electronic media. We use the electronic media to disseminate our message and information and then transcribe it so journalists can copy it and fact check it. Sometimes they can be humorous like this recent exchange on CNN with Larry King and Jon Stewart:

Larry King suggested to Jon Stewart that the current low ebb of the Democrats and Republicans was good for Mr. Stewart's business.

King: So, in a sense you're happy over this.

Stewart: No.

King: This gives you fodder.

Mr. Stewart replied that if government "began to solve problems in a rational way rather than just a way that involved political dividends, we would be the happiest people in the world to turn our attention to idiots like, you know, media people, no offense."

King: So, you don't want it to be bad?

Stewart: Did you really just ask me if I want it to be bad?

King: Yes because you--

Stewart: What are you--I have kids. What do you think? I want things to corrode to the point where we're all living in huts?

King: You don't want Medicare to fail?

Stewart: Are you insane?

KING: No.

STEWART: You're literally asking me if I would prefer -- yes, Larry, what I'm saying to you as a comedian I want old people to suffer, old and poor people to suffer. That is -- that is -- what we want is -- what seems absurd to me is the length that Washington just seems out of touch with the desires of Americans to be spoken to as though they are adults.

Now this was hysterical to watch and now we have it transcribed for future humor. However when it comes to politics transcription become a serious business as they show what a politician actually knew and when he knew it. This becomes dangerous ammunition either proving infallibly that the politician knew what he was talking about, or that he was lying to save his ass. Its understandable that politicians don't like giving this up, especially presidents. Both Clinton and Bush have delayed the release of transcripts to two different reactions.

As Salon.com so articulately puts it(all emphasis is mine):

Despite the impression left lingering by the nation's leading newspapers, a close scrutiny of the record fails to show that Hillary Clinton is guilty of any Whitewater crimes. In spite of the strenuous efforts of the independent counsel's lengthy, multimillion-dollar investigation, there still has not been any evidence presented to show that the first lady broke the law, or even did anything unethical.

Take the infamous missing billing records of Hillary Clinton's work for Madison Guaranty. When the records finally turned up in the White House in 1996, after having been subpoenaed two years earlier, charges of "obstruction of justice" filled the airwaves and the halls of the Republican Congress. New York Times columnist William Safire called the first lady a "congenital liar." Drowned out in the hubbub was the fact that the records actually substantiated in great detail what Hillary Clinton had repeatedly testified to, publicly and under oath.

and then there is what Bush did as Newsweek put it (again emphasis is mine):

Administration and congressional officials said that the administration provided congressional investigators earlier this year with official transcripts of the daily noon FEMA conference calls conducted before, during and after Katrina. But the administration initially told Congress that the transcript for the Aug. 29 call--the call congressional investigators were most curious about, given that it occurred as the hurricane was actually battering the Gulf Coast--did not exist, with officials initially telling Capitol Hill that someone at FEMA or Homeland Security forgot to push the button on a tape recorder.

"Everybody has been looking for that transcript," former FEMA chief Michael Brown said Wednesday.

A White House official unexpectedly e-mailed the transcript to NEWSWEEK earlier today Wednesday morning--initially without explaining that it was the missing transcript. Two officials familiar with congressional investigations said that the document was turned over to Capitol Hill investigators Tuesday night. Administration officials told both Congress and NEWSWEEK that FEMA officials in Atlanta had taped the Aug. 29 conference call by aiming a video camera at a TV screen rather than following the usual recording procedure. The videotape was subsequently discovered and transcribed.

. . . Congressional investigators say they can't recall seeing a transcript of this Aug. 31 conference call. An administration official said the White House is withholding the Aug. 31 transcript in order to protect the confidentiality of communications between the president and his advisers. Brown now says that after initially being deeply immersed in the crisis, "I think the president assumed, despite my warnings about FEMA's marginalization, that it could handle a catastrophic disaster, too. Clearly that was not the case because of budget and personnel cuts imposed by Homeland Security."

Now lets put this in perspective here one is a land deal where the people were actually innocent of the charges and the transcript vindicated them. The other is a national tragedy which cost thousands of people their lives and millions of dollars in damages and the near loss of a major American city. The first was persecuted by the media and their opponents and the other has been given a free pass.

What a world we live in.