A New Yorker Kind of Guy

Ben Stein unloads on Thomas Bass, who recently wrote an article in the New Yorker entitled, "The Spy Who Loved Us" in the May 23, 2005 issue. The article shows the reverence western media had (and in many cases, still has) for Time magazine correspondent and Communist spy, Pham Xuan An, who helped to kill thousands of civilians and U.S. soldiers and ultimately help defeat the U.S. in Vietnam.

In this article, which I would guess to be about 8,000 words or more, there is not one hint, not one whisper, of sympathy for the American soldiers who fought and died or were maimed in Vietnam. Not one sliver of anger at a man who took American money and helped kill Americans. Not a word about the mass murder of civilians during Tet.

If the New Yorker is one of the flagships of the Mainstream Media fleet, they are sailing in maddeningly disloyal, contemptuous waters and obviously have been for a while. Small wonder the media gloried in Mark Felt and Watergate last week. In those days, Americans actually trusted the Mainstream Media. The New Yorker piece by Prof. Bass makes it clear how wrong we were. He's a fine writer but a man whose piece lacks any moral compass at all. And what of the fellow journalists in Saigon cheering him on? Now we know a bit more about why the war turned out as it did.