Tuesday, February 13, 2007

The two-year period comes due this Thursday. Even Goldberg now realizes his
prediction was totally wrong -- with poll after poll showing most Americans
do not "agree that the war was worth it." So shouldn't Goldberg -- or
somebody -- pay off the $1,000? The bet was offered near the end of an
overheated blogo-debate between Goldberg and Dr. Juan Cole, the Middle East
scholar from University of Michigan. In proposing the wager to Cole,
Goldberg goaded: "Money where your mouth is, doc. One caveat: Because I
don't think it's right to bet on such serious matters for personal gain, if
I win, I'll donate the money to the USO." Cole reacted to the proposed bet
with disgust -- calling it symbolic of "the neo-imperial American Right.
They are making their own fortunes with a wager on the fates of others, whom
they are treating like ants." Wrote Cole: "Here we have a prominent American
media star ... betting on Iraqis as though they are greyhounds in a race."
Just before Goldberg proposed his bet to Cole, the professor had fumed:
"Goldberg is just a dime-a-dozen pundit. Cranky rich people hire
sharp-tongued and relatively uninformed young people all the time and put
them on the mass media to badmouth the poor, spread bigotry, exalt mindless
militarism, promote anti-intellectualism, and ensure that right-wing views
come to predominate." "Relatively uninformed" seemed accurate to me, but I
wondered about the "mindless militarism" charge -- although I knew Goldberg
was one of dozens of pundits who mindlessly cheered on the Iraq invasion
(and suffered no consequences). Then I saw a 2003 column in which Goldberg
wrote of "bombing Afghanistan forward into the stone age" and relished this
anecdote: In the weeks prior to the war to liberate Afghanistan, a good
friend of mine would ask me almost every day, "Why aren't we killing people
yet?" And I never had a good answer for him. Because one of the most
important and vital things the United States could do after 9/11 was to kill
people. Since Goldberg felt compelled to tell us -- as he gallantly offered
the $1,000 bet -- that it was money he "can hardly spare right now," you may
wonder about his ability to pay. A look at his bio shows that Goldberg has
had a high-flying career in mainstream media -- from CNN contributor to PBS
producer to USA Today Board of Contributors. (Full disclosure: In 2000, he
and I wrote relatively-friendly point/counterpoint columns for Brill's
Content.) One would think he could easily afford $1,000, especially for a
charity like the USO.

But who knows -- maybe Goldberg has racked up huge gambling debts from
ignorant wagers like the one tendered to Cole.

So I have a solution. Let the Tribune media conglomerate pay the $1,000. Not
only does Tribune syndicate Goldberg's column, it was Tribune's Los Angeles
Times that added the analytically-impaired Goldberg to its columnist roster
in November 2005 -- at the same time it fired renowned columnist Robert
Scheer, whose Iraq analysis had been breathtakingly accurate.

Despite financial upheavals, the highly-profitable Tribune Company has
plenty of money, as it lays off journalists en masse and squeezes the life
out once proud newspapers like the L.A. Times.

Professor Cole may be right to dismiss Jonah Goldberg as a "dime-a-dozen
pundit." But it's time to hold media corporations like Tribune responsible
for elevating the Goldbergs and their reckless predictions -- as they
strangle newspapers and silence serious journalists like Bob Scheer.