At least in Australia. It seems to me that the mainstream media were ignoring the swift vets in the hope that they would go away; then after a couple of days, they felt obliged to cover the story; finally, they started to cover the story by covering the lack of coverage, and here we are today.
I haven't read the detailed criticisms of Kerry's decorations. I don't intend to, and I don't think they're very important. Kerry did serve; he did command a swift boat; he did get wounded; he did pull some guy out of the water, at least once: all good. I'm not interested in quibbles about comma placement in the after-action reports, or whether he ever exaggerated when telling war stories.
I do want to hear about this Christmas in Cambodia thing, though. Here's a summary of his statements.
From a New York Times Op-Ed today:
Imagine if one company controlled the card catalog of every library in the world. The influence it would have over what people see, read and discuss would be enormous. Now consider online search engines.
ARGH! The sheer idiocy of this opening paragraph is giving me chest pains. "Imagine if one company controlled the card catalog of every library in the world." Wow, sounds awful. Orwellian, even. One company -- presumably, one EVIL MULTINATIONAL CORPORATION -- controlling all those card catalogs.
"Now consider online search engines." OK! I am considering them! Let's see -- they are companies whose websites attempt to index the vast diversity of content on the web. Unlike card catalogs, they aren't naturally monopolistic.
Few people realize that 95 percent of all Web searches in the United States are handled by two companies, Google and Yahoo, either directly or through other sites that use their technology. In the case of Google, whose shares started to trade publicly last week, the company holds the world's largest index of Web content, at more than four billion pages, and handles more than 200 million searches a day. The influence of search companies in determining what users worldwide can see and do online is breathtaking.
"The influence...is breathtaking." Breathtaking -- because with Google people actually get useful results, whereas the web was much less useful under Altavista's crapgorithm.
The purpose of this article is to complain that Google is a very successful company in the search engine market. I guess this means Google has really arrived: they're getting the Microsoft treatment.
How about giving it back to the newspapers?
"Imagine if one company controlled the only broadsheet newspaper distributed in the nation's largest city. The influence it would have over what people see, read and discuss would be enormous."
Thank God for the web and Google News -- it protects us from the otherwise-monopolies of the New York Times and Los Angeles Times.