I have never liked Dianne Feinstein. I voted for her a couple of times, when I lived in California, but it was an unenthusiastic, anybody but a Republican sort of vote. She is an arrogant, rich bitch. She is pro-war and anti-freedom. She kissed George Bush’s ass the whole 8 years he was in office. She is a DINO.
Horrible Person Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
So, it’s no surprise that I disagree with her recent statements during the debate over a media shield law. (Which basically says that journalists are not to be spied on as much as members of the general public, who are just obviously threats to national security.) She said that we should only count “real” journalists (which, like the phrase “real Americans,” is both insulting and misleading), and by that she means journalists who work for real newspapers and TV stations and draw salaries and are therefore not likely to rock the boat.
Admittedly, when the law forces the lawmakers to come up with a definition for “journalist” it’s a pretty sticky problem. It’s like “Who’s a Jew?” or “Who’s a poet?” These are interesting questions for a conversation over a beer, but if the answers actually make a difference, things quickly become complicated.
Certainly, most of the people who work for newspapers and TV stations today do not fit my definition of journalist, which would be “somebody who looks for a story and reports on it.”
(disclaimer: as a blogger, one of the group Dirty Di would specifically exclude, I’m not counting myself as a journalist, either. I read and I comment. On a good night, I speculate. But I don’t make phone calls, I don’t dig through files, I don’t really work at it. I’m a blogger who would like to be a journalist. That’s all.)
I would say that a journalist (as far as the law is concerned) should be anybody who says they’re a journalist. Sort of like with freedom of religion. If people say they worship a Flying Spaghetti Monster, you have to give them all the rights of every other religion.
As far as that problem is concerned, the solution is to tax churches like everybody else.
As far as the journalist thing is concerned, the solution is for the government to stop with their damned spying on everybody.
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