Ideological contrasts

Two articles with contrasting ideologies were featured in the Bangor Daily News on Nov. 15. One honoring a journalist at the Lovejoy Award at Colby College, the second honoring the former prime minister (for 32 years) of Singapore, at the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom.

The journalist honored at Colby College said, “The media failed to take the opportunity to set the agenda for the [Clinton-Dole] campaign. The major campaign stories throughout the fall were driven by the candidates themselves rather than through the enterprise of reporters.”

The former prime minister of Singapore, “who ruled from 1959 to 1991, is one of the most compelling figures of our time,” he transformed Singapore from poverty to plenty in a single generation. “All hail Singapore’s safe streets, excellent schools and widely shared properity.” The prime minister said, “If the media is always putting down and pulling down the leaders — if they act on the basis that no leader deserves to be taken at face value, but must be demolished by impugning his motives and character, and no one knows better than the media pundits — they will have confusion and degredation. One of America’s greatest problems is that the authority of its key instituions has been undermined by the media.”

Think about the contrast in ideologies of these two men and think about the results caused by each of these ideologies. Nat Crowley Sr. Stockton Springs