Patterico's Pontifications

4/30/2005

Vik Rubenfeld Tears Apart the L.A. Times

Filed under: Dog Trainer — Patterico @ 5:08 pm



Vik Rubenfeld has an excellent critique of an L.A. Times sub-headline that reads:

Thirty years after the fall of Saigon, the firmly Communist nation has a flourishing economy, social freedom and deep ties with the U.S.

Vik shows how the article itself shows that Vietnam’s economy is anything but communistic. As Vik notes:

The subhead could just as well have been: “Capitalism Brings Vietnam Out of a Communist Dark Age.”

An excellent post. Read it all.

4 Responses to “Vik Rubenfeld Tears Apart the L.A. Times

  1. I couldn’t even finish the article when I saw it this morning. I was so disgusted by it, I haven’t even looked at the rest of the paper yet. And when the LA Times will not even correct a single, easily proven lie by Mike Davis – I know better to even bother to try and get corrections of entire stories are totally detached from reality. So when do we start our own newspaper?

    Brady Westwater (72f6df)

  2. My post on this at Cheat-Seeking-Missiles instantly drew a comment from VietPundit linking to a post that paints an entirely different picture. This marks twice in two months that the LAT has praised the Asian Communists — first North Korea, now this. The guy who owns the Vietnamese restaurant I favor was pretty angry at the paper today.

    Laer (fe63a8)

  3. The LAT is run by a bunch of NYT wannabees on the East Coast. It’s a joke. The article also buries on page A8 the ugly truth, that most Vietnamese are dirt poor, the countryside is in feudal poverty, and the cities are entirely dependent on sweatshop style cheap labor, assembling most low quality textile goods and shoes. Slaves for Wal Mart, Nike, and Kathie Lee Gifford, in other words. There is no legal economy, with severe restrictions on future growth. Everything is cash or barter, currency is not exportable without restrictions, and there is no credit or loan systems.

    Yes, Hanio is undergoing a building boom, like Shanghai before it, funded mostly by the Government and favor-seeking crony capitalists. Go 50 miles outside each city and you run up against horrific, rural poverty. The economy is choked with corruption, with the Party raking off it’s mark just like in China.

    Of course, the LAT ideologically loves this stuff, they’ve run sycophantic coverage of Kim Jong-Il, most recently in a movie review about a “documentary” about the nice normal lives of North Koreans. How “cool” it is that State Radio is piped into everyone’s house with no off switch. This matches their glee at the North Vietnamese victory, celebrated on CNN, NBC, CBS, and of course the LAT.

    LAT loves their Commies.

    Jim Rockford (e09923)

  4. Fisker’s Whiskers VI
    Week 6 of The Fisker's Whiskers is here and another week has produced more outstanding fisking of maddeningly biased, misleading or just plain lazy journalism. And now, let's just get down to business and roll out what this weeks Fisker&#…

    The Word Unheard (20fd31)


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