The Reporter as Counter-Intelligence Officer

By Nicholas Stix

March 30, 2009
The Critical Critic

Last summer, when “Barack Obama’s” friends were trying to cover up his work with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers on the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (see also here), where the two men wasted $159 million, while failing to improve Chicago students’ test scores one iota, an award-winning education reporter named Linda Lenz contributed to the cause in the pages of the Chicago Sun-Times.

In “The Lady Protests Selectively,” my Oak Park, IL (just outside of Chicago) journalist friend Jim Bowman wrote at his blog, Blithe Spirit,

Three things wrong with Linda Lenz’s spirited defense in this morning’s Sun-Times of Annenberg Challenge, Obama, and William Ayers….
1. She does not address why Obama did not come clean about his extensive working relationship with Ayers,
2. She inaccurately dismisses the writer who sought access to the U. of Ill. library records as “a blogger for National Review.”
3. She hurts the cause of her magazine Catalyst Chicago in her careless attitude toward an Ayers connection…. [Read it all.]

I commented that Lenz is a self-described “progressive,” who used to be the Chicago Sun-Times education writer and, before that, she was at Jim’s old stomping grounds, the Chicago Daily News, where he was the religion reporter for the last ten years (1968-1978) of that legendary daily’s existence. She’s won awards for education writing, which are the contemporary equivalent, I suppose, of the Order of Lenin.

The impression I get of her magazine is that it was founded in 1990 to hide in plain sight what CAC and Chicago educational “progressives” were doing.

Lenz oozes contempt for Stanley Kurtz (Jim’s point #2), a very sharp education writer and, based on her ideological background and activism, I have no doubt that she thinks Bill Ayers is as much a hero for bombing federal buildings as for his more recent propaganda work.

If Obama had been smart, he would have hired Lenz as a counterintelligence officer for his campaign. Then he wouldn’t have had to try and suppress the CAC material. After all, she’s been doing counterintelligence work for a generation, working against intelligence in the classroom, and against the truth coming out about “progressive educators’” agenda.