Serial: S02 Episode 10: Thorny Politics
March 17, 2016 6:35 AM - Subscribe
Are you hearing what I'm hearing?
I feel like I would have enjoyed a full episode just on his recovery. I was fascinated by the details about how he wouldn't sleep in the bed at first. And how when he wouldn't sit in a chair everyone followed his lead and sat on the floor to make him comfortable.
The digging into how the Rose Garden thing happened and why it was a mistake was great reporting.
posted by dnash at 10:20 AM on March 18, 2016 [3 favorites]
The digging into how the Rose Garden thing happened and why it was a mistake was great reporting.
posted by dnash at 10:20 AM on March 18, 2016 [3 favorites]
What's perhaps most frustrating about the Rose Garden situation is this:
On the one hand, yes, it was a major mistake on the part of the Obama administration. On the other hand, it is immensely disquieting the degree to which members of the military, in their zeal to protest a stupid thing said by someone who Bergdahl had no control over, are contributing to an environment where the only politically tenable action may end up being throwing the book at Bergdahl to a degree that even those who want him punished would not see as reflective of justice.
If Bergdahl ends up with a life sentence, I think those who jumped up to defend the honor of the military (as if this somehow could be an apolitical act), and particularly those complicit in the Fox News rumor mill / bullshit factory, will have had a major part in making that happen.
posted by tocts at 6:41 PM on March 20, 2016
On the one hand, yes, it was a major mistake on the part of the Obama administration. On the other hand, it is immensely disquieting the degree to which members of the military, in their zeal to protest a stupid thing said by someone who Bergdahl had no control over, are contributing to an environment where the only politically tenable action may end up being throwing the book at Bergdahl to a degree that even those who want him punished would not see as reflective of justice.
If Bergdahl ends up with a life sentence, I think those who jumped up to defend the honor of the military (as if this somehow could be an apolitical act), and particularly those complicit in the Fox News rumor mill / bullshit factory, will have had a major part in making that happen.
posted by tocts at 6:41 PM on March 20, 2016
Serial and the Fiction of Objectivity.
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:44 PM on March 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:44 PM on March 21, 2016 [1 favorite]
Finally got around to listening to this on my drive home from work tonight and while I enjoyed the "oh wait, we're journalists!" moment, I can't get over how genuinely surprised I am that the Army never actually investigated whether anyone died as a result of Bergdahl's desertion. I mean, goddamn. And it doesn't even sound like it required that much work for Serial to discover it all led back to nothing.
I also agree that I could've listened to a whole lot more about Bergdahl's experience in Germany and how the debriefing and recovery process goes. The glimpse we got was really interesting.
posted by lullaby at 3:26 PM on March 23, 2016
I also agree that I could've listened to a whole lot more about Bergdahl's experience in Germany and how the debriefing and recovery process goes. The glimpse we got was really interesting.
posted by lullaby at 3:26 PM on March 23, 2016
I can't get over how genuinely surprised I am that the Army never actually investigated whether anyone died as a result of Bergdahl's desertion.
Doesn't surprise me much. What does it add to anything? They're never going to charge him with anything based on it, because it would be so easy for the defense to say "What about all these other people who have fucked up and people died? We gonna start charging everyone in the maintenance chain every time a plane goes down?"
posted by Etrigan at 7:10 PM on March 23, 2016
Doesn't surprise me much. What does it add to anything? They're never going to charge him with anything based on it, because it would be so easy for the defense to say "What about all these other people who have fucked up and people died? We gonna start charging everyone in the maintenance chain every time a plane goes down?"
posted by Etrigan at 7:10 PM on March 23, 2016
Maybe I'm just a rube but I never parsed all the talking points and the testimony of, at least, Hagel and General Dahl that they had not seen evidence anyone died as a result to mean no one had bothered to check. So many people who do make that claim have been dismissed as conspiracy theorists (and/or Republicans), when it turns out the Army's response was a combination of "meh, it was all the [Afghan] election" and outright misleading people into believing that they had investigated when it turns out they had not.
I'd been assuming it was more about how difficult it would be to actually prove anything, especially after time had passed. Considering the sheer amount I heard about the fallout over the subsequent months in Afghanistan, I just didn't think the Bergdahl case could be investigated without a cursory glance into, well, the consequences of him walking away. And while I know next to nothing about legal matters, I suppose I was also assuming that second-order effects would already be relevant to the prosecution's case (rather than laying extra charges against him, which would be ridiculous). Is this not true of regular AWOL cases? Rather than something like "you went AWOL and left your platoon without a guy, which meant XYZ", why not "you deserted and the category-5 shitstorm the DUSTWUN kicked up resulted in XYZ"?
posted by lullaby at 4:03 AM on March 24, 2016
I'd been assuming it was more about how difficult it would be to actually prove anything, especially after time had passed. Considering the sheer amount I heard about the fallout over the subsequent months in Afghanistan, I just didn't think the Bergdahl case could be investigated without a cursory glance into, well, the consequences of him walking away. And while I know next to nothing about legal matters, I suppose I was also assuming that second-order effects would already be relevant to the prosecution's case (rather than laying extra charges against him, which would be ridiculous). Is this not true of regular AWOL cases? Rather than something like "you went AWOL and left your platoon without a guy, which meant XYZ", why not "you deserted and the category-5 shitstorm the DUSTWUN kicked up resulted in XYZ"?
posted by lullaby at 4:03 AM on March 24, 2016
Rather than something like "you went AWOL and left your platoon without a guy, which meant XYZ", why not "you deserted and the category-5 shitstorm the DUSTWUN kicked up resulted in XYZ"?
The military and its justice system -- especially at the ground level -- have a certain devotion to following rules because they are rules. I have been in and around many, many situations where the argument was "Nothing bad happened because someone did something wrong and/or stupid", and that does not fly. At all. If something bad does happen, that's a factor against the person who did something wrong and/or stupid, but the lack of bad result doesn't much matter.
The Army doesn't need (or, apparently, want) to hammer Bergdahl with everything they can possibly hammer him with, so they didn't bother to check whether they have a bigger hammer available.
posted by Etrigan at 6:19 AM on March 24, 2016
The military and its justice system -- especially at the ground level -- have a certain devotion to following rules because they are rules. I have been in and around many, many situations where the argument was "Nothing bad happened because someone did something wrong and/or stupid", and that does not fly. At all. If something bad does happen, that's a factor against the person who did something wrong and/or stupid, but the lack of bad result doesn't much matter.
The Army doesn't need (or, apparently, want) to hammer Bergdahl with everything they can possibly hammer him with, so they didn't bother to check whether they have a bigger hammer available.
posted by Etrigan at 6:19 AM on March 24, 2016
The ratio of exposition to interviews is really getting me down this season, and the last two episodes have been the worst. I don't even understand sometimes why they are doing it this way. The last five minutes could have featured their reporter explaining that she searched here and there and found no evidence of an inquiry into deaths, but instead we have Sarah explaining that the reporter found that.
This is how to write a book, not how to do a podcast, in my know-it-all opinion.
Sarah Koenig is super smart and insightful, but I think her editorial partner should step in and recommend she do less musing and more letting her sources speak for themselves. It just makes for more dynamic radio.
posted by latkes at 8:23 AM on March 24, 2016
This is how to write a book, not how to do a podcast, in my know-it-all opinion.
Sarah Koenig is super smart and insightful, but I think her editorial partner should step in and recommend she do less musing and more letting her sources speak for themselves. It just makes for more dynamic radio.
posted by latkes at 8:23 AM on March 24, 2016
I think Koenig and Snyder made some deliberate choices that, inadvertently or deliberately, lessened a lot of the aspects that people liked about season 1. It makes me wonder if they prefer season 2 because it's not all over the place in the same way.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:36 PM on March 24, 2016
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:36 PM on March 24, 2016
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posted by Etrigan at 7:33 AM on March 18, 2016