Make No Mistake
The Villagers’ biscuits are burnin’.
Yesterday was actually quite an extraordinary day in our political culture because Scott McClellan’s revelations forced the establishment media to defend themselves against long-standing accusations of their corruption and annexation by the government — criticisms which, until yesterday, they literally just ignored, blacked-out, and suppressed. Bizarrely enough, it took a “tell-all” Washington book from Scott McClellan, of all people, to force these issues out into the open, and he seems — unwittingly or otherwise — to have opened a huge flood gate that has long been held tightly shut.
Network executives obviously know that these revelations are quite threatening to their brand. Yesterday, they wheeled out their full stable of multi-millionaire corporate stars who play the role of authoritative journalists on the TV to join with their White House allies in mocking and deriding McClellan’s claims. One media star after the next — Tom Brokaw, David Gregory, Charlie Gibson and Brian Williams, Tim Russert, Wolf Blitzer — materialized in sync to insist that nothing could be more absurd than the suggestion that they are “deferential, complicit enablers” in government propaganda.
The shit is blowing wide open and as citizens of Lefty Blogistan, I would like to congratulate each and every one of you for Being Right All Along. Probably nobody in the corporate media is going to do that, so everybody, all together now.
1. Raise your arm.
2. Bend your elbow.
3. Pat yourself on the back.
Now, smile, because that’s probably all you’re getting.
This is the difference between the conspiracies that the Right sees and the ones we write about. Ours are real.
Several GOP tools are starting the predictable wailing that Scotty Mac’s book is getting more coverage because it’s slanted toward the “Liberal Media”, ignoring the fact that the information contained between its covers renders the very phrase “Liberal Media” oxymoronic on its face. It’s made even sweet Alex Koppelman’s normally affable, slightly bemused tone turn steely.
Break it down right here for the People, Alex:
As so often happens when people with little or no experience in the actual news business criticize it, the critics’ lack of knowledge has led to a fundamental flaw in their argument. A former White House press secretary coming out and slagging his former boss and former colleagues is news, especially when he offers revelations about the workings of the White House. That’s why McClellan’s book has gotten so much coverage, and the same thing would have happened in the Clinton administration.
Aw, shit.
The books written by Feith and Fleischer are a different story altogether. Feith came in to his book with a less-than-stellar reputation for his work in the lead-up to the war in Iraq. Retired Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the invasion, reportedly called Feith “the stupidest fucking guy on the planet,” and the assessments Feith’s office produced during the run-up to the war were criticized in a report from the Pentagon’s inspector general. Those things by themselves don’t necessarily mean that any book Feith wrote wouldn’t be newsworthy. But what he wrote was an apologia that attempted to shift the blame for the quagmire in Iraq onto others. (He actually still argues that part of the reason for the problems in Iraq is that the administration ultimately decided not to go with the plan he favored and install a group heavy on Iraqi exiles as a provisional government immediately after the invasion; that group would have included the repeatedly disgraced Ahmed Chalabi.) For that reason, the collective yawn the book inspired from the press shouldn’t have come as any sort of surprise.
And Fleischer’s book, too, was devoid of any new information of real substance. In a biting review of it for the New York Times, critic Michiko Kakutani wrote that the book was “essentially a collection of talking points hastily pasted together with large slatherings of the vitriol and exasperation the author seems to have accumulated … It’s an extended exercise in Mr. Fleischer’s spinning his own earlier spin.”
The sort of thing both Feith and Fleischer wrote, regardless of who the spin favors, doesn’t make for big headlines and it certainly doesn’t grab readers. In short, it’s not news. McClellan’s book is. That, not bias, accounts for the difference in coverage.
And finally, back to Glennzilla to…play…us…out. What does that even mean? There’s no words there!
FUCK IT! WE’LL DO IT LIVE!!
This is nothing less than compelling evidence that, in terms of our establishment press, our media is anything but “free.” Corporate executives continuously suppressed critical reporting of the Government and the war and forced their paid reporters to mimic the administration line. The evidence proving that comes not from media critics or shrill left-wing bloggers but from those who work at these news outlets, including some of their best-known and highest-paid journalists who are attesting to such facts from first-hand knowledge despite its being in their interests not to speak out about such things.
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
And I feel fine.
26 Responses to “Make No Mistake”
By Dan on May 29, 2008 11:58 am |
Hi TRex. I’m a regular reader but irregular poster. I meant to write this about your ESPN “joke” post: In the coming months there will be a great deal of prejudiced crap spewed and people will attempt to explain or apologize for it by saying it was stupid, or dumb, or thoughtless, or inartful, or any number of other other words that are kind substitutes for “racist.” And we will get a lot of the Don Imus Defense: I’m a good person who said a bad thing. Let’s start knocking that down starting right now, OK? No, you aren’t a good person who said a bad thing, you’re a racist who said a racist thing. We need to call it what it is, and call the people who say it what they are. Let’s not let the bigots hide behind euphemisms, OK?
By TRex on May 29, 2008 12:07 pm |
Dan said
Actually, the credit for that post goes to the TReehouse’s coblogger, Betsy. And I feel like she was pretty clear, but she’ll be around to discuss it at some point, I’m sure.
By Dan on May 29, 2008 12:11 pm |
Doh! I guess I should start reading the bylines in addition to the posts. (blush)
By Big Mitch on May 29, 2008 12:12 pm |
Loved the video, and especially the Alaska Flag which appears at 1:56 of it. Dan, thank you for de-lurking: Good point!
By madmommy on May 29, 2008 12:14 pm |
Well, you’re off to a rip roaring start this morning T!! I am soooo loving watching these tools of corporate America fall all over themselves trying to spin their way out of the truth. Fucking liberal media indeed! Assholes.
By punaise on May 29, 2008 12:22 pm |
“Fuck it. We’ll do it: lie!”
By punaise on May 29, 2008 12:29 pm |
They were “victims of their own professionalism.”
Glenn, quoting D. Ignatius in the link in the post (see ‘Update”):
punaise said
By blogenfreude on May 29, 2008 12:54 pm |
No one could have predicted that a bunch of billionaires would band together to help the Boy King have his little war.
By MR Bill on May 29, 2008 1:03 pm |
Off early, and kept having power outages in a cool and cloudy Blue Ridge this am.
No one could have predicted the brilliant investigative journalists who threw everything they could (Whitewater, Travelgate, Billinggate, the Kitchen sink)at Bill Clinton and his administration would become weak and supine and incurious and entirely dependent on Administration sources, unable to hear any dissent or even find it in the runup to the Iraq War..
By peanutbutter on May 29, 2008 1:34 pm |
blogenfreude said
Au contraire, of course we could have. All you have to do is follow the same damn trail throughout South America in the 70’s and 80’s moving on up and out from there
By Gnome de Plume on May 29, 2008 1:42 pm |
punaise said
That is such a bunch of horse apples. Somehow I heard experts on Terry Gross time after time explaining that there were no WMD’s and no Al Queda in Iraq. The information was there for the taking. It just wasn’t in the circular press for them to self reference. Those poor downtrodden journamalists could not be bothered to go outside their comfy little cocoons.
By wangdangdoodle on May 29, 2008 2:26 pm |
Professionalism? He wouldn’t know professionalism if it bit him on the ass. I’d like to think I’ve heard it all now, but I know better.
By Boudicca on May 29, 2008 2:31 pm |
On a less political note. . . gosh, I loves me some Nina Simone.
By peanutbutter on May 29, 2008 3:21 pm |
OT: odd but interesting article:
Michelle Obama In Phoenix: “Fear Is A Useless Emotion”
By punaise on May 29, 2008 3:24 pm |
they all deserve the profess-shun-all treatment
By wangdangdoodle on May 29, 2008 4:05 pm |
punaise said
I will, and-ever, to parse-severe.
By punaise on May 29, 2008 4:20 pm |
wangdangdoodle said
MSM reporters have confused the Wurlitzer Lies with the Pulitzer Prize.
By wangdangdoodle on May 29, 2008 4:29 pm |
I LOVE that song! Er, that other song…
By Laura on May 29, 2008 4:32 pm |
punaise said
What a chicken-hawk pulls on a chicken-shit: the Pullet Surprise.
By wangdangdoodle on May 29, 2008 4:35 pm |
Dayam, Laura! I do believe punaise has met his match.
By punaise on May 29, 2008 4:42 pm |
wangdangdoodle said
“uncle!”
By Laura on May 29, 2008 4:44 pm |
wangdangdoodle said
You’re very kind, wdd, but I am no where near his league. (and pullet surprise is something of a chestnut…I just decorated it with chickens…!)
By Laura on May 29, 2008 4:59 pm |
OT but noteworthy:
Iguanas have rights at Guantanamo: prisoners don’t
U.S. laws protect iguanas; but human beings are beyond the law’s protection. This is what happens when lizard brains run the world.
By Laura on May 29, 2008 5:12 pm |
By the way, apropos complicit enablers, here’s a link to a marvelous slap down of David Ignatius by Barnett Rubin (on the News Hour) earlier this month. The worm got turned but good.
By TRex on May 29, 2008 5:14 pm |
Fresh thread:
http://www.iamtrex.com/?p=958
By Big Mitch on May 29, 2008 5:32 pm |
O/T O/C (Off topic, of course.)
From today’s NYT editorial page:
For all of its self serving, the book does serve one good purpose: It is a reminder that we still do not know precisely how far Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and the others were willing to wade into that “culture of deception” to sell Americans on the disastrous Iraq war.
The Senate Intelligence Committee was supposed to answer that question years ago by comparing what officials claimed about Iraq — its missing weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein’s hyped ties with Al Qaeda — with what they knew.
Senator Pat Roberts, the former Republican chairman, tried to make sure the report never was completed. The current Democratic chairman, Senator John Rockefeller IV, is expected to finally issue it next week. We’ll be interested to see how Scott McClellan comes across.
I was unaware that this was coming out. This could be very big, because the economy has knocked Iraq off the top of the list of issues most important to the electorate. This could correct that, and return to the top of the list an issue where Democrats and the American public are clearly on the same side, and McCain is not.