I understand what Josh is doing, trying to gin up a sort of scandal of his own. In this case, the scandal is a real one, the utter ineptitude of the Beltway Media; the sheer ignorance and stupidity exhibited on that story. They won't cover that Josh.
Two pieces published this morning make this clear. First, here is Atrios making fun of CNN's John Roberts:
In What Universe?
CNN's John Roberts:
This was a rare occasion when "The Wall Street Journal" and "The Washington Post" both agreed on something.
Yes, Fred Hiatt is anti-Iraq Debacle. Riiiight, John Roberts. Clueless.
And this from Paul Krugman:
Four years into a war fought to eliminate a nonexistent threat, we all have renewed appreciation for the power of the Big Lie: people tend to believe false official claims about big issues, because they can’t picture their leaders being dishonest about such things.
But there’s another political lesson I don’t think has sunk in: the power of the Little Lie — the small accusation invented out of thin air, followed by another, and another, and another. Little Lies aren’t meant to have staying power. Instead, they create a sort of background hum, a sense that the person facing all these accusations must have done something wrong.
. . . Before 9/11, however, the right-wing noise machine mainly relied on little lies. And now it has returned to its roots.
The Clinton years were a parade of fake scandals: Whitewater, Troopergate, Travelgate, Filegate, Christmas-card-gate. At the end, there were false claims that Clinton staff members trashed the White House on their way out.
. . . This is the context in which you need to see the wild swings Republicans have been taking at Nancy Pelosi.
First, there were claims that the speaker of the House had demanded a lavish plane for her trips back to California. One Republican leader denounced her “arrogance of extravagance” — then, when it became clear that the whole story was bogus, admitted that he had never had any evidence.
Now there’s Ms. Pelosi’s fact-finding trip to Syria, which Dick Cheney denounced as “bad behavior” — unlike the visit to Syria by three Republican congressmen a few days earlier, or Newt Gingrich’s trip to China when he was speaker.
Ms. Pelosi has responded coolly, dismissing the administration’s reaction as a “tantrum.” But it’s more than that: the hysterical reaction to her trip is part of a political strategy, aided and abetted by news organizations that give little lies their time in the sun.
. . . Even Time’s Joe Klein, a media insider if anyone is, wrote of the Pelosi trip that “the media coverage of this on CNN and elsewhere has been abysmal.” For example, CNN ran a segment about Ms. Pelosi’s trip titled “Talking to Terrorists.”
The G.O.P.’s reversion to the Little Lie technique is a symptom of political weakness, of a party reduced to trivial smears because it has nothing else to offer. But the technique will remain effective — and the U.S. political scene will remain ugly — as long as many people in the news media keep playing along.
This is a great piece by Krugman but almost irrelevant. What everyone is missing is that Iraq trumps all and the Bush Administration, the GOP and the Media are utterly untrusted right now. They are irrelevant in how the American People feel about the Debacle, and how the Debacle is the most important issue by far.
They can write trumped up stories about Pelosi's scarves and Carl Levin can act a fool but as long as Democrats are trying to end the Iraq Debacle they will be who the American People trust. Not the Media.
And that is the great danger I think, that Democrats do not realize where their political power is coming from. You feel that they think they have done some great political work when basically they just happened to be there, on the other side.
We'll see what they have learned soon.
