TeeVee last night was a nostalgic Time Warp (c. 2001-2003)

I happened to watch TeeVee for a little while around the 9 O'Clock hour, and it was as if the last three years had vanished. It was all a very depressing Media Time Warp. It was as if all of the skepticism and awakening that has beeen building up in the last year or two had suddenly vanished and we were back in the Post 9-11 trance and Iraq War Cheerleading.

It made me glad that we have moved out of that phase -- but depressed that the media presstitutes can so esily slip back into that mode.

There were the same "authority figures" like Gen. Tommy Franks spouting off happy talk about how the war in Iraq is going swimmingly....There was John McCain giving his usual "stay the course" tommyrot...There was Sen. Joe Biden (representing the "Democrats") saying for the 50th time in three years how there is a window of a few months where we can get it right in Iraq that we must take advantage of. (Same damn thing he said in 03,04,05)....There was terror expert Peter Bergman giving his earnest assessment of the terrorist threat....Barbara Starr mounthing the latest message from the Pentagon....Retired Generals and Terrorist Analysts spouting off the same crud...yadda,yadda,yadda.

Sure there were the cautionary notes, and the warnings that this was not the end of the war. "Still a lot of dificult days ahead before we achieve victory."...etc. But it was the caution of "official sources' and placed safely in the box of conventional wisdom.

And -- once again -- there was a near- total lack of critical voices about the war, or from the progressive side of the spectrum. It was as though they don;t exist.

The one exception I saw was Nick Berg's father on Larry King. Mr. Berg is admirable and shows great courage. However, he is not necessarily the best spokesman for "the left" as the ONLY representative of an anti-war viewpoint, because he is a pacifist and he lost a son in Iraq and he is almost too forgiving. It reinforces the stereotypes of all Iraq War opponents as fringe poeacenicks and dissidents, rather than a legitimate mainstrem point of view.....

And worse yet, he was treated by Larry King as an exotic weirdo. "Whaddya mean you're not celebrating this death? What's wrong with you? He killed your son. Why aren't you calling for his blood?"

Just another nioght on TV circa 2002.

Roger Cressie on Olbermann for one.

And the Newsweek guy said it might mean Rumsfeld's job is less secure, because The Boy King would never fire him when everyone is calling on him to do that (imature little creep), but when the pressure is lessened, owing to Zarquawi's death, he might look at Rummy again.

Just the little creep playing "you're not the boss of ME" for the hundredth time.