The media have protected these dogs, now they've bitten them on their a...

Dear Media: You've been played like a '59 GoldTop. Now what?
Submitted by davidswanson on Thu, 2006-06-29 13:43. Media
Contributed by: Stranger
www.MakeThemAccountable.com

Dear Media,

I hope you all enjoy lying in that bed you've made.

All those years of making excuses for George W. Bush's ineptness, inadequacies, and illegalities have earned you absolutely nothing. You brushed aside his lack of experience and intellectual incuriosity in 1999 and 2000, mostly because you didn't like Al Gore. Your behavoir gave him a much better position from which to steal the 2000 election.

You bought the spin from Bush's minions, ignoring the crisis that was taking place in Florida after the election. You believed every lie they came up with, from 'The votes have been counted and re-counted and re-counted' to 'Al Gore is trying to steal the election,' and you decided that letting Bush take office (in the most literal sense possible) was 'best for the country.'

You papered over the fact that he was scared out of his mind on September 11, 2001 - to the point where he flew to Idaho to hide - in favor of painting him as a 'resolute leader.' You swallowed, hook, line, and sinker, every lie that came out of the White House in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq - in many cases embellishing the lies to make them sound more plausible.

You let the elite members of your profession use their positions as opinion-shapers to shove cooked intelligence down the throats of the American public. You placed that cooked intel on the front pages of every newspaper and magazine in the country, and you played that cooked intelligence at the top of every hour on your cable news outlets.

You never once asked, 'Where is Osama bin Laden?'

The rest of the column is at: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/12547

Osama who? Dirtbags.

Great op ed.

but it sounds cool, doesn't it?

Maybe someone from the Greatest Generation would know.

Gibson, Les Paul Guitar

Context always helps.

Thanks.

A Les Paul guitar, painted gold, made in the year 1959.

I'm a guitar player.

I knew I should have used 'Jimi Hendrix' Stratocaster' in the title. :)

- as

I hope every journalist who ever uttered the phrase 'popular war-time president' reads this and realizes that they've been had.

are still moving. Isn't it ironic that this happens when it finally came down to money.

...is practically its own reward.
Do you suppose Judy Miller took money from Karl Rove or a foreign intelligence service to write the lies she wrote? Not a chance. These people you see on the idiot box do what they do for a cause, they do it for the team. As for compensation, they know the more water they carry the better their chances for personal advancement will be, maybe even a news show under their own name someday.
Do you suppose they give a shit about freedom of the press or any other freedom provided by the Bill of Rights? They get paid MONEY (all caps) in their line of work and they see that anybody with real money in this society doesn't need a Bill of Rights. Whatever it's origins, that bit of paper is there mainly as symbolic nod to the idea of equality before the law and as such it is a vestige of a long gone era. If you have big bucks you belong to the club and you'll be left alone, so long as you continue to act like a good club member.
They "got played" is a misleading metaphor. That makes them sound like independent economic and moral agents and ignores the entire context of their employment. It would be more accurate to say that they are there to play for the team and if they have to take a hard hit for the team, 9 out 10 of them implicitly understand this is part of their job, and the other one out of ten (like Dan Rather) can easily be replaced.

with every word in this article.
And, once again, we're left to wonder why THIS observation isn't even being discussed when we talk about the NY Times article.
It's not "we supported him and now he's biting us on the ass," but more "Should the NY Times editors be allowed to live or not?"
That's how warped our public dialogue and how corrupt our media has become.

You can say that again.

the MSM has let the cabal tell them what news is really news, what news to report, let KKKRove dictate to them what they could and could not report and now they are paying for it. On one hand I say GOOD, let them pay for their sins. Let them pay for not being the Fourth Estate. Let them pay for their complicity in what has happened to our country, but on the other hand I say...MAYBE NOW THEY WILL START DOING THEIR F*CKING JOBS! Maybe NOW they will see the error of their ways. Maybe NOW they will start to take down this administration in a Woodward/Bernstein manner. I can only hope. It may be too late. Look at how the rest of the MSM is piling on the NYT. WHY? This is their chance to stand up to these thugs...their corporate bosses included.

We used to have reporters like Helen Thomas, but as she said, they've almost disappeared. If they want to keep their jobs they have to tow the "company" line, which unfortunately is the Republican line.

The MSM hasn't been fooled or anything, they've been used as the corporate bull horns that they are.
If the MSM have been played, it's 'like a fiddle' - by their owners.

The article is not from Make Them Accountable.

I wrote it, and it originates from my blog, http://blah3.com

The full article is here: http://www.blah3.com/article.php?story=2006062901411348

I've tried containg ADS three times today to get them to correct the link, but they either don't believe I wrote the article or they simply don't read their email.

Truth be told, I'm a little ticked at ADS for getting the link wrong, and doubly ticked for giving me zero response to a request for correction.

If you want to read the entire article, do me a favor and go to my blog instead of ADS. Thanks.

- as

I did post the article here on GD last night. Here's the link:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=1530667&mesg_id=1530667

This is a crisis of their very own media whoring making. They can now either act collectively and forcibly to yank the curtain back on the full ugly reality of what they've chosen to participate in....or they can leave the NYT to hang out to dry all alone.

Predictions, anyone? My cynical money is very much on the latter.
I wish it wasn't.

K&R