Molly Ivins: Dismissing Downing Street

[Dudley_DUright]

I hope this is not too Inside Baseball, but I am genuinely astonished by what the bloggers call "Mainstream Media." (In my youth, it was quaintly called "the Establishment press.")

The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times have all gone way out of their way to deny that the Downing Street Memos (it's now plural) are news. Like many of you, during the entire lead-up to the war with Iraq, I thought the whole thing was a set-up.

<snip>

It was always weird that the White House kept saying it knew Saddam Hussein had WMD, but it would never tell the U.N. inspectors where. Yes, I suspected all that, but I was not the head of British intelligence in the summer of 2002, for pity's sake.

Here are some aggravating factors. Tom Friedman, columnist for The New York Times, recently wrote that "liberals" no longer want to talk about the war because we were against it to start with and probably hope it ends in disaster. Good Lord, who does he think we are? Does this man actually think we are out here cheering every time another American is killed?

Mr. Friedman, real, actual, honest-to-God American liberals are out here in the heartland, and we know the kids who are dying in Iraq. They are from our hometowns. We know their parents. That's why we hate this war. That's why we tried to tell everybody else it was a ghastly idea.

more...

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=19234

[bpilgrim]

1. "it(WH) would never tell the U.N. inspectors where" - intel was givin

it was always wrong, though.

peace

[Catfight]

2. The pathetic press is a proganda machine for Bush. Time to cancel

everything except internet news. Molly is 100% right.

[Raster]

3. and newspapers in this country wonder why their subscriptions

are in free fall? Wake up and smell the java.

I too am aghast at the attitude taken by the Fourth Estate: "sure they were lying, we all knew that." Really? THEN WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T YOU SAY SO, instead of giving bushco* a tongue bath and free pass. Seriously, 90% of the papers printed in this country aren't worth the newsprint they're printed on. We're killing trees for this?

[grannylib]

8. Yeah, did that stop the press from reporting on the effort to destroy the

Clintons? "Everyone knew" that the Big Dog was lying about his relationship with Ms. Lewinski - shouldn't that have put the kibosh on any reporting about that whole deal????
What a pathetic excuse.
Now I know why the Chimp sits with his legs spread (crude little bastard that he is) - it's so the yappy little lapdogs of the Poodle Press can more easily access his crotch.

[MasonJar]

4. You go, girl! We love you.

[dalloway]

5. great article. I misread your headline though and first thought

you were saying Molly Ivins was DISMISSING the memos when, in fact, she was criticizing the Corporate Media that is dismissing them.

[grannylib]

6. Molly rocks. Glad to see that someone in the media is still willing to

stand up for real truth, not the propaganda that's being stuffed down our throats by the morally bankrupt, spiritually shallow, greed-driven, war-mongering, lying sacks of shit known as 'Republicans.'

[Pirate Smile]

7. I hope everybody reads this - especially the Washington Post, NYT,

LA Times, etc.

[mpendragon]

9. I posted this in another thread and I know that is a faux pas but . . .

I think the metaphor is just too good.

Every few weeks there is a story in the news about a house with hundreds of cats or dogs or birds or whatever. The Humane Society or some other group of people goes into the house, which is typically full of feces and dead animals, to clean it up and they take pictures. We all get to see the least horrible of those pictures in the news. We read those stories and wonder how someone could live in a place like that. How could they ignore the smell and noise and the death.

That's a lot like what we are doing now. The Whitehouse is full of the rotten stench of lies, corruption, and death. They are capable of hearing the noise of dissent. We sit here seeing some small portion of the horror and wonder how the people associated with it can stand to work there and continue to do the things they do.

I think, like the poor crazy person with the animals, that they've gotten accustom to the smell even as horrible as it is and they can ignore the noise of dissent. Like the crazy person they've convinced themselves that they are doing something good even when the bodies start to pile up. They will never be convinced otherwise.

The media can smell it now. They, like most other Americans, are getting the least offensive pictures and now they have to dismiss it as some random fact. They are partially responsible for this and now they reek of the stench. They are ashamed and all they can do is pretend it didn't happen.

[KoKo]

10. Interesting analogy.....

probably the truth of it. I also wonder what Friedman's kids are doing. Private school, soccer, or maybe old enough for the new little BMW Sportster. None of them will ever go to a war. They and their friends parents are too busy fantasizing about the glories of war for the folks "somewhere out there in the heartland" that they will never see or visit unless they are paid to go on a campaign bus where they jump off interview a coupld of people and hit the road again eventually landing back in their cucoon of weatlth and priviledge where they write about Americans they don't even know.

[architect359]

11. Goddamnit

I'm so frustrated at this that I'm flabbergasted! I mean, I feel like bawling in frustration, fer jimminycricket! There is another editorial in the San Francisco Chronicle that mirrors Ivins sentiments: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2005/06/22/notes062205.DTL&feed=rss.morford

I must be so effing naive to think that on such important issues political partisanship would have been put aside for the sake of our country and society. Isn't trust in our leaders paramount? If we cannot have respect or trust for those that we ELECT to represent our aspirations - well, hell, why even bother?

Politics. Pah! Here's the rub - Clinton was $*^(#&(&# impeached for that affair with the intern. <-- For this crap! Yup. Now a leader has misled us for I can only speculate are personal reasons, wrapped himself falsely in the flag, and is untouchable.

No wonder "Deep Throat" did what he had to do. Same situation now - all the avenues of investigation are closed by partisanship. Well, no - not quite like the 70's - now even the traditional news outlets wouldn't persue this! I want to know why. Are the DSMs fake? If so, tell us! Is it so hard frickin' hard? Jeesuschrist!!!