Blumenthal: The White House Has the Last Laugh

[kskiska]

Bush's latest abuse of power fails to rouse the Washington media

Within hours of the testimony of Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism chief, before the 9/11 commission, where Clarke discussed how resources spent on the Iraq war undermined the war on terrorism, President Bush acknowledged that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction - the rationale for the war - remained absent. Bush's admission took the form of a comic monologue before about 1,000 black-tied members of the Radio and TV Correspondents' Association gathered for its annual dinner. The lights dimmed and Bush presented a slide show of himself peering out of windows and looking under furniture in the Oval Office. "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere ... nope, no weapons over there ... maybe under here?"

With each gag the press corps roared. Bush was acting as the college fraternity house president he once was and the journalists as pledges eager for acceptance by the Big Man on Campus. "I'm the commander - see, I don't need to explain - I do not need to explain why I say things," Bush told Bob Woodward in Bush at War. "That's the interesting thing about being president."

Through its laughter the press corps didn't grasp that the joke was on them. The problem is not that Bush's jest was inappropriate and tasteless - the widow of David Bloom, the NBC reporter who died in Iraq, had tearfully preceded Bush on the platform. It is not that much of the media, including elements of the quality press, had been complicit in the choreographed disinformation campaign in the rush to war. Rather, it is that the press is accepting of Bush's radical undermining of the long-established arrangements of Washington, including the demotion of the press's own role by breaking the off-the-record rule in order to have a weapon to use against Clarke. The implicit deal that the press thought it had with the Bush White House, as with previous White Houses, has been broken-unilaterally, like other policies.

more…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1183425,00.html

[teryang]

1. The joke is always on you

...in a dictatorship.