Woodward: "This time, he was his own Deep Throat."

[kpete]

Is it Woodward? Or us?
by teacherken
Mon Nov 21, 2005 at 03:58:14 AM PDT
That is the thrust of an op ed in today's Boston Globe by James Carroll. Entitled The fall of Bob Woodward it is as much about our naiveté and gullibility as it is about the famous "reporter" (something I think he ceased being at least several books ago).

More about this article at:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/11/21/55814/352


JAMES CARROLL
The fall of Bob Woodward
By James Carroll | November 21, 2005

AT WHAT point does naiveté become something to be ashamed of? The revelation last week that Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward abetted the Bush administration's program of lies and character assassination left you feeling as if you, too, have been a coconspirator in the sleaze. Not that you were under any illusion about the turn Woodward's career took when he became a justifying megaphone for ''Washington insiders." Nor is it a surprise to find the dean of investigative journalism acting like every other self-protecting member of the establishment, since journalism itself has become a pillar of the governing power structure. But Woodward represented something more than all of this, and his quite American fall from grace (''The bigger they come") presents a challenge to your conscience.

So also that season's grief. Like frightened and heart-sick scribes looking to Marines to protect them on the battlefield, and therefore unable to write critically about their protectors, the news media, with rare exceptions, simply embraced and passed along Bush's purposes and justifications, not matter how palpably dishonest. Judith Miller was the public captain of this enterprise, but Woodward was her secret co-captain. This time, he was his own Deep Throat.

Your naiveté consisted in the belief that, after Vietnam, your nation would never again embark on a criminal and unnecessary war. After a popular movement, inspired by tribunes of the free press, stopped the Vietnam War, you believed that the government would be responsive to the will of the people, forgetting that the people can surrender that will.

The finger-pointing in Washington now -- who voted for what, when and why -- is truly pointless. The merest glance back at the prewar debates shows that the justifications for war were all made of tissue. If the press treated them as substantial, that is because the nation itself, which still includes you, needed the tissue to cover its shame. The tissue of lies is yours.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/11/21/the_fall_of_bob_woodward/

[WiseButAngrySara]

1. Very interesting article. I don't buy that the Nation, if ill-informed by

the M$M and BFEE, had any shame to cover at all! The "tissue of lies" was fed to us, and the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder of the entire Nation at grief post 9-11, believed the 'shock and awe' rhetoric, as we were dabbling our eyes with tissue for a very real and horrific event. Naivete' perhaps, but why should we be so cynical as to only expect lies, delusions, and murderous intent for profit, from those who govern and from those who are supposed to keep us informed as a free Nation?

I categorically reject the notion that we are responsible for "the tissue of lies."