Sidney Blumenthal: Ridicule and contempt

[understandinglife]

An imperial president is smothering the system of checks and balances, imperiling free speech.

Thursday May 4, 2006
The Guardian

The most scathing public critique of the Bush presidency and the complicity of a craven press corps was delivered at the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner on Saturday by a comedian. Bush was reported afterwards to be seething, while the press corps responded with stone-cold silence. In many of their reports of the event they airbrushed out the joker.

Stephen Colbert performed within 10 yards of Bush's hostile stare and before 2,600 members of the press and their guests. After his mock praise of Bush as a rock against reality, Colbert censured the press by flattering its misfeasance. "Over the last five years you people were so good - over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn't want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out ... Here's how it works: the president makes decisions ... The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spellcheck and go home ... Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know - fiction!".

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Some in the press understand the peril posed to the first amendment by an imperial president trying to smother the system of checks and balances. For those of the Washington press corps who shunned a court jester for his irreverence, status is more urgent than the danger to liberty. But it's no laughing matter.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1766835,00.html

Nope. Not funny at all ...


If You're pro-Bu$h, You're Anti-America

[understandinglife]

1. Glenn Greenwald: "The national media of which Cohen is an integral and ...

... zombified part has spent the last five years so petrified of George Bush that they have been unwilling even to investigate, let alone criticize, the claims he and his administration have made. That is why 70% of Americans were permitted to believe -- even six months after we invaded Iraq -- that Saddam personally participated in the planning of 9/11 -- because the media cowered in the corner like meek and passive mice while the administration spewed exaggerated and false rhetoric to justify the war.

But to them, there is something terribly rude and improper about looking in the President's eye and criticizing him. That is so very disrespectful. What country does Stephen Colbert think this is? We don't criticize the President like that. And the idea that Colbert was "a bully" -- because he criticized the most powerful man on earth, who has made the need to be shielded from criticism a virtual religion -- reflects such a mind-bogglingly dimented view of the world that it is difficult even to analyze it.

Link: http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/05/various-items_04.html

Indeed.


Never Forget: George W. Bush willfully violated National Security to cover-up his willful launch of a war of aggression and illegal occupation of Iraq.

[understandinglife]

2. georgia10: "Richard Cohen and Truthiness"

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Oh, poor President Bush! The most powerful man in the world being bullied for an agonizing 30 minutes by a heartless comedian who dared to include a kernel of truth in his shtick. The ONE DAY Bush dares to venture out of his bubble of controlled reality and screened audiences, BAM! Colbert has the audacity to hit him with the truth in a blunt and intelligent manner. Tsk, tsk. He should have been more polite.

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Welcome to the last five years, Mr. Cohen. Five years of the Rude Presidency of George W. Bush, during which , lulled the press into complacent and dangerous submission, gagged the people with threats of reprisal and covert spying, and paralyzed our nation all while bitch-slapping us with claims of "staying the course" and "I'm the Decider." You say Colbert insulted one man. I say this President has insulted our entire nation.

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Those who wanted to see truth, saw truth. Those who wanted to see a "bully," saw a bully. And those who see Richard Cohen for what he is see nothing more than a joke.

Link: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/5/4/113535/9188

Hey, Dick, here's some "bully" you might just comprehend - Bush digs torture and is a mass murderer.

Got it.

I don't do "irony," just facts.


Be The Bu$h Opposition - 24/7

[Jack Rabbit]

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