Hueston

Lay Lady Lay now in Hueston, Texas.

Distraction

Did Condoleeza Rice actually call Iran a “central banker of terrorism” this morning on Meet the Press? Twice. Read today’s front-page report on Saudi Arabia’s contentious religious education in the Outlook section of the Washington Post (“This is a Saudi textbook,” by Nina Shea), for starters, and then recall that the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis. Talking with Russert, Condi just presented more egregious WMD posturing, casting about for red herrings again in yet another distracting ploy of warmongering. The real question is what is the Bush oligarchy trying to distract us from — themselves? Or the military industrial complex? Or would that be one and the same? As in the Central Bank of Temerity.

MSM

In Lapdogs, Eric Boehlert confirms what way too many citizens could see clearly from the very beginning. And we didn't need the MSM to tell us about it, as it turns out, because they simply showed it to us by their own obsequious examples, time and again. What were they thinking? Or were they thinking at all, except of course about themselves, clueless in their own exclusive disdain? Either 1) the MSM fell into a sociopathetic stupor after 9/11 (perhaps even before Jason Blair, Stephen Glass, or their corporate suits’ powerful infatuations?), or 2) the MSM are complicit in a sinister oligarchy that will exacerbate global discord for years to come, not to mention domestic unrest. Let's hope it's the first, though that is bad enough because in time it would inevitably lead to the second. And if it’s neither, then we’re back to the original question: What were they thinking? The question itself is disturbing because it evokes a bevy of Valley Girls cavorting in some bushy Valley of the Dolls. Does Mr. Keller know he’s just another pretty face? Embedding themselves, as they call it, seems to be just getting in bed with their sources and coming together, so to speak. All we get from that are leaks and stained sheets.

To be sure, there are discerning journalists working in the MSM, but too often perhaps they are overshadowed by their powers that be, just when the time is ripe. There’s a fine line between what’s politically correct and what’s politically coerced. And now we have, for another example, Richard Cohen et al with much ado about Steven Colbert’s not all that much about anything really except maybe some truth. Tch, tch. Truth can hurt. From Miss Run Amok to this, it’s been downhill much of the way since Bush came into office and co-opted blocks of the MSM in ruins and tried to ruin the country. Is it just fortuitous that the blogosphere expands as the fourth estate seems to be sucking wind? Or is it simply Newton: "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction."

Gore

"I am here to tell you that we simply cannot afford to wait 1,000 days to put the brakes on the Bush agenda," Al Gore wrote in an e-mail recently, adding that "the level of cynicism and crass political calculation . . . is truly breathtaking."