Now I could use a drink.....

There's a very nice article on Harper's today that looks at one of the most baffling issues to haunt the nation for the last ten years or so. Mr. Horton, you're on.

I just finished reading the Jeff Gerth-Don Van Natta book on Hillary Clinton entitled Her Way and relived the tumultuous days of the Whitewater investigation through it. One thing that really struck me was the hyperventilation in the media at that time, while public attitudes remained relatively calm. It seems just the flip side of the current situation in which scandals have proliferated beyond count, the public is intensely unhappy, but the media has a sort of ho-hum, “scandal, what scandal?” attitude. . .

Conversely, we look at prevarications that come out of the Bush Administration—which go to things of vastly greater consequence to society—for instance, the use of torture, the approval of illegal surveillance schemes, the partisan dismissal, appointment and manipulation of prosecutors. But these rarely seem to provoke comment, and indeed we have the immortal comment of the New York Times’s Elisabeth Bumiller that “you can’t just say the president’s lying.” The Bumiller mentality is widespread with the Washington press corps, and to the extent the nation is now drowning in lies of an Orwellian magnitude, this is a major reason.

The author also sneaks in a pretty sweet Daily Show clip that is funny, but staggeringly... sad. It makes its point eloquently, though, in how worthless the MSM has become.

Also, the current issue of Harper's (not yet online) has a series of articles called 'Undoing Bush' that sound pretty damn interesting. Because the next administration is going to have the thankless task of repairing all the damage. Unless a Republican wins, in which case we'll just keep sliding toward fascism.