Keith Olbermann is a Total Fucking Rock Star and a Stud
Well at least there is one TV newsman who is not groveling in front of BushCo.'s propaganda machine, and he's doing the right thing -- calling for Scott McClellan to resign:
Whenever I hear this White House talking about ‘doing to damage to our image abroad’ and how ‘people have lost lives,’ I strain to remember who it was who went traipsing into Iraq looking for WMD that will apparently turn up just after the Holy Grail will — and at what human cost.The whole Newsweek faux-scandal is nothing but an attempt to intimidate journalists from printing anything that didn't come out of the white house fax machine smelling of toner, and it's nothing short of fucking awful that journalists everywhere care more about their "access" than they do their professional integrity and they aren't up in arms about this. They should all be calling for McClellan's resignation.
Newsweek’s version of this story has varied from the others over the last two years — ones in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Post, and British and Russian news organizations — only in that it quoted a government source who now says he didn’t have firsthand knowledge of whether or not the investigation took place (oops, sorry, shoulda mentioned that, buh-bye). All of its other government connections — the ones past which it ran the story — have gone from saying nothing like ‘don’t print this, it ain’t true’ or ‘don’t print this, it may be true but it’ll start riots,’ to looking slightly confused and symbolically saying ‘Newsweek? Newsweek who?’
Whatever I smell comes from this odd sequence of events: Newsweek gets blasted by the White House, apologizes over the weekend but doesn't retract its story. Then McClellan offers his Journalism 101 outdoor seminar and blasts the magazine further. Finally, just before 5 p.m. Monday, the Dan Rather drama replaying itself in its collective corporate mind, Newsweek retracts....
Ultimately, though, the administration may have effected its biggest mistake over this saga, in making the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs look like a liar or naïf, just to draw a little blood out of Newsweek’s hide. Either way — and also for that tasteless, soul-less conclusion that deaths in Afghanistan should be lain at the magazine’s doorstep — Scott McClellan should resign. The expiration on his carton full of blank-eyed bully-collaborator act passed this afternoon as he sat reeling off those holier-than-thou remarks. Ah, that’s what I smelled.
And off topic, sort of -- what's up with the sports guys? Over at the Huffington Post, the person drawing the most attention is Jim Lampley (okay well the most of mine anyway), who has this to say about l'affair Newsweek:
As for expressed neoconservative outrage over the fourteen deaths, get real. Those of us who oppose this administration and its private $300 billion Iraq war are as saddened as we should be about the fourteen people who died in Afghanistan because of this. We're equally saddened by the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians cavalierly sacrificed on the altar of Messrs. Bush/Cheney/Wolfowitz/Rumsfeld's preconceived "anti-terror" initiative. For pro-Bush writers to attempt to guilt-trip professional reporters for collateral damage is beyond ludicrous. It's immoral.More astute than anything you're going to read on the subject in the NYT or the WaPo any time soon. Plus he kicks Roger Simon around the block a few times, which is always a fun spectator sport.
I'm going to try and carve out some time today to write some LTEs to my local papers. The right-wing squawk machine can only dominate the dialog if we let it happen, and if they win the battle over spin on this one it sets an extremely dangerous precedent. I hope you'll take some time and let your local editors know how you feel, too.
(via the Left Coaster)
posted by Jane Hamsher @ 5/17/2005 01:39:00 PM
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