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Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Hey Wingnuts -- Put Up Or Shut Up



Listening to four conservatives on Hardball tonight discuss -- well anything, really -- was quite the spectacle. I guess the "equal time" mantra only seems to enter the media equation when defending the right to insert baldface GOP lies into their narratives.

So Peter Daou issues a challenge to the wingier residents of Greater Blogistan to back up their latest claim -- articulated by both Tony Blankley and Ole 60 Grit O'Beirne -- that the only reason the story about Cheney drunkenly shooting an old man in the face persists is because of some sort of liberal media vendetta.

Peter takes on the task of proving that the major media outlets are regularly quite obedient to breezily repeating GOP talking points, and what else would you expect when they are being lobbied to the tune of $1.6 billion. Peter argues quite persuasively that what these people are really arguing for here is "a servile, state-run press. Which, ironically, seems to be where we're heading."

As a side note, I'd also like to point out that when Dick Cheney refused to answer Brit Hume's question today about whether he ordered Scooter to leak the classified NIE and Dick demurred on the grounds that he may be called as a witness he was, as usual, full of shit. Scooter is charged with lying to the FBI and the grand jury, not with leaking the NIE. There is no reason Dick can't talk about that and a real journalist should have challenged him on that point.

(Update: David E. does an excellent job of reconstructing the he said/she said of the Hume dickfest.)

I was on Sean-Paul Kelly's radio show in San Antonio and we discussed how Dick capped his good friend acquaintance. You can listen to the clip here

And RJ Eskow is going to be on MSNBC with the bow tie tonight. Tuckie, along with the rest of the wingnut punditocracy, is now trying to pass himself off as an expert hunter.

Yeah and I'm the Duchess of Kent.

(graphic by Dark Black)

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