Main characteristic of a Lapdog: selective memory.....some examples of how completely

in the tank the WH Press Corps was during the run up to the war

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=a030603pressscripted#a030603pressscripted

Just one example, from Eric Boehlert, as regards the infamous March 6, 2003 press conference....you remember, the scripted one:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/05/04/lapdogs/

New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller, a participant in the conference, later defends the press corps’ “timid behavior,” in Boehlert’s characterization, by saying: “I think we were very deferential because… it’s live, it’s very intense, it’s frightening to stand up there. Think about it, you’re standing up on prime-time live TV asking the president of the United States a question when the country’s about to go to war. There was a very serious, somber tone that evening, and no one wanted to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time.”

Boehlert later writes: “The entire press conference performance was a farce—the staging, the seating, the questions, the order, and the answers. Nothing about it was real or truly informative. It was, nonetheless, unintentionally revealing. Not revealing about the war, Bush’s rationale, or about the bloody, sustained conflict that was about to be unleashed inside Iraq. Reporters helped shed virtually no light on those key issues. Instead, the calculated kabuki press conference, stage-managed by the White House employing the nation’s most elite reporters as high-profile extras, did reveal what viewers needed to know about the mind-set of the on the eve of war.”

and to refresh the memories of Messrs. Matthews and others who claim to have been so staunchly against the war before the fact, there's this, regarding the same Kabuki press conference also from Boehlert's May/06 story:

On MSNBC’s flagship news commentary show, Hardball, host Chris Matthews spends an hour discussing the conference and the upcoming invasion. Matthews invites six guests on. Five are advocates of the war, and one, given a few moments for “balance,” questions some of the assumptions behind the rationale for war. The five pro-war guests include an “independent military analyst,” retired General Montgomery Meigs, who is one of around 75 retired military officers later exposed as participants in a Pentagon propaganda operation designed to promote the war (see April 20, 2008 and Early 2002 and Beyond).

So, please, David Gregory, Matthews, Mike Allen, John King, Wolf Blitzer, etal, you all doth protest too much. You, like the emperor have known to have been without clothes for a very long time. At least the NYT stuck its toes in the water a little way, with its very marginal mea culpa, when it admitted that it might've exercised a bit more editorial scrutiny over the likes of Judith Miller and Michael Gordon.

lots more at the same link as above....this starts from the top:

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/context.jsp?item=afall02msnbccountdowniraq

:hi:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=run+up+to+Iraq+war+pro+war+guests+vs.+anti-war&btnG=Search

first link on google.

:hi:

Good to see you here. We still share the same interest in media issues. Keep fighting!

trying not to pay attention, as DU, like Macbeth, doth murder sleep,
as well as equanimity, blood pressure, etc

and Plame outing. They are complicit - and Boehlert has collected plenty of evidence of their complicity in 2004 campaign in his book, Lapdogs.

appeared in that book, IIRC

my favorite part was where he unmasked the cravenness of ABC's The Note, along with the slimy, unctuous, Rove/Limbaugh worshipping Mark Halperin

Convention where he countered the swifts and challenged Bush to stop hiding behind the swifts and come out publicly to debate their services.

That would have been a huge showdown that got weeks of attention in any other election cycle, but, instead, no network would broadcast the speech and few even reported that it occurred.

How 'coincidental' could that have been? especially now that they all hide behind the collective lie that Kerry never answered the swifts. And a whole pack of Dems hang their owm hats on that lie.

That sure didn't help from 2001-2006, did it?

THANK YOU!

Kicked, Recommended, and Bookmarked.

:thumbsup: :yourock: :headbang:

BTW - I wrote a rant about all this that the Huffington Post just picked up!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-lyon/the-i-didnt-do-it-letter_b_103952.html

http://dean.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/05/28/gibson/print.html

in which Charlie Gibsos is shown to be one of the biggest liars around, or else possessed of one of the most selective (or presenile dementia-addled) memories extant:

"There was a lot of skepticism raised about" the Colin Powell speech, said Gibson, in one of the falsest statements ever uttered on TV. He continued:

I think the questions were asked. I respectfully disagree with the gentle lady from the Columbia Broadcasting System . I think the questions were asked. . . . I can remember getting in trouble with administration officials for asking questions they didn't feel comfortable with.

It was just a drumbeat of support from the administration. And it is not our job to debate them; it's our job to ask the questions.

Greenwald goes in in the above link to CITE just how cravenly accepting of Colin Powell's mendacious tour de force at the UN just before the invasion. You can read it there. I have to leave now....to angry for health.

Brings me to a boil quite frequently, too.

...And we STILL can't IMPEACH these bastards?