Paleo Meets Payola

George Will gets halfway there. Time will tell if he publicly connects the dots. He's not an idiot; one assumes that he's connected them privately, and knows better. His paleo sensibilities have to be ruffled mightily at this neo-con administration's (emphasis on the con) shenanigans in virtually every area imaginable.

It can't be said too often -- these guys really don't even bother to conspire. They don't need to. It's out in the open, pretty much. They have simply taken every inch that a passive, lazy legacy media and an even lazier citizenry have allowed them.

The estimable Charles Pierce issues a challenge (you have to scroll down a bit) to the departing Dan Rather and the CBS News Gang Of Four. And he's right on the money. Journalists, as regards this administration, are basically standing in the middle of an enormous pile of manure, and they've got their shovels at the ready. All that has been required of them is to dig. They wouldn't even have to dig that far; again, these assholes are not bothering to hide much of anything. Bush has repeatedly looked America in the eye and flat out lied about the future viability of Social Security. He has been shameless about even a modicum of accountability on Iraq.

It's all there for the taking, the chance to become the next Woodward or Bernstein, but there seems to be little but fear and complacency. They're all climbing the same corporate ladder, the one that eventually leads to that house in Nantucket or the Hamptons. Well, Dan and the Gang no longer have anything left to lose -- which, as the song says, is just another word for freedom. You don't hate freedom, do you, guys?

Think of it -- they could expose these people for what they truly are, for the ways they're destroying this country, and they could even start restoring the patina of legitimacy on the mainstream media that is rapidly being outshone by the so-called pajamahadeen (bloggers).

It's an opportunity, for them, for us, for the country, really. Will they do it, or is Dan going to be content to burnish his faded legacy by quickie junkets to Banda Aceh to moon over tsunami wreckage? Well, Katie bar the door, Dan, 'cause you've got only about six weeks or so left.

Tick-tock.