Weekend At Cheney's

National Review's The Corner (which, geographically, is the intersection of Shameless Hack Avenue and Dipshit Boulevard) has master thespian Andrew McCarthy in its stable of trenchant commentators. McCarthy informs his political commentary with the same care and craft he perfected in Pretty In Pink. Unfortunately, Duckie isn't there to help.

Today's article on the Plame Leak Investigation is prototypical of the NYTimes's disingenuous approach to all Bush admin matters -- the approach by which the paper pretends to objectivity while pounding a partisan narrative. It's always in the small choices of words.

Note this sentence (which both is in the article and, as of mid-morning at least, is the tease in the online edition that encourages you to click on the article):

"Yet Mr. Bush has yet to address some uncomfortable questions that he may not be able to evade indefinitely."

EVADE? There is no credible suggestion at this point that President Bush is EVADING anything. He encouraged the investigation, he made statements about taking action against wrongdoers, and he has repeatedly said he wants the independent counsel to press ahead because he wants to know what happened. He has also sat for an interview himself and encouraged everyone in his administration to be cooperative.

What a crock of shit. For one, the NY Times has led the pack of media lapdogs, or has Andy already forgotten all of Judy Miller's helpful agitprop in foisting the lies upon the rubes? That's the thing with these guys -- everyone's like a used rubber to them, once their usefulness to the "admin" is over with.

But let's break Andy's "EVADE" paragraph down. Bush "encouraged the investigation" only in the sense that he made sure to mumble the usual boilerplate about rilly rilly wantin' the truth to come out, which was the absolute least that was required of him in this sort of situation. His "statements about taking action against wrongdoers" have been weaseled several times since, to the point where they no longer have any credibility or meaning to anyone but the Kool-Aid drinkers in the base -- which is exactly the way they want it.

Bush "sat for an interview". Well, big fuckin' whoopdee-doo. He had his lawyer present, as always, but just on the basic principle of the matter, so fucking what? That means about as much as his and Cheney's "testimony" for the 9/11 committee hearings -- one hour, lawyers present, no notes allowed to be taken. Why fucking bother with it at all?

But Our Hero, whose acting was even more wooden than Kim Cattrall's in Mannequin (and she, after all, had the excuse of being the title character) presses on. It's not like he has anything else to do.

This is a classic example of how the Times spins the narrative. If President Clinton was the one in the eye of the storm here, does anyone think there is a chance that the Times flatly says he has been EVADING anything? With Clinton, the Times offered us legalistic justifications for false statements on the basis of whether they were "material" or whether they affected a zone of sexual privacy. To the extent the Clintonian spinmeisters actually evaded the investigation, the Times faithfully hewed to their scripts and subtly shifted to the issue to how competent and strategic they were in spinning, as opposed to the fact that they were spinning.

This is nonsense on several levels. For one, the endless stream of Clinton scandals was in no small part actively fueled by the media jockeys at the Times and Washington Post. The thing about the liberal media is -- as has been shown for this entire admin thus far -- they quite frequently go out of their way to show how even-handed they are in political matters, thus their kid-gloves treatment of the sheer mendacity of this admin since the first day they sullied the White House with their foul presence.

For another, one can easily turn the lame Clinton analogy on its head (or at least its side), and point out the obvious -- would hacks like Andy and Jonah and K. Lo be playing the same tiresome semantic games over an issue like this in a Clinton/Gore/Kerry admin, or would they suddenly turn into the tendentious partisan ankle-biters everybody knows they are?

See, the difference here is, I would be just as fierce in my criticism of this sort of misdeed in a Clinton or Gore admin, and people who have been reading my rants since 1998 (and they're out there, God bless 'em) know that for an indisputable fact. In fact, I might even be more fierce in my criticism in that instance, because I expect idealists to behave themselves. Coming from the current gang, I'd be more surprised if they hadn't pulled this sort of shit. It's still despicable, but not exactly surprising.

Anyway, the politically-astute midget from St. Elmo's Fire has one final volley to lob.

Now Bush, who is not evading, is flatly said to be evading. And yet, all the while, the Times evades the issues that (a) its reporter is in jail for withholding information from the investigation (ironically, under the guise of protecting the public's right to know), and (b) that the organized media has argued in the U.S. courts that this whole matter (Bush is supposedly evading about) does not in fact constitute a crime. As my dad used to say, people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw wild parties.

Too clever by half. I can only laugh my ass off at these conservatard douchebags pissing and moaning about this supposed bias, because let's face it -- if the media are resolutely liberal and anti-Bush, they're doing a piss-poor job at it. And there was a point in time where Andy and his Ratfuck Pack could posit that the bias just wasn't working because a majority (however slight) of Merkins was in agreement with Bush and his policies. That time has long since passed, and the fact is, in the face of 40-60 polls, the media could get away with being a lot more partisan and a lot more resolutely liberal.

I hope Andy and friends keep fucking with them; at some point the media hacks will regain some semblance of self-esteem and stick it to them just out of pride. I mean, some of them must still have some pride left.

Funny how hacks like Laura Ingraham and Bernie Goldberg never seem to include people like Andy McCarthy (or Arnold Schwarzenegger, for that matter) in their pained jeremiads against celebrities who misuse their exalted public status and foist their political views on us impressionable children. At least Tim Robbins can use facts and rationality to bolster his argument, and he doesn't even have to scream in capital letters.