Damn statistics

Those Media Matters talking head counters are at it again.

In Media Matters' third examination of guest appearances on ABC's This Week, CBS' Face the Nation, and NBC's Meet the Press, research demonstrated that Republicans and conservatives outnumbered Democrats and progressives from April to June of 2006.

<SNIP>

Republicans and conservatives outnumber Democrats and progressives. More conservative journalists appear than progressive journalists. Panels are more likely to be imbalanced toward the right than toward the left. Republicans and conservatives are given more solo interviews. In short, the title we gave to our original study -- "If It's Sunday, It's Conservative" -- remains true.

In the second quarter, the Sunday-morning programs continued to host more Republicans and conservatives than Democrats and progressives. Across all three shows, Republicans and conservatives made 66 appearances, compared with 48 appearances by Democrats and progressives.

But hey, if they changed the line-up, I'd never wake-up on Sundays. All that screaming gets me going right through the morning.

Range of opinion from AEI to AEI

My friend C. -- an astute observer of the news media -- writes (I cleaned it up a bit and added the links):

Earlier tonight, ABC had an item on North Korea; during that item, they put on a clip of Danielle Pletka, underlabeled American Enterprise Institute. More blah-blah, and then a clip of David Frum, underlabeled Ex-White House Speech Writer.

Not only they didn't specify WHICH White House, but I suspect that they met him while walking the hallways at the AEI, looking for Danielle. Yet, they made it look as though it was a SECOND opinion, from another angle (saying the same thing), hiding the fact that he's also at the AEI!

There was also more blah-blah, and then an ex-Asst. Sec. of Defense. For all I know, he was also at the AEI!

This is how they sneakily try (and succeed, in most cases) to pull the wool over our eyes (but they have to be sneakier than that to fool me).

C. raises an interesting issue. These think tanks are mostly about producing talking heads for rent, with quick and easy access to the news nets, and 24/7 p.r. machinery to ensure that their fellows get on the air. The think tanks' affiliations or financing are never identified giving viewers the impression that the spokespeople are neutral braniacs with objective opinions.

Not surprisingly, right-wing think tank representatives outnumber left/lib ones in the media three-to-one.

Is this just lazy ''journalism'' by overworked show bookers who need to fill as much airtime as possible as easily as they can? If so, you'd think they'd stuff a few leftie think tank names into their Rolodexes. There are plenty of them.

So it's gotta be something else.

I wonder what ...

UPPITY DATE: According to commenter Andy Vance, the third talking head was Lawrence J. Korb, now a fellow with the liberal Center for American Progress. Interestingly, he used to be with the AEI, but apparently saw the light.

The terrorists have won ... and are in the White House

THIS POST HAS BEEN UPDATED -- and a big Canadian howdy doody to all you charming Little Green Footballers who are leaving comments about my supposed dildo use! (Shows what a bunch of goofballs you are.)

Because of one thing or another -- professional and personal -- I have been inexcusably neglectful of the outrageous situation in the US of A regarding the political fallout following the New York Times' reports on the Bush regime's tracking of private bank records in its so-called war on terror. Apologies.

The upside is that I can now afford to bring you the more thoughtful pieces (and some bonus fun stuff) on the issue -- specifically, the Bushite war on the Times and several other news organs -- rather than chase the ambulances as they roared by.

For those not fully caught up, the Star's Tim Harper had a good primer last week.

The tension between George W. Bush's White House and The New York Times has largely bubbled beneath the surface, a battle of wills between a secretive administration and a newspaper that has launched almost daily anti-Bush grenades from its editorial pages.

Until now.

Republicans are accusing the paper known affectionately as the Old Gray Lady of treason, giving aid to the enemy and imperilling American lives.

It is, by most accounts, an attack on the media unmatched in its bitterness since Richard Nixon fought the Times and The Washington Post over the publication of the Pentagon Papers and the Post's Watergate coverage.

This time, the paper's alleged crime was publishing details of a secret anti-terror government program that tracked international bank transfers through a consortium known as SWIFT.

As Robert Scheer sees it, this is a jihad on the media.

The Bush Administration's jihad against newspapers that reported on a secret program to monitor the personal-banking records of unsuspecting citizens is more important than the original story. For what the President and his spokesmen are once again asserting is that the prosecution of this ill-defined, open-ended "war on terror" inevitably trumps basic democratic rights in general and the constitutionally enshrined freedom of the press in particular.

The stakes are very high here. We've already been told that we must put up with official lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the unprecedented torture of prisoners of war and a massive electronic eavesdropping program and other invasions of privacy. Now the target is more basic--the freedom of the press to report on such nefarious government activities. The argument in defense of this assault on freedom is the familiar refrain of dictators, wannabe and real, who grasp for power at the expense of democracy: We are in a war with an enemy so powerful and devious that we cannot afford the safeguard of transparent and accountable governance.

It's been fascinating to follow the media reaction to the threats against the media made by the White House ... and the media. There's been virtual silence from the mainstream editorial boards.

As numerous Bush administration officials, congressional Republicans, and conservative media figures continue to attack The New York Times and other newspapers for their decision to publicly disclose the Treasury Department bank-tracking program, major U.S. newspapers' editorial boards have largely remained silent on the issue. According to a Media Matters for America review, 15 newspapers -- not including The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, which also initially reported the program -- have so far editorialized either in support of the papers' decision to run the story or against the criticism they received for doing so.

So where were the hundreds of others of papers?

Meanwhile, the right-wing echo chamber that pretends not to be part of the mainstream in the U.S. but, sadly, is. Very much so. Consider:

TUCKER CARLSON, HOST, MSNBC'S "THE SITUATION": I think "The New York Times" hates Bush. I think they probably go out of their way to hurt Bush. I think they would probably even reveal things they shouldn't reveal in order to hurt Bush.

BILL O'REILLY, HOST, FOX NEWS CHANNEL'S "THE O'REILLY FACTOR": The "New York Times" may have reached a tipping point. The paper is chock full of far left columnists, and now its news pages could be damaging national security.

Media Matters has a good round-up of the offenders here. Below, three examples.

Rush Limbaugh, syndicated radio host: "I think 80 percent of their subscribers have to be jihadists. If you look at The New York Times and the kind of stories they're leaking and running and the information they're getting, it's clear that they're trying to help the terrorists. They're trying to help the jihadists." Limbaugh added that he thought that "80 percent of their subscribers have to be jihadists." ... [The Rush Limbaugh Show, 6/27/06]

William Kristol, editor, The Weekly Standard: "I think the Justice Department has an obligation to consider prosecution. ... This isn't a partisan thing of the Bush administration. This is a U.S. government secret program in a time of war, willfully exposed for no good reason by The New York Times." [Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, 6/25/06]

Ann Coulter, right-wing pundit: [R]evealing a classified program, which no one thinks violates any laws ... that has led to the capture of various terrorists, and to various terrorist money-laundering operations. If that is not treason, then we're not prosecuting anymore." [MSNBC's Scarborough Country, 6/26/06]

More on the rightwingdingaling regurgitation of White House talking points here and here.

One talk show host even sanctioned the possible execution of Times editor Bill Keller:

San Francisco talk show host Melanie Morgan believes that Times editor Bill Keller should be jailed for treason for approving the publication.

The maximum penalty for treason is death.

"If he were to be tried and convicted of treason, yes, I would have no problem with him being sent to the gas chamber," Morgan, whose show airs on KSFO-AM, told The Chronicle on Wednesday. "It is about revealing classified secrets in the time of war. And the media has got to take responsibility for revealing classified information that is putting American lives at risk."

But not all conservatives see it that way. I was amazed to discover that MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, for instance, came out on the side of freedom of the press.

Scarborough: You gotta admit-it’s frightening. More so to us who know how Washington works and know how power can corrupt and know how power can be abused. I believe friends, we are in dangerous times for those of us who believe like Thomas Jefferson-that Washington is not to be trusted with unlimited police power.

(H/t to Ron Saba for that one.)

But most of the rightwingers came off like the wing nuts they are. Check out this ''debate'' between California talk show host Bernie Ward and Texas talk jock Chris Baker  on MSNBC. Or as Calitics puts it,

Baker:  Time of War!  New York Times Treasonous! Bush Haters!
Ward:  Should the government control what a newspaper prints?
Baker:  Time of War!  New York Times Treasonous! Bush Haters!
Ward:  Answer the question.  Should the government control what a newspaper prints?

[Repeat until Baker loses his mind, calls Ward names, and storms off because his Rove-approved talking points aren’t working.]

(H/t to Rachel Marsden for that one.)

But seriously ...

First amendment lawyer Glenn Greenwald has a long but very strong analysis here.

The media is guilty of publishing stories which might harm the political interests of the President, not which could harm the national security of the United States. But Bush supporters recognize no such distinction. Harming the "Commander-in-Chief in a time of war" is, to them, synonymous with treason. Hence, we have calls for the imprisonment of our national media for reporting stories which tell terrorists nothing of significance which they did not already know, but which instead, merely provoke long-overdue democratic debates about whether we want to be a country in which we place blind trust in the administration to act in total secrecy.

Last, but not least, Don Waller says it ALL here. (Emphasis is his.)

Dear Media,

I hope you all enjoy lying in that bed you've made.

All those years of making excuses for George W. Bush's ineptness, inadequacies, and illegalities have earned you absolutely nothing. You brushed aside his lack of experience and intellectual incuriosity in 1999 and 2000, mostly because you didn't like Al Gore. Your behavoir gave him a much better position from which to steal the 2000 election.

You bought the spin from Bush's minions, ignoring the crisis that was taking place in Florida after the election. You believed every lie they came up with, from 'The votes have been counted and re-counted and re-counted' to 'Al Gore is trying to steal the election,' and you decided that letting Bush take office (in the most literal sense possible) was 'best for the country.'

You papered over the fact that he was scared out of his mind on September 11, 2001 - to the point where he flew to Idaho to hide - in favor of painting him as a 'resolute leader.' You swallowed, hook, line, and sinker, every lie that came out of the White House in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq - in many cases embellishing the lies to make them sound more plausible.

You let the elite members of your profession use their positions as opinion-shapers to shove cooked intelligence down the throats of the American public. You placed that cooked intel on the front pages of every newspaper and magazine in the country, and you played that cooked intelligence at the top of every hour on your cable news outlets.

You never once asked, 'Where is Osama bin Laden?'

You followed him, with your TV cameras, to every single place he went to vent his spleen about terrorists, giving him hours and hours of free face time to repeat his lies. You ignored that people were being arrested for speaking against him, that his audiences were hand-picked, that protestors were being put in pens at great distances from every venue in which he ever appeared.

You bought 'Mission Accomplished' by the pound. You cleared the shelves of 'shock and awe,' exhausted the stocks of 'smokin' 'em out,' drank gallons and gallons of GOP Brand Kool-Aid. You 'embedded' youselves with the military and took everything the military told you at face value - even if it directly contradicted reality as we know it.

You reported staged events like the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue as if they were real news events. And even after the American public started to wise up and wipe the terra-dust from their eyes, you still insisted upon calling him a 'popular president.'

You helped his employees ruin the reputations of fine men who served this country honorably - letting them compare a man who gave three limbs in service to this country with Osama bin Laden. You took a highly-decorated war veteran - you know, the kind of person that you all love to say you 'support' and 'honor' - and ran his reputation into the mud, somehow making his exemplary service seem shameful.

You justified Bush's expansion of executive power to the point where we don't even need Congress, giving them their new job of stage managers for completely meaningless staged events like the Terri Schiavo fiasco or railing against gay marriage and making sure nobody burns an American flag or dares utter the words that Iraq is bleeding us dry, killing our kids and destroying our reputation as 'the good guys,' worldwide.

You made excuses for his illegal spying on the American people. You offered weak justifications for his naked power grab, you laughed off the fact that his second-in-command shot a man in the face.

You made Ann Coulter socially acceptable.

And after all this, Bush and Cheney and Congress and Coulter and every wingnut pundit, whom you've coddled and accomodated every step of the way, show their appreciation how?

They want to muzzle you. They want to imprison you. They want to try you for treason.

I'd print some more but he gets into what the Bush regime has done to the media in terms I can't use here.

The one good thing in all of this is that more and more Americans are starting to see that the Bushies are acting like cornered rats on their own sinking ship.

But, before they go down, they'll try to take what made the States so great with them.

UPPITY DATE: For all of you claiming that the Times' story was news to the terrorists, read this.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: You know what I don't get? Why the righties don't understand that financial transactions were being tracked well before 9/11 -- and it was no secret. But they'll say anything to prop up their fearless service-avoiding leader.

Anyway, I am updating this post because I believe it gives the impression that I am a big fan of the Times, the paper that helped make the Bush case for war by publishing all those phoney-baloney weapons of mass destruction stories.

In fact, I am more in line with David Corn, who calls the Times' ''timid."

what if everyday it had a box on the front page listing all the attacks and bombing within Iraq the previous day? Reuters keeps (and posts) such a list. Anyone who read this sort of roster on a daily basis would have a tough time accepting Bush and Dick Cheney's never-ending claims that progress is being made. Or what if the Times—as it did with the victims of 9/11—printed profiles of every U.S. soldier killed in Iraq, placing one a day on the front page? Such a reminder of the cost being paid might well undermine the war effort by causing more people to question the value of this military venture. Or what if the newspaper ran a daily account of how much the war is costing, not in blood, but in taxes? (Representative Jack Murtha, the Democrat hawk who turned against the war, recently put the tab at $450 billion and noted this was $445 billion more than the cost of the first Gulf War.)

There's plenty more the paper can do to discredit Bush. It often treads lightly when the president or the vice president says something untrue. Two weeks ago, Dick Cheney claimed in an interview that there were 250,000 Iraqi soldiers "now in uniform, equipped, trained, in the fight." That was a whopper. In February, the Pentagon noted that the number of Iraqi battalions ready to fight on their own was zero. (The Defense Department then stopped releasing figures on the battle readiness of Iraqi security forces). After Cheney made those remarks about the Iraqi military, did the Times rush out a front-page article reporting that the vice president was misleading the public about the centerpiece of the administration's Iraq policy? No. Keller missed another chance to deal a blow to the administration's war on terrorism.

As Corn concludes, those who believe that the Times is a hotbed of anti-Bushism don't read. I would go further. I would say they they're blind, or Little Green Nutballers.

And now, I gotta go launder my burka.

From scoop to nuts

Political strategist Robin Sears has a terrific analysis of the news media today in the Hill Times. He covers all the bases, from Watergate to the VRWC (vast right wing conspiracy), and even touches on the current situation in Ottawa.

Stephen Harper plays a long game and surely believes that revenge is a dish best served well chilled. No, his media campaign fits his game plan precisely.

First, he knows that the only people less loved than politicians and aluminum siding salesmen are the media. And he knows that among his target audience this contempt runs to violent hatred. His target voters see Maclean's magazine–now, under editor Ken Whyte, under its most conservative and Conservative management in its history–as part of the "vast left-wing media conspiracy" because it publishes unflattering cover photos of the PM.

Second, he knows that to a greater extent than any prime minister before him, he does not need the gallery. Every Ottawa pundit who says, "He'll fold when he is in trouble," misunderstands how the media and political world has changed. Stephen Harper's target voters read few newspapers, not because they are stupid but because they are young. The youngest among them hardly watch television news; their lens on politics is blogs, news sites and Maxim magazine.

Finally, he knows that it is not the PMO that will bend. The gallery will. Media owners are already deeply unhappy at this unseemly spat. Discussions about a compromise through intermediaries are under way.

Which is why, I believe, Stephen Harper has done us all a great favour. We have come to the end of the post-Watergate era in political journalism.

The centre – made up of a handful of nightly newscasts, rich big-city dailies and their star political journalists – cannot hold. It is doubly harassed: by declining audience and revenues and therefore relevance, on the one hand; and by the explosion of ankle-biting, semi-professional digital competitors on the other.

Where has the growth centre in print media been? In trash celebrity journalism and soft porn.

In television it is completely unreal reality TV. Radio risks becoming a satellite-borne digital jukebox. As in most of the developments at the nexus of politics and journalism in recent decades, it was the American hard right that saw this first.

<SNIP>

It is time for both sides to look at the real world and make some changes.

Neither politics nor political journalism sits as close to the centre of people's lives as it did a century or even a generation ago. To win attention and respect from a more sophisticated and skeptical public means going upmarket, not down. The wrong-headedness of most media moguls in understanding why so many have defected from politics and the media is painfully clear.

What can one say about The Toronto Star's launch of a trash celebrity magazine as its major editorial investment this year?

This should be required reading for every programmer and news director in the country.

Tell us something we don't know

She whose name shall never more be mentioned by me on this blog because, frankly, she gets more publicity than she merits -- and even conservatives think she's a whack job as this web site attests -- has been polluting the airwaves altogether too much lately. Does she get carbon credits under Kyoto or something?

Turns out, she's a big fat liar.

First of all, her constant harping on the media being liberal is belied by her constant presence in and on it.

And second of all ...

I have been saving this link for nearly a year -- and now's the time to post it. It's from Timothy Karr's MediaCitizen who caught SWNSNMBMOTB on the radio show hosted by Fox News talking head Sean Hannity in a ''debate'' with right wing media watchdog Brent Bozell. On it SWNSNMBMOTB admits ...

We have the media now.

Oh it gets even better. Here's the conservative megaphone himself Fox News' Bill O'Reilly on the subject, just one day later.

One major casualty in the war on terror is the liberal press in the USA. Don't believe the right-wing ideologues when they tell you the left still controls the media agenda. It does not any longer. It's a fact.

The terrorists must have dropped chemical weapons in the New York water that week.

UPPITY DATE: Peter Daou takes a rhetorical chainsaw to SWNSNMBMOTB and the media who love her.

It's hard to deny that Coulter's words border on incitement. What she says is neither amusing nor smart nor humorous nor factual nor worthy of airing on a major media outlet. It treats a substantial segment of the population as sub-human, as creatures deserving of public scorn and worse (She said Jesus would say that "we are called upon to do battle" on liberalism). Careful not to violate Godwin's Law, I'll refrain from the obvious comparisons, but what we're dealing with here is a dangerous inflection point in American politics. When this kind of opprobrium is peddled by major media outlets, it's high time that the Democratic establishment and the larger progressive community understand that this is a make-or-break showdown with the media.

Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and their ilk have made an industry out of liberal-bashing. Coulter fits in perfectly with those hate-traffickers. And contrary to the false Michael Moore comparisons made by Leno and others, there is no progressive counterpart to these people on the national stage.

My fears are, the day is coming when we will be saying that about the Canadian media too.

Bloggin' in the free world

And now is the time at Zerb's place where we get up and dance: Here's a video that celebrates the growing power of alternative media.

And I don't even like Hillary

Wow: It's tough to top this lede:

The defining issue of our time is not the Iraq war. It is not the "global war on terror." It is not our inability (or unwillingness) to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable health care. Nor is it immigration, outsourcing, or growing income inequity. It is not education, it is not global warming, and it is not Social Security.

The defining issue of our time is the media.

The dominant political force of our time is not Karl Rove or the Christian Right or Bill Clinton. It is not the ruthlessness or the tactical and strategic superiority of the Republicans, and it is not your favorite theory about what is wrong with the Democrats.

The dominant political force of our time is the media.

Author Jamison Foser takes the wheels off the free ride the media give neocon politicians and right-wing causes. For example:

Every prominent progressive leader who comes along is openly derided in the media as fake, dishonest, conniving, out-of-the-mainstream, and weak. We simply can't continue to chalk this up to shortcomings on the part of Democratic candidates or their staff and consultants. It's all too clear that this will happen regardless of who the candidate or leader is; regardless of who works for him or her. The smearing of Jack Murtha should prove that to anyone who still doubts it.

Meanwhile, any conservative who comes along is going to be praised for being strong and authentic and likable. Ask yourself: What prominent Republican is routinely portrayed in the media as a phony the way Al Gore and Hillary Rodham Clinton are?

It's a long but really strong read.

H/t to Russ Skinner.

CNN at War with itself

CNN scored both a hit and a miss yesterday.

The hit was the work by senior Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre on Pat Tillman, the NFL football player killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan and whose death the U.S. military tried to cover up and exploit for propaganda purposes.  Reported McIntyre:

It would be 26 days after the memorial service, more than a month after his death, before the army would publicly acknowledge what the rangers who were with him in combat knew almost right away. Tillman's death was from friendly fire.

He was hit in the head by three bullets fired by American soldiers, who say they mistook him for the enemy.

(on camera): Much, but not all of the story of what went wrong that April day in 2004, can be found in thousands of army documents obtained by CNN.

<SNIP>

Two years and three investigations have produced a mountain of files. But there is still a long list of unanswered questions about the death of Pat Tillman at the hands of his fellow rangers. Why were Tillman's body armor and uniform burned by his fellow soldiers after he was killed? Why did some soldiers change their testimony from investigation to investigation? And should some rangers have faced courts martial?

In McIntyre's harrowing account, the full tragedy of what happened to Tillman is described in all its bloody and wasteful detail. Better late than never.

That's the good news about CNN.

The bad news?

Listening to Wolf Blitzer yesterday, I finally got it. The man is a war junkie, trying to relive his glory days from Gulf War I: The George H.W. Bush Classic. These are just some of the questions from his interview yesterday with former U.S. Presdent Jimmy Carter:

The secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice said this last Sunday. She said, "Obviously, we don't want to be the world's jailer. We will be delighted when we can close down Guantanamo, but I would ask this: If we do close down Guantanamo, what becomes of the hundreds of dangerous people who were picked up on the battlefields on Afghanistan, who were picked up because of their association with Al Qaida?"

What would you say to Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state?

BLITZER: Here's what the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, says about the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

He says, "Ahmadinejad talks today like Hitler spoke before seizing power. We are dealing with a psychopath of the worst kind, with an anti-Semite. God forbid this man from ever getting his hand on nuclear weapons." That's what he told the German newspaper, Bild, on May 1.

He said similar things to me last Sunday when I interviewed him. If, in fact, this is a new Hitler, what's the point?

I guess that what's the Israelis would say. What's the point of talking to someone if he's simply a new Hitler?

BLITZER: Here's what the president said this week, President Bush, in a direct warning to the Iranians. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The United States and the international community have made our common position clear. We're determined that the Iranian regime must not gain nuclear weapons. I told the prime minister what I stated publicly before. Israel is a close friend and ally of the United States, and, in the event of any attack on Israel, the United States will come to Israel's aid.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Anything in that section that you would disagree with?

BLITZER: Let's talk a little bit about human rights in the West Bank, in Gaza, the Palestinian/Israeli problem, which is clearly very much on your agenda right now. You say the elections were very free, very fair, the elections that saw Hamas win and become the leader of this new Palestinian government. Listen to what Olmert, Ehud Olmert, the prime minister, said this week at the White House about this new Hamas-led Palestinian government.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

EHUD OLMERT, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: Unfortunately, the rise of Hamas, a terrorist organization which refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist and regards terrorism as a legitimate tool, severely undermines the possibility of promoting a genuine peace process.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Is the peace process effectively dead right now?

Blitzer kept leading and leading, not giving Carter the same platform he gave Olmert the Sunday previous. Here's a sampling of his questions from that interview.

Prime Minister Olmert, congratulations. Thanks very much for joining us. Welcome back to "Late Edition."

We have lots to discuss. I want to start, though, with the situation involving Iran and its nuclear ambitions. What's Israel's estimate? How much longer before Iran has a nuclear bomb?
BLITZER: Well, what does that mean in terms of the time line? Do you believe it's months away, years away from crossing that technological threshold, as you say?

BLITZER: Do you really believe that the president of Iran would stop its nuclear enrichment program under these political pressures from the U.S., the U.N., the Europeans?

BLITZER: Here's what Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, said last October. He said, "Israel must be wiped off the map of the world. And, God willing, with the force of God behind it, we shall soon experience a world without the United States and Zionists." And this is what he said only on April 14th, last month. He said, "I would like to say that, whether you like it or not, the Zionist regime is approaching its end. The Zionist regime is a dying tree, that soon its branches will be broken down."

Is this, from your perspective, simply rhetoric on his part, or do you think he really means it?

Does Blitzer HEART war because it's good for ratings? Or is there something else going on here?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch ...

How come when it involves Bill and Hillary Clinton's marriage, the MSM are happy to take their lead from the supermarket tabloid press?

But when it involves George W. Bush?

This week's Globe has quite the cover story about the state of the union between George and Laura. But, according to Media Matters, the MSM are ignoring it.

Media Matters does not endorse the decision by The New York Times, NBC's Tim Russert, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, The Washington Post's David Broder, and countless other elite media figures to take their cues from tabloids like the Globe, or to pry into the personal lives of political figures. But if they are going to do so, we expect them to be consistent.

As it happens, the cover of the May 29 edition of the Globe contains another sensational headline about another high-profile political couple:

    BUSH MARRIAGE BREAKUP!

    EXCLUSIVE!

    SEPARATE LIVES IN THE WHITE HOUSE

        * Nasty fights
        * Booze problems
        * Laura urges counseling

On Pages 20 and 21, the Globe announces "Bush and Laura's 29-year marriage FALLS APART," adding: "They barely talk to each other," "[t]hey argue when they do speak," and "[s]he's afraid he'll hit the bottle." Quotes in the article attributed to "a longtime friend" include the assertion that "[w]hen the cameras aren't on, they have nothing to do with one another," and that "[f]or all practical purposes, they've broken up."

<SNIP>

Media Matters wonders when we can expect The New York Times to assign a reporter to tally the number of nights the Bushes spend together and to conduct 50 interviews with Republicans to assess their interest in the state of the Bush marriage, or in President Bush's reported relapse -- and when it will run a 2,000-word front-page article on the topic.

Try, um, never?

Under wraps

At the risk of starting another Middle East comment war, here's Michael Massing's take on the media fallout (and more), following the publication in March of The Israel Lobby by John Mearsheimer, the Wendell Harrison Professor of Political Science at Chicago, and Stephen Walt, the Robert and Renee Belfer Professor of International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

Massing starts out knocking the paper, as well he should for it is indeed flawed, but then takes a sharp turn to explain exactly what is going on. His piece is long and complex and to excerpt all its ideas here would not do it justice. So here's the conclusion:

The nasty campaign waged against John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt has itself provided an excellent example of the bullying tactics used by the lobby and its supporters. The wide attention their argument has received shows that, in this case, those efforts have not entirely succeeded. Despite its many flaws, their essay has performed a very useful service in forcing into the open a subject that has for too long remained taboo.

Massing, it must be noted, was the journalist who gave us this, the definitive look at the New York Times, Judith Miller and the false WMDs stories.

One more thing on the Israel Lobby. I caught up on my reading this weekend and found this analysis by Philip Weiss in The Nation.

The shock waves from the article continue to resonate. The initial response was outrage from Israel supporters, some likening the authors to neo-Nazis. The Anti-Defamation League called the paper "a classical conspiratorial anti-Semitic analysis invoking the canards of Jewish power and Jewish control." University of Chicago Professor Daniel Drezner called it "piss-poor, monocausal social science." Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz  said the men had "destroyed their professional reputations." Even left-leaning critics dismissed the piece as inflammatory and wrong. As time passed (and the Ku Klux Klan remained dormant), a more rational debate began. The New York Times, having first downplayed the article, printed a long op-ed by historian Tony Judt saying that out of fear, the mainstream media were failing to face important ideas the article had put forward. And Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, praised it at the Middle East Institute for conveying "blinding flashes of the obvious," ideas "that were whispered in corners rather than said out loud at cocktail parties where someone else could hear you."

Turns out the piece was originally commissioned by The Atlantic, reports Weiss. But the magazine apparently chickened out.

"We understood there would be a significant price to pay," Mearsheimer says. "We both went into this understanding full well that our chances of ever being appointed to a high-level administrative position at a university or policy-making position in Washington would be greatly damaged." They turned their piece in to The Atlantic two years ago. The magazine sought revisions, and they submitted a new draft in early 2005, which was rejected. "[We] decided not to publish the article they wrote," managing editor Cullen Murphy wrote to me, adding that The Atlantic's policy is not to discuss editorial decisions with people other than the authors.

"I believe they got cold feet," Mearsheimer says. "They said they thought the piece was a terrible--they thought the piece was terribly written. That was their explanation. Beyond that I know nothing. I would be curious to know what really happened." The writing as such can't have been the issue for the magazine; editors are paid to rewrite pieces. The understanding I got from a source close to the magazine is that The Atlantic had wanted a piece of an analytical character. It got the analysis, topped off with a strong argument.

That might have been the end of it. The authors "nosed around," Mearsheimer says, looking for another US publisher, then gave up, concluding that the piece could not be published as an article or book in "a mainstream outlet" in the United States. Half a year passed. Then a scholar Mearsheimer will not identify called to say that a staffer at The Atlantic had passed along the piece, which he found "magisterial." The scholar put the authors in touch with Mary-Kay Wilmers, the London Review of Books editor, and last fall she contracted to publish the piece.

The rest, as they say, is history. Or not. That's because the paper, and subsequent discussion, never really hit the mainstream. Indeed, it was deemed too hot to handle by just about every news organization you can name.