Plame Horse Almost, But Not Entirely, Completely Dead
Dean
I'm not sure what I'll remember as the dumbest story of the 2004 election season. I guess it's a tie whether it was the phoney story that we'd see a return of a military draft, or the Valerie Plame "outed spy" nonsense.
I guess I'll pick the Valerie Plame baloney, only because the phoney "they're bringing back the draft" story was serious enough that Congress actually voted on it (nearly universally against, mind you--only two members actually voted for it). The Plame nonsense, however, has dragged on and on and on and on--even long after it was pretty obvious that the only person who'd "outed" the "undercover agent" Valerie Plame was her husband Joe Wilson.
The mainstream press here in America had done their best to whip this phoney "scandal" into national news for well over a year--until prosecutors started threatening to force reporters to divulge their sources. Then all of a sudden the press started screaming that this whole story was a witch hunt. It reached the height of absurdity last Thursday, though, with major news organizations arguing that there was no proof a crime had actually been committed here, and demanding proof that a law was actually broken before harassing reporters any further.
Can you get more rich with irony? Apparently people in the press are all too happy to pass along half-assed allegations that smear people in government.... until one of their own is in the crosshairs. THEN they start asking whether there's any actual proof that a crime was committed?
Ah. You gotta love the press corps.
(Via Mark Noonan.)
What's funny is that the Times, specifically, did that. One institution. It would be unremarkable if, say, the Post had been pushing the story, and, say, the Sun Times had decided to ask for proof; that's just "the media" working decently as it should, covering multiple views of one story.
But when it's the Times (and other papers) contradicting themselves now that it's got no chance of hurting a certain President, well, that's just comedy.
Now Dean, do we haffta? You never know where those press corps folks have been, so the though of 'loving' them is pretty repulsive to me. ;)