Nice guys move to Canada

For those still laboring under the false impression that the political press in the US is engaged or interested in a fair fight, consider the following public statements and resulting press furores.

Case 1: Dick Cheneny on Meet the Press, as reported by the Washington Post:

On the subject of Iraqi chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, which have not been discovered, Cheney said he still believes chemical weapons are “buried inside [Hussein’s] civilian infrastructure.” Of the weapons search, Cheney said, “We’ve got a very good man now in charge of the operation, David Kay, who used to run UNSCOM.”

Kay, who is heading the 1,200-person search group, did not in fact run UNSCOM, the U.N. Special Commission that directed inspections in Iraq from 1991 through 1998; he was for one year the chief inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency, which handled the nuclear portion of those investigations for UNSCOM.

And that’s not the only lie he told: see Talking Points Memo for a couple more.

Resulting press furor: You're looking at it.

Case 2: Howard Dean on Wolf Blitzer, as reported by MSNBC, among many others:

In an interview on CNN Wednesday, Dean said, “there is a war going on in the Middle East, and members of Hamas are soldiers in that war, and, therefore they are going to be casualties if they are going to make war.”

Resulting press furor: Top line on Drudge. Discussion on Crossfire. Blog after blog up in arms. Fox not only reported the story, but decided to turn it into a propaganda piece (thanks to Unfogged for the link):

“There is a war going on in the Middle East, and members of Hamas are soldiers in that war,” Dean said Wednesday.

Dean condemned terrorism but his description of Hamas — designated by the United States as a terrorist group — as “soldiers in a war” conflicts with U.S. policy. The European Union also approved last week the designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization.

(See how easy it is to cut a few words, and change the meaning of a statement entirely? That’s why news organizations don’t do it. Tends to damage the old credibility; a concern that Fox, having no credibility, obviously needs not share.)

So. The playing field isn’t level. The game isn’t fair. Liberals—hell, centrists—hell, actual conservatives, as opposed to the revanchist McKinley “Republicans” now running the country into the ground—we have all chosen to play by gentleman’s rules. The other side hasn’t and won’t. In a bizarre twist of chronology, we modernists are taking the field in boiled leather and eschewing the forward pass, while Bush and his loyal disinformation team are layered in polycarb, and gauging eyes like the Oakland Raiders.

In these circumstances, fairness and polite disagreement are nothing but uniltateral disarmament. The country won’t magically become unbankrupt while we argue points of honor. It won’t magically become safe, either.

The time for polite disagreement is over. We have to stop pretending that we’re in a contest against decent people with whom we happen to disagree. We aren’t. We are in the midst of a struggle that will shape our country for the rest of our lives, and our children’s lives, and their children’s lives. On our side are people of good character and genuine concern. On the other side are corrupt propagandists, racists, anti-American haters of liberty and democracy, religious fanatics, and crony capitalists, led by the worst, most mendacious, most incurious, most despicable man ever to hold high office in this country. What we want is liberty and justice for all. What they want is to roll back a century’s worth of social progress and reclaim this nation that belongs to every American for the kleptocrat aristocracy that ran it in the era before labor unions and suffrage and Social Security and the Civil Rights Act. They are not good people, and in their aims we must see them disappointed. And we can’t let manners get in the way of winning.

Civility is a small price to pay for an America worth having in the world. Or, put another way, this Spinsanity article that cuts on Al Franken’s excellent new book for being too mean is a crock of warm, unilaterally-disarmed piss.

Filed under: politics