Stop Me Before I Vote Again

"If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.

"The collapse of the administration's rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. … In this case, the 'liberal media' didn't live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served."

The public tribunes of the press, however, see no reason to question their own general flawlessness:

"It's a stunning and unsupportable statement," pronounced Mark Knoller, CBS Radio correspondent. "Transcripts of McClellan's press briefings provide more than ample evidence of the intense scrutiny imposed on the White House and its policies by members of the press. Most days, McClellan left the briefing room lectern positively spent by the pounding he faced from reporters."

ABC's Ann Compton was perplexed: "Is Scott suggesting the White House press corps can stop, or start wars?"

David Gregory, NBC News' chief White House correspondent, opined: "I think he's wrong." He added: "I think we pushed, I think we prodded. ...The right questions were asked."

Our friends at Progs for Obama have posted an article by George Lakoff. Lakoff's impressions move beyond the tiresome atropine and organophosphate dichotomies that have plagued the compartmentalized dialectics of the post structural recrudescence. He presents an argument in favor of cultivating an evolving, omnichronal, flexible exegesis of President-to-be Obama's apparent tactical pandiculations, and 21st century politics in general, while striving to maintain the perseverance that has brought progressives to the cusp of the progressive actualization of recommitting to incrementally express a sense that... Anyway, he does so with a restrained, thoughtful use of capital letters; indicative of an appreciation for the sensibilities of both strict and nuturant mindsets. Extrapolating from this, as I do in my book, Dining Our Way Out of the Doldrums: Progressive Recipes for Success, one feels comfortable asserting that a breaded pork chop may benefit from a dollop of apple sauce, that macaroni and cheese may blossom under a shake or two of paprika and that no one need fear the onion when making an artisanal meatloaf.

As a philosopher and a gourmand, I came away from reading the proffered Text with the conviction that the progressive will to progressivism is, like butter, undergoing a clarifying process. The progressives themselves, however, appear to have a fundamental misunderstanding of their ultimate conjuration -- a real tragedy of méconnaissance.

[T]his country's "radical" activist contingents [are] making a big mistake by not openly, actively attacking corporate media personnel and equipment at major protest-attracting events such as [the Republicrat conventions].

I agree.

We rads need to change targets -- stop attacking the hams up front on the podiums and start attacking the actual culprits, the giant media congloms that provide us with all our degenerate political theatre; these elite mass media production companies, these studios of news-fic. Let's knock over their remote teams, trash their reporters while on camera live, bust up their megadollar griffs, festoon their broadcast towers with sacks of cowshit, storm their studios, get the Kiev boys to lance their web site's software: proclaim nonviolent but total war. Threaten to "virtually" bring down the beast, the giant red white and blue corporate news hydra, and by using only the miracles of voodoo agitprop, sizzle the beast's zillion heads right off at the stump, one by one.