Say No Evil
by shep
John King, CNNs White House correspondent, appeared on the Colbert Report last night to promote his new, as yet unnamed, Sunday morning roundtable gas-purge. No I’m not kidding.
When Colbert suggested that, to compensate for being too easy on George Bush, the press should go after Obama “hammer and tongs,” King admitted that the mainstream press had indeed, “made some mistakes”. Specifically, King said that in the post-9/11 moment and the run-up to the Iraq War journalists “…didn’t ask the critical questions of the president”.
So King still doesn’t understand how he and his industry failed the country (and pretty much the entire world as a result). I heard many journalists ask the President the right questions. Then I heard President Bush lie to them – to us. Then, incredibly, I heard nothing.
Now, I knew that I was being lied to and so did King (and Russert, and Williams, and Mitchell, and Matthews, and Stephano…well, you get the idea). But a lot of other people didn’t know they were being lied to. Some still don’t.
One thing the 2008 campaign proved without a shadow of a doubt: all Republicans are liars, from bottom feeders like Limbaugh and Hannity all the way to the top of the Republican presidential ticket. When King and his ilk can tell the public the truth about it, they’ll be starting to do their jobs. Until then, they’re just part of the lie.
