Today, I’m willing to bet, will mark the high point of the corporate media’s coverage of the Downing Street memo. I know the gadflies will keep on gadding — and more power to them — but this is clearly a story the media elites are determined to stuff down the memory hole. Who’s going to stop them?

Going Down on the Downing Street Memo

These days, the art of political persuation in America is as a strange melange of tribal solidarity, celebrity worship, religous proselytizing and mass marketing — preindustrial and postindustrial at the same time; Marshall McLuhan meets Billy Graham meets . . . Juan and Evita Peron. All generalities are false (including that one) but my general take on the American electorate runs something like this:
…

Out of the Running

That kind of thing always makes me nervous about forecasting a top — as a wiser analyst than me once said, bear markets always begin with full elevators, and right now there may be too many people (including me) standing around talking about a housing bubble for the bubble to pop.

Covering the Top

The Friendly Skies

The obvious truth is that in the globalization era, the phrase "homeland security" is an Orwellian oxymoron — particularly for a country with 9,600 miles of land and sea borders, 14,857 airports and 185 major seaports handling an estimated 214,000 ships a year. Clearly a forward strategy against terrorism is needed — which may about the only thing Donald Rumsfeld and I agree on.

Litter Boxes

No good deed goes unpunished, they say, and I’m sure Judge Bridges will pay for his by being the target of a few conservative hate rallies. But to me it’s enormously gratifying to see that a backcountry judge in Washington State has more sense, and far more intellectual integrity, than the partisan majority on the Supreme Court in Washington D.C.

The Bridges of Chelan County

Despite all the rhetoric, winning the war against terrorism really isn’t all that important to the wingnut right — far less important, anyway, than always feeling morally superior to the hated liberals and never, ever admitting that the Bush administration’s critics might, just once, be right.

Captains Clueless

Edwards and Biden may have thought they were immunizing themselves by pushing the media knife a little deeper into Dean’s back, but all they did was ensure another couple of days of coverage for the "story" and give the GOP spinmeisters some fresh ammo to fire back at Dean — who, whether they like it or not, is the chairman of the entire Democratic Party, not just the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.

Casey Stengel’s Lament

Human Events‘ Bonfire of the Vanities

(on Human Events see also my earlier post Reality & Satire)

I doubt few "mainstream" journalists are prepared to consider — much less cope with — the possibility that the U.S. government is waging information warfare against them (and, by extension, against the American people), even though Rummy and company long ago all but declared their intention of doing just that.

The Friday Flush

Maybe we need to put up some signs, like: "I am a corporate journalist, kick me."

Memory Loss

What the health of the Republic requires, in other words, may not be a new crop of leakers and whistleblowers, or a fresh young generation of Woodwards and Bernsteins — or even a more independent, aggressive media. What it may need is a new population (or half of a population, anyway), one that hasn’t been stupified or brainwashed into blind submission, that won’t look upon sadistic corruption and call it patriotism, and that will refuse to trade the Bill of Rights for a plastic Jesus and a wholly false sense of security.

Sore Throat