Earlier this week, I made the ever so modest suggestion that it would be neat if a whole bunch of people put links on their blogs and blog posts that said the words "Bill O'Reilly is a
terrorist sympathizer."
Many people did. So many, in fact, that if you search for "terrorist sympathizer" on Google today, the first result you'll see listed is Bill O'Reilly's website. Mission very much accomplished. Suddenly I feel like donning a codpiece and a flight suit.
But our good work is not over, fine people of the leftward persuasion, because a certain individual has this week demonstrated his utter lack of ethics, journalistic standards, honor and independece. I am, of course, talking of former hero of the journalism world, now laughing stock, Bob Woodward.
Woodward had once been instrumental in bringing down a President of low ethics and high crimes - one Richard M. Nixon - and has since been held in high regard by all who wish that journalists could find their way back to the honor and integrity of the days of Edward R. Murrow.
Alas, yesterday saw Paula Zahn have Armstrong Williams on to discuss George Bush's problems du jour, and thus we know that journalism, at least on television, is dead. Whan an institution like CNN decides that a journalist who admitted to taking $250,000 to shill for the Bush administration is the most qualified person to discuss his current problems, you know the henhouse is being run by the Fox.
But hey, at least we could always trust print journalism, right? I mean, as long as Woodward and Bernstein were entrenched at the Post, we'd be able to trust that the truth would come first... right?
Wrong. This week it was revealed that, despite calling the Plamegate issue largely 'gossip' on national TV, Woodward had been smack dab in the middle of it, having learned of Plame's identity not from Scooter Libby, but from someone else (presumably Libby's replacement, Stephen Hadley). Yet, Woodward didn't bother telling us, the public, about this. Nor did he tell his boss about it. Nor did he tell the Prosecution about it, until compelled to do so under oath.
Instead, he kept his mouth shut, even when it was the biggest news story in the land. Bob Woodward, as a result, has gone from hero to zero, from defender of good to White House word-whore, and has damned himself to not only be taken off his pedestal, but kicked around the room until he puts his hand up and says "no mas."
Bob Woodward must be driven out of the Washington Post - and journalism - in a Miller-like cloud of shame.
WHICH LEADS US TO THIS WEEK'S GOOGLE-BOMB!
Just as Bill O'Reilly is a terrorist sympathizer, George W. Bush is a miserable failure, and Santorum is defined as "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex", as of this day forward, Bob Woodward will now be known as "White House shill".
How do you take part in the Bob Woodward Google-Bomb?
It's easy! Just post in any website, blog, blog comments, signature line, or messageboard post, the following line of code:
Bob Woodward is a < a href="http://mediamatters.org/items/200511160013">White House shill< /a>
NOTE: In order to be sure the HTML would display properly for you, I've added a space after the <'s - be sure to remove those spaces before you post to your own blogs or it won't work properly.
Post that passage everywhere, people. Email it to friends. Post it as comments. Make it your signature file. Pass it around like Scooter Libby passes around state secrets.
How does a Google-Bomb work?
Basically, the more times a phrase is linked to a given website, the higher that website is ranked in searches for that phrase at Google. When thousands of people linked to George W. Bush's White House bio webpage under the link "miserable failure", that made him the number one search result under that term. Ditto Bill O'Reilly and 'terrorist sympathizer'.
All you need to know is that if you're mentioning 'Bob Woodward' somewhere online, and you link the Media Matters page outlining his deception to the phrase "White House Shill", the Google-bomb will work, Media Matters will get more traffic, Bob woodward will be further shamed, and the free world is the big winner.
The Bill O'Reilly Google-bomb took just four days to work. Let's see if we can damn Bob Woodward to a lower level of Hell in three.
UPDATE: As is pointed out below, it wouldn't hurt to link both
Bob Woodward's name AND the phrase '
white house shill' to the Media Matters page. Let's make it so that Woodward's name itself is a Google-bomb and double-load the shame!