Consider the following outtake from "In the Loop" column by Al Kamen in todays Washington Post
Speaking of the State Department, it appears Rice will break the modern indoor record for being without a deputy secretary of state. Former deputy Robert Zoellick left in early July.
The previous record was 3 1/2 months -- from Clifton Wharton's departure to Strobe Talbot t's arrival during Secretary of State Warren M. Christopher's tenure. (This, of course, was considered breakneck speed in Clinton time.) Granted, there was a five-month gap when Secretary of State James A. Baker III left State and Lawrence Eagleburger moved up to replace him without getting a deputy to replace himself. (That really doesn't count, however, since they never tried to find a replacement during the final months of the first Bush administration.) But even if Rice named someone now, there wouldn't be confirmation until early next year, so the record will be hers.
I read that this morning and suddenly a new realization of how far the Washington Post had sunk struck me.
Did you catch the little gratuitous comment:
(This, of course, was considered breakneck speed in Clinton time.)
This is a little thing to be sure but it points to an underlying structural problem with the Washington Post and why they are becoming increasingly irrelevent.
Al Kamen's is a columnist but his column appears in the News section of the print version not in the Opinion section. It is little news bits of whats going on inside the beltway.
Still note, Kamen cannot resist inserting his little parenthetical commentary into the paragraphs. It is not enough to note that Warren Christopher was without a Deputy Secretary of State for 3 and one half months, he has to make sure to get a little kick in at Clinton.
Al Kamen snipes. Al Kamen snipes like an old married who is afraid to confront his wife about something he is unhappy about, so he includes little barbed comments in the conversation. The little barbed comments never rise to the level of confrontation or seeking a solution, they just provide a continuing unpleasantness in the hopes that someone else will notice and agree with them.
Sniping is what people do when they are afraid to say something outright it is a form of cowardice.
If Al Kamen has something to say about Clinton, then he should come out and say it and save the WaPo readers the little barbed comments.
The whole article is warped by Al Kamen's unsaid bias. He could not present the facts in a straight forward manner. Factually, the longest the State Department has been without a deputy was 5 months under Lawrence Eagleburger during the first Bush administration. Currently, Rice will take over the second spot, eclipsing the 3 and one half months under Warren Christopher during the Clinton Administration. Al Kamen has to modify the simple factual statement to get his opinion that the 5 months interval is excused and to get his little dig at Clinton in the article.
The fact that the Editors at the Washington Post let this stuff through shows how low the standards at the Washington Post have sunk.
It is not the paper that exposed Watergate. Note that under the current rules they profess, e.g. They can't call a civil war in Iraq a civil war because the White House hasn't said it, Thus they wouldn't be able to call the Watergate cover-up a cover-up because the Nixon Whitehouse didn't say it. Under the rules they profess they limit themselves to doing in-depth investigative puff-pieces.
We still get the Washington Post at home. I would let it go, but my wife likes it, mainly for the coupons and flyers I think. I should say, I still do read pieces of it but, I no longer expect in-depth journalism, it is merely a pass through for what officials are willing to say.
Of course when I was a kid in St. Louis, we used to get a paper with coupons and flyers, puff pieces and little articles by the local officials. It was called the Suburban Journal and it was free.
I think we need to change the tag line for the Washington Post from, "The Washington Post, the Nation's Newspaper" to, "The Washington Post, the Nation's Suburban Journal"