By all means, we should read and use the "revelations" in his latest
book in any way possible. But please do not lose sight of what we are dealing with here - the calculated "cognitive dissonance" and frontrunning exhibited are staggering to behold - clearly Bob Woodward is in a league of his own. Last week I included Bob in a
depiction of the four main
WaPo courtiers as the Four Horse Men of the Apocalypse as
pomposity and said:
Oh, and of course, it would not be complete without Bob Woodward, who I am sure is off somewhere writing some sycophant[ic] piece of crap - but we haven't seen it yet, as he hasn't figured yet how to get the maximum profit from it.
Who could have anticipated that he would come out that very week with articles, interviews and a book that would seem to be anything but. Ah, but you can bet Bob's net worth that he is flattering and sucking up to somebody - the trick is to figure out who.
As Kevin Drum
points out, the best news here is that by spinning this book this way, Woodward is giving confirming evidence that Bush is out with the "in crowd". It's as if Woodward has stuck is head in the door and told
Broderalla et al that the
way cool party is down the street.
[JP - and if you do nothing else- click on the Boderella link to see some inspired snark by The Editors.]
Now I suspect the new cool party looks alot like a former Vietnam War POW and his band of Merry Pranksters, ["Boy, we had you going on that torture and habeus corpus thing didn't we."] and the Party of Joe. In fact this fits right in with Broder's recent "Bush sucks" "Bush bad, Republican moderates good" rhetoric.
So, by all means use it, but be careful out there. In fact I think now would be a good time for everyone to watch The Stunt Man, Richard Rush's great exploration of the nature of illusion. Like director Eli Cross(Peter O'Toole), Woodward's got all of the film in the can, and can show what suits him. As Cross asks throughout the film "How tall was King Kong?" .... (3'6")
And remember, however tall the Washington in-crowd chooses someone to appear, the Four Wankers of The Washington Post Apocalypse will be there to push the story:
Outlined against the troubles of a nation, the Four Writers wrote again. In Internet lore they are known as arrogance, pomposity, cluelessness and idiocy. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Broder, Woodward, Howell and Hiatt. They formed the crest of the cyclone before which the reputation of the Washington Post was swept over the precipice these past ten years as a million readers peered at the bewildering panorama spread out on their breakfast tables and computer screens.