Bob Somerby continues to do highly commendable work at
the Daily Howler. He stands alone, as far as I can tell, in his relentless criticism not only of Russert, Matthews, and their ilk, but also of cowardly, ill-prepared, milquetoast liberal spokespeople, whose names I'll leave it for you to discover.
Sure, Somerby's style may seem repetitive and vicious at times, but his analytic skills are tremendous, and he consistently provides the web's best commentary on the SCLM.
Somerby's post today provides such a concise summation of the pathetic state of the press corps that I couldn't resist posting the following excerpt here. Enjoy.
BUNGLING RATHER (PART 8, GRAND FINALE): OK, let's make it short and sweet. Our modern press corps has two major parts. On the one hand, we have an aggressive pseudo-con press corps which is constantly yelling liberal bias. And then, we have the mainstream press corps, which actually tends towards that "right-leaning dinner-party centrism" which Josh Marshall correctly describes and correctly says that he fails to discuss.
Due to its right-leaning dinner-party centrism, what does that mainstream press corps do? For one thing, when kooky-con books ascend the best-seller lists, the mainstream press corps doesn't point out how kooky these books really are. The free pass being handed to Mark Levin has been handed to many others before him--including John O'Neill and Jerome Corsi, whose absurd, kooky book, Unfit for Command, rearranged last year's White House race.
But there's something else the mainstream press tends to do--over the course of the past dozen years, it has tended to savage Big Democrats. For reasons they've never much been asked to explain, they trashed Bill Clinton through his years in the White House, then conducted a two-year War Against Gore--a war which put George Bush in the White House. That War Against Gore may have been the most remarkable press event in our lifetime. But try to find the "liberal spokesman" who discusses that war today! That press corps war changed American history--and "liberal spokesmen" all seem to know that they just mustn't bring that war up!
Result? When Dan Rather bungled the Bush AWOL matter, pseudo-con screamers began to yell liberal bias. And even after the trashing of Clinton, then Gore, your "liberal spokesmen" stared off into space, unwilling to note the sheer absurdity of this persistent claim. Somehow, Flavia Colgan and Gene Lyons were able to see the foolishness of this claim in the wake of the Clinton-Gore era. But why didn't Rachel Maddow know what to say when she dropped by Scarborough Country? Perhaps she'd been listening to other "liberal spokesmen"--people who never seem to mention your nation's recent press history.
But then, their friends are inside that mainstream press, and so are the sources of their future earnings--earnings which can be quite considerable. Did Chris Matthews buy a second home, on Nantucket, for $4.4 million? There's a lot of scratch to be made inside Chris' cohort. And somehow, by total coincidence, your brave "liberal spokesmen never seem to discuss that cohort's "dinner-party" clownishness--the clownishness that continues to make a joke of your discourse and a mess of American interests.
For ourselves, the bungling of the Rather bungle finally said it all. Your brave "liberal spokesmen" refuse to discuss the most important events of your nation's recent history. (And when Dahlia Lithwick makes a plain mistake, they rush to praise her for her brilliance!) Meanwhile, the brilliant E. J. sits and chats about how drunk Wonkette really is! Yes, a fatuous, mewling dinner-party culture does own the soul of your Millionaire Press Corps. But so what? "Liberal spokesmen" are willing to come right out and note the fact that they fail to discuss it.
In the process, ordinary people never get to hear about their nation's recent history. And pseudo-con screamers get to keep yelling about that feared liberal bias. Indeed, there's the portrait of your age: One group keeps yelling things which are false--while the other refuses to say what is true! But so what? The people deceived by this process are proles! Why should your fiery "liberal spokesmen" give a fat fig about that?