Rove, Durbin and the Media inability to get the real story

Eric Alterman exposes the inability of the mainstream media to distinguish between the true statements Durbin made - but with the inclusion of the terms Nazi and Gulag as comparisons that set the right-wing into a frenzy, and the out-and-out McCarthyite lies made by Karl Rove.

The respective media flaps involving Senate Demo­cratic whip Richard Durbin and presidential consigliere Karl Rove invites a kind of admixture of awe and revulsion at the state of American political discourse and the media's inability to make the most fundamental kinds of distinctions to help citizens navigate it. [...]

Rove's [Republican] defenders, including White House press secretary Scott McClellan and New York Governor George Pataki, changed the subject to Durbin rather than offer even meek criticism of the second most powerful man in America (after Dick Cheney). But remember: Durbin paid tribute to America's ideals. Rove not only lied about liberals, he mocked the very concepts of "moderation," "restraint" and "understanding" as un-American. Durbin criticized no one but the torturers; Rove slandered more than 20 percent of Americans who proudly identify themselves as liberals.

And where were the mainstream media in all this? With just a few honorable exceptions they were passing along without prejudice Rove's slander and lies and the deliberate distortions of Durbin's words. Typically, Washington Post media cop Howard Kurtz adopted the White House spin with a report titled "Down­playing Durbin, Jumping on Rove." The smart guys at The Note explained that Democrats were asking for this kind of thing with their general wimpiness. Apparently, it's not a reporter's bus­iness to decide what's true anymore, just who sounds more macho.

There's a lesson for liberals in all this: American politics has become a game with no rules and no referee. Play by the old rules--fairness, honesty, good faith--and face political extinction.

This is the McCarthy Era again, but with a President who is the single most stupid man ever to hold that office.

The United States is being taken down the tubes by Bush, Cheney, and their henchmen in this administration. The U.S. is rapidly regressing militarily, economically, and socially, and the Republicans are working hard to destroy the Constitution to do it.