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At this late date, it is scarcely radical to suggest that Whitewater and all the other "scandals" deployed by the Washington press corps to besiege the Clinton White House (before the Lewinsky affair) were without substance. In the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post, which created and promoted those stories, even such media mandarins as Thomas Friedman and Evan Thomas now casually assure us that they were overblown, even "bogus." And former New Republic editor Andrew Sullivan today admits that the famous takedown of the Clinton healthcare reforms he published in 1994, Betsy McCaughey's "No Exit," was essentially a fake too.
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They just pulled it out of their ass.
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Belated as those affirmations are, by more than a decade, they may still matter -- if only because they arrive at a time when the mainstream media is just beginning to descend into some of the same bad habits that plagued us during the last Democratic presidency and the far right is already talking impeachment.
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Of course they are and the so-called "liberal media" is gonna give 'em a platform, just like they did during Clinton's time. Not that anything said is new. The pattern of broadcasting any dirt (truthful or not) about a Democratic President and giving a Republican the benefit of many doubts was predicted during Bush's first term (we were hopeful back then that we could get him out in '04).
As bloggers and real journalists ran around with their hair on fire saying we were lied into the Iraq War, the MSM was busy helping the Republicans brand John Kerry a flip-flopper, as a man who didn't deserve the commendations earned in Vietnam while his opponent did everything he could to avoid service, to the point of basically abandoning his post during a time of war. Those opposing anything Bush did were crazy, shrill, Bush-hating, left-wing freaks; idiots sitting around the basement in pajamas spouting off on things they knew nothing about.
We were right, but that means nothing.
When I was young, I learned (and watched examples of) journalists held the highest standards to ensure their credibility to their readers and viewers. You were supposed to trust them, and you did. You knew you would be given the facts as they were known and the opinion of the newscaster, and his superiors, would not affect the story. You knew it as an article of faith.
Sadly, it is no longer so. Money is the bottom line and scandal sells. Be it genuine or not it's put on the air and smeared on a dead tree. Everything you read and hear has to be taken with a weighted slant, with the question "Who is pulling the strings?". Under the guise of fairness and balance, lies and distortions are given an equal platform with the truth. Other facts are omitted in fear of angering a corporate master or powerful lawmaker who could make life difficult regardless of who might be in power.
As Barack Obama tries to find his presidential footing, the tsunami of scandal is once again heading toward shore and the same 'journalists' are riding the wave as they did during the 90s. Their previous behavior is shrugged off as a 'product of the times' or 'the conditions at the moment' and they'll move on, this time giving voice to the people who question the validity of Obama's birth, his religious identity, and his 'far left' (read: Communist) leanings. I'm only surprised something hasn't come up that he dated (heaven forbid) a white girl sometime in his past. It's only gonna get deeper.
The state of journalism in the United States is sorry and until it turns around (not holding my breath) we will have to sift our information for truth. To those of us who've spent the past few years doing it, it'll continue like business as usual. Unfortunately, the majority of Americans still take what they read in the New York Times and Newsweek, and what they hear on CNN (or worse) as gospel, and that's why so many Americans believe Saddam had WMD and Obama wants to convene "death panels" to winnow out the elderly.
So be prepared, ladies and germs. It's only gonna get crazier and the same mouthpieces are gonna bring it to ya, live and in color with a conservative slant. Put on your hip waders and get out your sieve.
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