Scott McClellan on "Meet the Press"

Not much room left to throw anyone under that Bush bus.

What infuriated me about all this is a story in the New York Times getting reaction from major media outlets (re: TV) about how they pursued the story at the time and whether they felt pressure to be lapdogs.

Uh, hey, New York Times people. Did you not write about the buildup to the war? Did you not have a reporter pretty much in bed with these very people? No comment for the story?

Pathetic.

 

Reporter? Stenographer.

 

And I loved Duffy with the classic conservative "Were you lying then or are you lying now?" schtick. Um, dude, the events on the ground confirm when McClellan was lying.

Also, he did a splendid job getting in the obligatory regurgitation of the evils of terrorists, taxes and teachers' unions. Not that those talking points have anything to do with the issue at hand.

 

Anybody else notice the Meet The Press interview was edited within an inch of its life? Sheesh.

And - did anybody catch O'Reilly's wig-out last week on the subject of Russert? Nothing short of a jealous rage. "HE'S NOT A NOBLE GUY ARRRGH!" Embarrassing.

 

I definitely noticed that. There were some very poor cuts.

 

Yes. I wish they'd provided the raw interview on their website or something.

 

Scott probably kept screwing up his lines and they had to reshoot.

 

McClellan didn't screw the American people; his bosses did.

If the president says to him, "Go tell the press corps we're certain Saddam has weapons of mass destruction," he's very well not going to stand in front of the podium and say, "The president is confident in the information that shows Saddam has weapons of mass destruction, but personally, I think that's a bunch of BS."

If a political spokesperson quit every time they provided a statement that skirted the truth, you'd have someone new in that job every day.

 

McClellan was doing a job we all know to be one step below cleaning septic tanks. His ethics are shit. We know it and he knows it and we know that PR types in every organization run the gamut ... from the ethically sound to those who are perfectly willing to whore themselves out for the paycheck. McClellan is firmly among the latter and he's certainly out whoring again with this book, but now it's in his self-interest to rain down shit on his formers bosses. And that's the issue with the Bushies. You behave like whores and ally yourself with whores, you're eventually going to get yours. McClellen and his ilk have been fucking the world for about eight years now so I guess we all deserve to know how it went down. I mean, having spent thousands of lives and billions of dollars, we should at least get a detailed invoice of services rendered.

The funny thing is, among those who are tearing him down, nobody is saying he's lying ... or at least not with any credibility. He's a scumbag, but now he's a transparent scumbag, which is certainly preferable.