Yeah, I was really shocked at how pro-Obama Brooks was being when Brooks:

* said that his statement about Hezbollah "has the whiff of what President Bush described yesterday as appeasement";

* asked rhetorically: "Is Obama naïve enough to think that an extremist ideological organization like Hezbollah can be mollified with a less corrupt patronage system and some electoral reform?"

* concluded: "If Obama believes all this, he’s not just a Jimmy Carter-style liberal. He’s off in Noam Chomskyland."

I don't know why you felt the need to reprint the first part of Brooks' piece as if I hadn't read it and as if I hadn't already argued that Brooks uses these points as softballs. But since you did, I'll repeat: the way I read it, these are strawmen that he props up just to then let Obama knock down, in extremely flattering style, I might add. By the end of the piece Brooks makes people who believe such things - such as George W. - look a little silly. THAT I think was the point of bringing up H.W. Bush at the end, to tweak W.

Jestaplero has made numerous statements suggesting that he's a pedophile. Can he really be as sexually attracted to small children as it seems from his statements?

Good grief, Glenn, that analogy is about is inapt as it is tasteless. No one's accusing me of such things, while half this nation's punditry, his GOP rival, and the frickin' president are all running around accusing Obama of saying the very things Brooks uses to set up the piece. That's why it's not a spurious or gratuitous ploy - and why your pedophile analogy, frankly, sucks.

Earlier someone asked "Who is the Brooks piece supposed to please?" Good point. It's not aimed at you or me or UT readers. It's aimed at reasonably intelligent Reagan Democrats, independents, and moderate Republicans who can't stand Bush and yet are actually trying to decide between Obama and McCain, believe it or not, and want some reassurance Obama is tough enough. That describes half the people I know and virtually everyone I work with. They are also the people Obama needs to win over to win the general election. Columns like this will be helpful to Obama with this demographic, trust me. I'm shocked that it came from a source such as Brooks.

Finally, I'm really amazed at how frequently people come and say: "You described what this person wrote inaccurately because they said X," when I explicitly described X.

You described it inaccurately: factually (where did it say Obama "had to call Brooks"? did you make that up or was it reported elsewhere?), and thematically. You held it out as an example of lack of diversity, i.e; another anti-Obama piece, when I (and others) found it rather positive.

Finally, I'm really amazed at how thin-skinned you can be sometimes. It's a minor critique I thought was reasonable, why the flame-thrower? Can you really not see how that column could reasonably be construed as helpful?

I also noticed in my review of yesterday's carnage in here St.Glenn never was able to recover from direct indictment of his charade...Imagaine a gay activist being ashamed of being a gay activist..

I seem to recall that Glenn responded and asked you to back it up with some facts. And I also recall that your response was absolutely pathetic. So I'm not sure what Glenn needed to "recover" from.

Good post.

One correction: the former MSNBC host is Joe Scarborough, not to be confused with long-time local NBC news anchor Chuck Scarborough. (Although Joe's first name does happen to be Charles.)

“I think the questions were asked,” Gibson repeated. “It was just a drumbeat of support from the administration. It is not our job to debate them. It is our job to ask the questions.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24855902/

Williams, the NBC Nightly News anchor, said that one problem the media faced was not being able to independently verify the administration’s allegations.

“In Katrina, the evidence was right next to us,” he said in reference to the devastation wreaked on the Gulf Coast and New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. “Sadly, we saw fellow Americans — in some cases floating past facedown. We knew what had just happened. We weren’t allowed that kind of proximity with the weapons inspectors [in Iraq].”

See, that's the problem. There just wasn't anybody available for the networks to talk to during the runup to the war who disputed the administration's case for war. It's really not the media's fault.

...the tenor of the reporting so far has been anti-McClellan, and has focused more on Administration insinuations that he's unbalanced - "this is not the Scott we knew" - or motivated to fabricate criticisms of bush in order to juice his book sales.

The idea that McClellen did this to enrich himself is ludicrous on its face. Does anybody with the slightest sense of how the world works really believe that whatever he earns from this book is more than he has now sacrificed byt blacklisting himself with the right-wing power establishment?

I've not seen a single instance where the admin. representatives have been pressed to address the substance of McClellan's claims or to acknowledge these claims have been anticipated and corroborated by scores of independent sources over the last four years.

I saw one, on Fox News, surprisingly enough. Alan Colmes v. Karl Rove.