Thanks for the link and excerpt, and I agree. Not that it should be banned, of course. There's still a pressing need to know about puppies and for the likes of Chuck Todd to have places to look good in a bad goatee while pretending to work for Fox News. But I do agree that most of them are engaging in bad journalism that only detracts from substantive discourse on the matters touched upon by them.

I think that a real, honest, substantive WH correspondant would be genuinely investigatory and not just rely on talking points and the silly and pointless controlled Q&A contrivances that are the WHPB--and ideally not attend all of them, on a passive-aggressively random basis--and be adversarial when and where called for. If that limits their formal access, so be it. There are other, better ways to get information than from official sources spinning administration versions of the truth, and the adversity works both ways--a good investigatory reporter can apply all sorts of pressure on the WH to get it to be cooperative, via their reporting.

Of course, most of these robots lack either the brains, skills or guts to do that, as well as the support of management, which has become increasingly obsequious to power. So I don't expect to see it from the establishment media any time soon. Which is why we have people like Glenn and Amy, and the occasional establishment media exception like Priest, Risen, Hersh, etc.

Heh, unlike these EM asshats, at least Jeff Gannon didn't deny being a whore.

And, apologies for going somewhat off-topic, but I just spent some time on DailyKos, which IIRC was the first political blog that I read and followed regularly, around the '04 election. And as a regular commenter and occasional diarist there, I find it hard to see that site turning into the Obama Adoration and Apology Society (or, perhaps, and I'm coming to believe more likely, ground zero for Obama Astroturfing). As the blog that put progressive blogging on the map, making it possible for blogs such as yours, Digby's and others to become well-known, it's a damn sham to see what's become of it.

I'm referring, of course, to what has by now become a regular phenomenon on Daily Kos, that whenever Obama breaks a campaign promise, or says or does something that is intrinsically and undeniably counter to what the (real) Democratic party, the left, and really the country are supposed to be about, a huge swarm of shameless defenders emerges to lash out at anyone who dares criticize him on it, no matter what the issue. Today it was Rahm Emanuel's assertion that NO ONE, including those who authorized torture, and devised legal theories to allow it, will be prosecuted for it, period, in addition to those who actually carried it out.

I'm sure that some of these people are genuine and sincere in defending Obama on such things, so delusional and clueless are they about what he's doing. And some, I imagine, have reluctantly bought into the nonsense about how Obama simply doesn't have the political pull to prosecute torturers (in which case, who the hell cares what he "wants" to do if he can't actually do it?). But I suspect that most of them are morally challenged faux progressives who are only interested in having their own special interests advanced, and so long as they believe that these interests are being adequately addressed, to hell with everything else.

Obama supporters/apologists/worshippers call it political "pragmatism". Which is basically just a lazy and dishonest euphemism for cowardly, unprincipled and cynical. And the ironic thing is that a political "movement" that is based on such things is inevitably doomed to fail. If the Obama phenomenon ultimately proves to be--as it's being proven to be, by its own words and actions--based mostly on lies, false hope, great speeches, smoke and mirrors, endless capitulations and sellouts, cowardice, lack of principle, and the occasional bone thrown to a credulous and adoring nation, then it will fail, sooner or later. Because they always do. And what will take its place will almost certainly be from the right, and most likely even worse than BushCo.

Does Obama actually even believe in anything, deeply, if at all, or is it all about what "works", with the least amount of conflict and risk? With all his talk about being post-partisan, I think that he's really just post-principle. And leaders like that never last.

I continue to believe that for real reform to happen, we have to keep on working within the system, because more radical approaches are both far less likely to succeed, and far less likely to lead to the sorts of hoped-for outcomes that proponents of such approachs seem to believe even if they did "succeed". But clearly, the rot is far vaster and deeper than we'd hoped, on both sides of the aisle, and this is going to take generations.

Sic semper mannulus!

Meus regnum parumper mannulus!