Excellent, as usual, but I can't agree that (most of) these Beltway jackasses are expressing what they "personally" believe.

They are expressing what they are paid to believe.

Thanks Glenn. Your point is accurate, and helps one understand the vital importance of the blogosphere. You and your fellow independent-thinking bloggers help keep the small flame alive, that was once the bright torch of "The Free Press" our Founding Fathers so cherished and passed down. Let the MSM cable news darlings get more party invitations sent out by "powerful" beltway personalities. You keep acting as a patriot would.

Excellent, as usual, but I can't agree that (most of) these Beltway jackasses are expressing what they "personally" believe.

They are expressing what they are paid to believe.

It's hard to talk about "they" this way - in terms of motives - because they are not monolithic. But I think that as one ascends up the media food chain, this distinction vanishes. Their identities, careers, and everything they value comes to depend so much on the system that rewards them that a defense of that system becomes the only true belief they have.

“The arguments against negotiating with Syria and Iran were also made against negotiating with the Soviet Union, and by some of the same people.”

Ronald Reagan didn’t listen to them. Instead, he took an “extreme” leftist position and negotiated with them.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116658378080955371.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries

I think most people are starting to catch on to the fact that just because these people say something (creating their own reality), doesn't actually mean it is so. Hopefully, that era has passed. But if you listen to what the righties are saying, I believe they want Clinton to be the D's candidate and are trying to create that reality as best they can. There are probably lots of reasons they want her, but, as usual, the two best reasons come down to fear and smear. Fear of a woman, and she would be the easiest to smear....just take up where they left off in 2000.

Similarly to anti-Semitism, the phrase "Holocaust denial" is being changed.

Much as anti-Semitism used to mean that the person holding that faith felt that Jews were to be avoided, kept away from society by various means, and kept separate – it now seems to be used in the sense of “someone who disagrees with the Neocon vision for Israel” or “with Israel’s most extreme policies”.

Similarly, “Holocaust Denier” used to mean "someone who says that Hitler didn't kill Jews" to "someone who might disagree with the Neocon vision for Israel” – the thinking (?) there being that if anyone disagrees with the policies presented as “for Israel” they must want Israel destroyed, and thus support what Hitler wanted to do.

If a person being thus-accused pulls out their own Holocaust credentials or claims to be Jewish, they’re told that they’re “self-hating” and marginalized thus.

It is a very successful campaign of marginalization, much like the “serious person” one that you’ve been highlighting.

Of course, people who were appalled a couple of years back when they were first called anti-Semites are – by now – quite blasé about it. “Ho, hum, yeah; anti-Semite. Now, how about those FISA warrants/military scandals/whatever?”

There may be some associated blowback from this, along the lines of "oh, if that's what anti-Semitism means, I guess it's not a bad idea".

How soon before “Holocaust denier” gets the same attitude?

I was about to remind everyone that Specter didn't put Gonzales under oath in February of '06 - and I see that JaO has also brought that to AL's attention, who in turn has edited his post accordingly. It is still, however, a crime to lie to Congress I believe, tho offhand I do not recall how that crime is denominated.

the Beltway punditocracy is a fringe, extremist, and dangerous "interest group" who routinely distort the views of the American People in order to support and perpetuate their own extremist, fringe, and dangerous agendas.

The more this Truth is repeated, the more the Beltway crowd will be rejected.

Ridicule is good, too. But the truth is, almost no one agrees with the pundits, on just about any topic.

I read your column so I don't have to listen to, or watch, troglodytes like Chris Matthews, and your last quote from him justifies my caution. I'd blow a vessel in my attempt to strangle the fucker through the TV when he says things like that.

What a scum-sucking low-life. No wonder our politics are such a slimy mess. In another time, not long ago, Chris Matthews would have been run out of town on a rail for saying that kind of thing. Now, it's routine.

It's the kind of thing that brings me to the edge of despair. How do we fight this kind of know-nothing, pandering, racist gabble that passes for "journalism" now?

Makes me want to go wash my hands.

Glenn, I find this fascinating. Your reaction was that the media was unduly harsh on Obama, while Bob Somerby thought it was Hillary who was treated unfairly.

Check this out, it's worth a read:

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh072607.shtml

It would seem that the media narrative that the few of us that read Greenwald/Somerby/Alterman/Boehlert are seeing will flower eventually into a meme that will be hard to stop. "Clinton is this and Obama is that." I don't think it even matters this and that are, just so long as they get to stroke the candidate they like and trash the one they don't.

I remember when the press was spending so much time on Bush's "likeability" when at the same time I was sitting here wondering how anyone could even look at him without feeling nauseous, much less have a beer with him. No matter -- they needed something to balance Gore's awesome credentials so that's what they had.

Right now it doesn't seem too offensive, since most of us could vote for either Hillary or Barack, but just wait until Hardball and Meet the Press tries to "fair and balance" the field between either of them and whomever the Republicans finally settle on. Would that be Thompson? That is a lot of leveling to do but don't think they won't attempt it to generate the horserace they crave so much.