Letters to the Editor
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Seconding Buffalonian's question
I'd also like to add that I fully expect, should a Democrat win in 2008, the Beltway Press to revert to its 1990's hostility to the White House.
My own explanation, for what it's worth: the Beltway press's submission to the Bush white House is not so much due to its cult of savviness and worship of power as it is the result of the monstrous symbiosis between the corporate media and the Right Wing Noise Machine that took place during the Clinton years, giving birth to a monster that's half free press, half Republican propaganda tool. The change in the media's "mood" from Clinton to Bush is not a change at all; it's the same creature doing the same thing but in a different environment.
As to how the right wing achieved this genetic fusion, one of the most illuminating things I've read on this is from S. Blumenthal book on the Clinton years, in which he cites a Washington journalist explaining how much easier the other (Starr's) side is to work with because they provide information that's fully packaged and ready for publication. In other words, laziness (or if you want to be kind, the pressure of deadlines) on one side, and extreme diligence on the other, is the key.