..how King can't distinguish between what he said (the questions he asked) and what was aired. He seems to think that because he supposedly asked some "tough questions" the interview isn't fawning, even if those "tough questions" never saw airtime.

@sysprog at 6:45 AM:

Thanks for posting the excellent piece by Matt Taibbi...highly informative and painfully revealing.

KR

Twenty years of experience, or a single experience repeated for twenty years?

Clearly, John King doesn't ordinarily read you, Glenn, or he'd know what happens next. Now, John King and Colonel Boylan have a shared experience. They can have a male-bonding experience should their paths cross, and salve their respective egos. The rest of us can simply shake our heads and chuckle.

Let the brave John King, intrepid-hard-hitting newsman, be tough enough to read you column today, and the comments which follow.

Next time contact King first, give him the chance to debate the issuue with you first hand

What's the logic here again? Why is it up to Glenn to chase down King and beg him to convince us he is doing his job? Final product of King's work is published. Glenn didn't misquote him or take his words out of context. No one disputes this. If Glenn were to "debate" King's very professional work with him, he'd be no more a softballer than King is with McCain.

We're not trying to make King & Company look good here. We are tired of their lousy work and their getting chummy with people who have power over us. WE gave journalist a place in society and an obligation to fulfill, together with vast privilages and protections. We expect something back. We don't answer to them. They answer to us.

I don't read biased uninformed drivel so I'm a little late to the game.

Does King make his assistants read Drudge for him?

What's the logic here again? Why is it up to Glenn to chase down King and beg him to convince us he is doing his job? Final product of King's work is published. Glenn didn't misquote him or take his words out of context. No one disputes this. If Glenn were to "debate" King's very professional work with him, he'd be no more a softballer than King is with

McCain.

Exactly. I really don't understand King's complaint here at all. Do book reviewers call the author before writing a negative review to make sure there isn't hidding meaning or deleted paragraphs which undermine what was written? Do movie and television reviewers call the screenwriters or directors to ask for their "side of the story" in why they produced some crappy product.

I wasn't interested in King's after-the-fact excuse-making for the product they broadcast. What matters is what they broadcast, not what King was thinking or why. Having said that, once he did offer his side of the story, I printed it here in full. But the idea that you can't critique someone's work product until you first speak with them is ludicrous.

"I understand why the MSM hate bloggers. The curtain has been lifted and the truth is out."

I was reflecting on that same point this morning as I was reading Glenn's latest and the responses here. In light of the most recent encounter by a US Navy ship in the Strait of Hormuz, I thought of how much easier it was for Lyndon Johnson, et.al., to manuever events re: the Tonkin Gulf encounter(s) (literally, it turns out, as a recent document unearthed illustrates that the chronology of events--or non-events-- were either erroneously transposed in translation or manipulated intentionally by the Johnson Administration). Now that so much information or misdirection is easily traceable and readily available to those who pay attention, those who speak, or mimic, or puppet the company line must now be prepared to defend themselves in open court. God bless the internet for that access…

There are many truths, Mr. King, and those about you have leaked into open discourse. Draw your sword to defend or lay it down peacefully. And step away from the vehicle…

You are teasing?

You are on your last chicken leg (pun), and have been diagnosed as chronically mentally ill, and in denial, and refusing to believe the 'shrinks' honest, heartfelt, and helpful diagnosis? He's trying to help heal you of a bad public smell? If you have under-arm odor a 'friend' can warn you. You may go into public and people will talk behind your back.

Do you ever read by candlelight just before bed time on those cold nights, you know, when your tempted to be all lonely, and can only resort to a choke a chicken-by-the neck moment of pleasure? You are still blind? You pull 'our' legs collective (chicken legs)?

By the way, 'rubberchicken' soup with large white lima beans, red kidney's, or the best blackeyes peas can't give health good wholesome health if your a financed troll. You gotta admit, and/or confess, at the darkest lonely night moments..

if you don't claim your mental illness...

you may respond here as if you got a bad-case-condition of dry-bean gas?

~Maybe you can-can dance in the outside foyer?

You remind me of the school teacher in 6th grade who said,

"Now class, it's time to behave." The children had fun by this: They commenced and began: The rubberchicken 'one' was pelted with kitchen trash."

John King wrote:

The interview was mainly to get a couple of questions to him on his thoughts on the role of government when the economy is teetering on the edge of recession, in conjunction with similar questions being put to several of the other candidates.

I went back and looked at the four questions in the interview. None of them had anything to do with the economy. Strange.

Glen you must give credit were do. I was the video clip of King interviewing McCain and he looked very serious indeed.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07133/785076-148.stm

We all struggle mightily to prove to ourselves and others that whatever we do is the right thing to have done, even -- or most especially -- when it is not.

This team of social psychologists tackles "the inner workings of self-justification," the mental gymnastics that allow us to bemoan the mote in our brother's eye while remaining blissfully unaware of the beam in our own.

Their prose is lively, their research is admirable, and their examples of our arrogant follies are entertaining and instructive.

Two concepts are central to their study:

Cognitive dissonance: "The hard-wired psychological mechanism that creates self-justification and protects our certainties, self-esteem and tribal affiliations."

Pyramid of choice: When we first deal with a mistake, we are at the top of the pyramid. As we create ever more elaborate fictions that absolve us and restore our sense of self-worth and thereby remove the dissonance, we descend step by step to the base.

The authors follow the trail of self-justification through the areas of family, memory, therapy, law, prejudice and conflict, but some of the juiciest examples come from politics. Think most recently of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, echoing Ronald Reagan when he used the very words of this book's title -- "mistakes were made." (Politicians are especially fond of the passive voice.)

What's going on is not lying, exactly, except insofar as it is lying to oneself. As Aldous Huxley said, "There is probably no such thing as a conscious hypocrite."