They like McCain because he's accessible to them. What shallow narcissism.

On the whole I really admire your columns, but I think you should have called King first.

Really?

For what possible purpose?

King very much appears to have dug himself an admirable hole without benefit of any phone call. So obviously such a call wasn't necessary to encourage King to confirm his status as a complete kneebiter.

You're doing pretty well yourself.

One of the things I observed from litigation and elsewhere is that what makes people angriest and most ashamed is when you use their own words against them.

It certainly works with the wingnuts on these boards. Eventually I expect them to go into apoplectic fits and spew death threats. So far I've only been threatened with torture.

Given the opportunity and a little encouragement they'll discredit themselves every time, and John 'Petty Satrap' King is no exception.

There's only one thing to do when one these slimeballs digs himself into a hole: hand him a bigger shovel.

And that you did.

I'm like Ohmigod -- how can someone with that....lack of temperance have a major position on CNN? King is supposed to be a "correspondent". Unlike the "commentators", I thought he wasn't supposed to have a discernible preference on the candidates...yet his creepy affection for McCain and his rabid hatred for Hillary come through pretty much every time he opens his mouth. CNN has completely blurred the lines between news and editorials with these guys.

But his email is just too funny...how juvenile can one overpaid reporter get??? Time to boot King back to the minor leagues. Maybe he can cover high school football in some misbegotten Red State.

Glenn, you should have told him that thousands ( I hope its millions) of Salon readers and Greenwald disciples think its King who spews uninformed drivel all over CNN. And, before that I thinkl it was NBC. He has always been one of the MSM's

biggest enablers.

Thanks, Glenn, for taking him to task for his McCain adulation.

Keep on keeping on! We need you now more than ever!

Perhaps the King would rather Glenn spend his journalistic (and I use that term deliberately) talents, on John Edwards hair - a la the rest of useless, bought and paid for, MSM.

Hey King (I know that you are reading these posts - ego boy) if you want to see how journalism is done, go here and listen to this: http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/index.html (Or just read ANY of Glenn's previous columns)

Anna Maria Tremonte of CBC's "The Current" does it old school, you know King, you shill, you twerp, you useless waste of journalistic space - the school you never went to.

You calling Glenn Greenwald anything other than a true journalist, is perfect evidence of your complete lack of "journalistic" integrity.

The horrific thing is that if John "bomb bomb" McCain ever makes it to the White House, (and he might) we can look forward to hearing a lot more from Mr. King in his new role as the White House Press Secretary. After all he sure worked hard for it.

On the whole I really admire your columns, but I think you should have called King first. I also think that your response to his reply is very disappointing -- more like nitpicking than anything else. The impression I'm left with is that you're embarrassed to have been caught out and you're going to hit back rather than face up to what you did.

I know what you mean. I agree with both of you, actually. We all make compromises. You wouldn't believe the stuff good teachers do in the name of getting kids to pass tests. They know better and they go home heartsick every day, but they do it to keep their jobs. But maybe I'm really arguing the other side b/c that's why I am just a sub--I can't compromise like that, so instead I go to a different class each day, offering a scintillating environment where I seize the teachable moments, lesson plans be damned, providing the occasional safe haven for kids stressed and bullied by tyrannical teachers and standards.

Aych: There is a lack of full disclosure in the recruiting process, youthful idealism & enthusiasm, and other complicating factors accompanying your correct observation of recruits' responsibility for their own destiny. Our nation owes anyone willing to serve more than we give them.

Believe me, I know all that, I was once a recruit myself.

Why do you think I quoted "Tommy"?

Some things never change and Kipling's observations are as valid today as when he wrote them.

I got on a local bulletin board that leans pretty hard to the right a while back.. When I observed that all the "support the troops" magnets were gone from the cars I was snippily told that the only ones they supported were the ones making the magnets.

Success has a thousand fathers while failure is an orphan.

I have to tell you though that the local American Legion post has been doing right by those injured troops that come back to us. Just a month or so ago they bought a house for an injured vet and his mother..

When I asked why the Legion had to do this and the government couldn't be bothered no one would answer. A common reaction to a lot of my questions it seems. A lot of the Legion members lean to the right politically and I go out of my way to tweak them sometimes. The disaster they and their leaders have wrought just angers me to the point where I don't care how they feel.

A kid my daughter went to middle school with came back without a leg.. He was lucky, the RPG that took it off didn't explode. He still lives in our neighborhood and my eyes get wet whenever I see him out playing with his little daughter.

I mean, nice legwork.

Did you think to ask me or anyone who works with me whether that was the entire interview? No. (It was not; just a portion used by one of the many CNN programs.)

Did you reach out to ask the purpose of that specific interview? No.

Or how it might have fit in with other questions being asked of other candidates that day? No.

Or anything that might have put facts or context or fairness into your critique. No.

The key point he misses is that we don't need to know, nor should we care, *why* his reporting is bad and why CNN pushes this drivel onto our TV screens. The fact that they do is enough.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating and all that. His interview had no actual news content. Do restaurant reviewers need to know why their food tastes like shit? Not really.

No doubt his interview was edited but nobody forced him to ask those questions with that specific phrasing (I hope), and the best he can do is shift blame from himself onto CNN.

Unless the "purpose of that specific interview" was to be stupid and irrelevant I don't see how it matters.