King claims the interview you reviewed in your column was not the entire interview, but was "just a portion used by one of the many CNN programs."

If that is the case, why doesn't CNN simply post the entire interview on their website so we can all be better informed? Come to that, let them stream all their full interviews with the other candidates. It would not only help them with accusations of bias, but also better inform the voting public.... if they are interest unbiased reporting?

Thanks, bebop-o, for giving me a smile today.

Someone, I think it was sysprog, mentioned something similar upstream, so I'll be brief.

If you google a lot of John King, focussing on news reports and interviews at AP, before he became GWB Washington Press Corps and then senior grand whosiwhatsits at CNN, he used to be very earnest and pretty hard hitting. I've seen this before. I had a major confrontation with a top of his field MD specialist, because I went for a second opinion. Sounded just like Mr. King's letter.

At some point in their lives, these guys traded careers they could be proud of for resumes they can bank on. They get very upset if someone reminds them of who they used to be.

BTW on that side thread about wounded vets. Does anyone know if there are any discrepancies in counting the number of wounded in the Iraq War? I was told by someone very credible that the ratio of wounded to dead was 16:1 because of medical advances since Vietnam, when it was 2.5:1. Very simple arithmetic says there's something strange about that figure.

BTW on the side thread about FISA. Someone (I think RMP) mentioned last week (?) that the Reid plan is to push for a renewal of the PAA. That is not a good outcome. Very soon, the time will have come when we need to start looking at a bigger picture than telecom immunity, or it will be traded for greater spying powers.

You sensitive? You need to put on a cup? I'll throw you some Hoyt Wilhelm knuckle-balls and toss underhand softball

spitballs, and maybe a few sliders?

Go out for a Gordon Triandos pass?

sysprog or Dirigo will blow you a wet airborne slurps kiss?

I'll toss a spiral rotten watermelon?

You receive a CNN King trophy in glass?

It's in a styrofoam white picture frame.

There's a lot of talk these days about rights of free speech with regard to campaign contributions, especially when wealthy individuals or corporations make them.

-- kevin

1) Money = speech
2) Corporation = person

Our current disaster follows from these decisions.

You got it, exactly. These soldiers were being held onto by the Army because they are so short of personnel (not to mention a 20% broken soldier rate, a 10% officer resignation rate and an unsustainable 18% waiver recruitment rate (those with education, health, psychological or criminal issues). They have also returned many more soldiers to front line assignments with ACTIVE medical diagnoses of traumatic brain injury, most due to the pressure waves from IEDs. TBI treatment, diagnosis and research is ongoing, and the preliminary findings are that people who are exposed to the pressure waves, even though they have no demonstrable injury - do indeed have varying dgrees of permanent brain injury. The behavioral manifestations are showing up later - sometimes long after discharge. No studies have been done of civilian exposure, to my knowledge, as most of Iraq's physicians and nurses have fled, and there is literally no one there able to conduct the necessary research and to provide the treatment and support. I'd have to point you to my old blog because to answer your questions more fully, this comment would be incredibly over-long.

But one of my chief complaints was that the Army was not discharging personnel hoping to return them to active duty, where instead, they should have been given medical discharges (NOT Chapter 5-13 general discharges), and they should have been transferred to the appropriate care settings in a timely manner.

I've seriously never heard of John King.

But he's kind of an idiot, isn't he?

--Anonymous

I'd never heard of him either. And, having not been caught up with Glenn's recent posts, this was my first introduction to him. That's unfortunate for Mr. King. All I know if him is that he's a petulant whiner with a fragile but massive ego. He clearly believes that he should not be criticized ever, for any reason, despite the fact that he gets paid (and well, I'm sure) to put himself in the public eye. What a hack.

And, to those who think Glenn should have looked to see if there were any hard hitting questions on the cutting room floor: would you suggest that regular viewers do the same research for every interview ever aired on TV? That's the beef here - that softball questions lead to an uninformed populace. The crux is, are the viewers being exposed to the adequate information? Here, they were not. Had all of King's questions been serious, we wouldn't have this editing issue.

Plus, I don't believe King. The inaccurate way he described the questions that were aired/published tells me that he's not describing the unaired/unpublished questions (to the extent there were any) accurately.

In it we talked to some high-profile people at major newspapers. This is par for the course, they live inside a tiny little box and anything outside of it is incomprehensible to them. It's hard to overstate how even the most obvious ideas surprise them. They have absolutely no perspective. They have zero ability to objectively examine their own field.

There is a good reason that Rolling Stone, Comedy Central and ESPN produce better journalists. Those people have perspective, they haven't been part of the same small crowd for 20 years.

Blaming the editor is silly. Yes, editors do edit things out, but they don't force people to ask specific questions. His questions were not even questions, they were just praise in question form.

When someone says that you don't understand how journalism works that is a compliment.