with hubris like "Tell me where I've been misled by my sources.", you're just begging to be cut off at the knees.

Kind of like Tom DeLay daring us to prove he's a crook.

You must have noticed from last night's comments that you have been missed...

About your comment before this one... perhaps we could persuade you to parodize Ozymandias for us, now that you are freshly traveled, wined and dined?

Glenn Greenwald wrote:

We have an extremely healthy and Serious Pundit class, particularly its leading war cheerleaders, and I think we should all be proud of our political discourse.

I write:

Mr. Greenwald, I've read most of your columns over more than the last year. I read a lot, and don't always have time to decipher the sarcasm. Could you just say exactly what you mean? I think it would help me get the intent of your column.

For example:

We have an extremely disfunctional and frivolous Pundit class, particularly its leading war cheerleaders, and I think we should all be ashamed of our political discourse.

I admire your analysis of things, Mr. Greenwald. Thank you for doing what you do.

Thanks.

How does one become a Joe Klein, or a Thomas Friedman? I used to think that it was important to know such things. These days, though, I'm inclined to think that knowledge of the process wouldn't necessarily lead to a remedy. Whenever the conditions are right, such people always appear, like Aphrodite, from the sea of our own failings, and when they appear, explanations are a luxury; remedies, however crude or brutal, are the only true necessity.

We should remember Albert Speer, the reasonable Nazi. He seems to have been the archetype, the first approximation of our own Serious People. There was no explaining him, I think, despite the many attempts to do so. Fortunately Spandau made explanations unnecessary, at least until Speer got too old to maintain the sheen of rationality or the pretense that he was a creature made necessary by some undocumented force of nature, and as such, should be held blameless.

Perhaps we need a new Spandau. It could be smaller than the embassy in Baghdad, and so wouldn't need a McDonalds, or a bus route, or a nine-hole golf course, let alone fortifications. It could use a gilded sign over the gate, though. Lasciate ogni speranza... might be too literary. I'd suggest Suck. On. This.

Just switch it around to Friedman, Klein and O'Reilly. I'll put up GG's pinky finger on his left hand to these "journalists" anyday.

GG has so effectively destroyed their credibility, that one can't listen to them speak without detecting the Goofy-Disney voice chortle and spittle.

Who listens to these jokers? How many times IN A ROW do you need to be wrong before someone detects that you may not have a clue.

Keep roping 'em up GG, it's certainly entertaining to watch you do your journalistic duty...the real mccoy, you are.

Pick up a TIME magazine from the late 1960s, and it's easy to figure out that for a sizable amount of "journalists," their work has always been no more than transcribing the common wisdom of those in power at the time. In those old articles, progress is being made in Vietnam, our military is invincible, and US motives are pure.

Joe Kline and friends follow in this journalistic tradition; to them, research is for obsessive "investigative journalists." Being a plain journalist just means a comfy career in the chattering class, safe in New York or DC -- the perfect vantage points to discover what Real Americans think.

All Kline has to do is think in his head that the U.S. was "abiding by the spirit of the Geneva Conventions" and he makes it so. That's not writing; that's typing.

What's funny is that in Revenge of the Nerds, when the Nerds finally took over the Greek Council, they preached non-violence and inclusiveness.

When these Nerds took over our National Press, they simply became war-mongerers themselves.

Joe Klein should be completely discredited. He should get a job reporting on the horse races in Florida. At least that way, he can be right once in awhile.

I have neither the time nor the legal background to determine who is right, but I'm sure if we knew more about all this, we would support whatever the Bush Administration is doing.

"Europe...[is] tired [and] flaccid..."

"...riding an ass."

It's especially ironic/terrible, considering the abuses he was lying about.

He is a pundit. He offers his opinion on things. The "journalism" he does consists of either regurgitating what his sources have gossiped to him or offering opinion based on uncritical acceptance of said gossip. This has some utility, as it gives him insider insight; for example, his book Politics Lost reveals how Democratic strategists managed to kill Al Gore's passion for the environment in 2000 and turn him into a robot.

But little actual journalism gets done by the ever growing pundit class that masquerades as journalism.

Something I find interesting is that when you compare the pundit class to the actual journalists what jumps out at you is how when you think of the pundits you think of their personalities where as when it comes to the journalists you think of their work.

Compare, for instance what comes to mind when you think of Klein versus Charlie Savage, Peggy Noonan versus James Bamford, Maureen Down versus Eric Lichtbau, etc.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/05/yoo_impeach_bush_why_not.php

Can I abide by the "spirit" of the laws against robbery, as long as I only rob places owned by Muslims? And would that be any Muslims, or only Muslims who don't dress correctly and/or are in the wrong place at the wrong time?

wasn't bolded: "And I believe that the US is abiding by the spirit of the Geneva Convention..." Personally, I wouldn't put much stock in Joe Klein's Empathetic Intuition as a source.

or what the rest of us call low hanging fruit. Today's media figures are not paid to be insightful, accurate or professional. They are paid to be distractions, to willingly babble the company line whatever that line is, whatever the company is. Klein is an idiot whose sense of self awareness and personal integrity is somewhere at the invertebrate level. In other words, he has everything it takes nowadays to be a media star.