Andrew Card, Bush's chief of staff: "They don't represent the public any more than other people do. In our democracy, the people who represent the public stood for election," said Card. "I don't believe you have a check-and-balance function."
See? No check and balance role. Not representative. That's post-press thinking, coming from the Chief of Staff. It is a political innovation for which Bush does not get enough credit.
Yes, if this administration likes anything, it is the art of propaganda.
From buying and planting fake advocates in communities generally opposed to them (i.e. Armstrong Williams) to seating fake journalists in the White House who'll only ask softball questions (i.e. "Jeff Gannon") how can any sane person trust
anything these people say?
And it's not even that they're good at it.
They simply have the luxury of operating unopposed, free and clear, with a partisan majority in both houses of Congress.
No one holds their feet to the fire, yet they are sitting on a bed of lies the size of Texas, and growing.
Iraq has WMDs.
Social Security reform is good for America.
The US won't invade Iran.
These seem more like empty advertising slogans: soundbites that are deliberately misleading, spun to hide the truth, not bring it to light.
But, of course, it's the job of the press to bring the truth out.
But the leaders of the press industry seem to be complicit in all this subterfuge: today, I've seen so many headlines covering a non-news event --
Martha Stewart's impending prison release, she's not even out yet -- that it makes me wonder how people who call themselves journalists these days can stand taking home a paycheck, because they're not doing their jobs, they're just stealing.
And they pout when they're not taken seriously.
Instead of doing their jobs, and enlightening the public, the increasing share of media time seems to be getting devoted to tripe like Stewart's release and subsequent house arrest,
dumb-ass Paris Hilton's dumb-ass Sidekick getting hacked, and
Michael Jackson's trial.
But then, if this is what people really care about, then we really are going to hell, in a handbasket.