Used Journalists

By Keith R. Schmitz

Is this is the shape of things to come?

If there was someone who could lay claim to the title of pseudo liberal it was Richard Cohen of the Washington Post. As the Daily Howler so often said, "Can humans get dumber—or more disingenuous—than this hapless pundit?"

Turns out the McCain lying has become not only so baldfaced is that not only that the news media which plays fair and balanced can't ignore it, these violations of the Ten Commandments are bringing out remorseful confessions from Cohen:

I am one of the journalists accused over the years of being in the tank for McCain. Guilty. Those doing the accusing usually attributed my feelings to McCain being accessible. This is the journalist-as-puppy school of thought: Give us a treat, and we will leap into a politician's lap.

This was such a remarkable statement I had to check the web page again to make sure it wasn't a parody site.

Well, McCain had to do something didn't he? The Democrats offered up a tight, well-scripted convention with lots of affect and drama, and if the McCain campaign didn't top it somehow McCain would have to serve out his days in the Senate doing what ever it was he did and in an assortment of homes. Instead he comes up with a novelty candidate and then doubled down with buckets of lies to give her and him an image of being Potemkin reformers, not realizing there was a technology for recording it all.

Cohen goes on:

His opportunistic and irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his political heir -- the person in whose hands he would leave the country -- is a form of personal treason, a betrayal of all he once stood for. Palin, no matter what her other attributes, is shockingly unprepared to become president. McCain knows that. He means to win, which is all right; he means to win at all costs, which is not.

It is funny. Cohen was part of the pack that stuffed fake lies into the mouth of Al Gore and set him up like a bowling pin, giving us eight years of the worst governing this country has ever known.

That's why there is danger lurking in the strategy that the GOP thinks is a sure thing, though it still might be. Somewhere packed within the minds of Americans is the knowledge that lies got us into trouble in Iraq. Is it a good idea to give someone running for president the idea that this country will fall for more lies?

At some point what has saved mankind is that eventually your integrity catches up with you. Looks like it hasn't with John McCain, but if it has with Cohen and the rest of the press the damage the Senator has done to a carefully crafted image may be fatal and unsatisfying.