Our "press corps" has become a major national disgrace

The indispensible James Wolcott weighs in on the latest outbreak of Clinton Freakout on the part of David Broder, the Dean of All Pundits (Nookie draught hits DC 05/27/06):

As Firedoglake and other psychic healers diagnosed earlier this week, David Broder ain't nuthin but a horndog, a'pantin' all the time. He may fool Gwen Ifill, but he ain't no friend of mine. I can picture him and Chris Matthews poised at the edge of the marsh, nostrils twitching, ready to plash in and retrieve a pair of Clinton undies; meanwhile Jacob Weisberg waits back at the station wagon, preparing a tasty picnic lunch and wishing he were in the hunt instead of filling thermoses. Given how most of the Beltway elite have bowed and scraped like eunuchs for most of Bush's presidency, this aphrodisiac attack of Clinton arousal (prurience topped with prissy indignation) must be giving them a nice nostalgic nineties feeling; such days those were, when they could roll around in the gutter with Laura Ingraham and Barbara Olsen and mount their moral high horse at the same time, no easy trick. Yet even I am surprised to spot James Warren of the Chicago Tribune among the panty raiders. He acts so deadpan and dyspeptic on TV—who knew that he too had a yodeling libido yearning for release?

Wolcott also gives kudos to the incomparable Daily Howler, whose brilliant dissections of the pathologies of our celebrity punditocracy are enough to earn him a pass (more or less) for his strange misjudgment of the importance of the Valerie Plame/Scootergate/TreasonGate case:

As Daily Howler’s Bob Somerby reminds us with the persistence of a saint, we have a disastrously unserious press corps fatuously amused with itself.

Democracy cannot survive with a press corps this whacked out. That's a big reason why, after 15+ years of this kind of press pathology, we know have a President originally selected for us by a shamelessly partisan Supreme Court who openly proclaims he can disregard any law he chooses.

| +Save/Share | |