Saturday, January 28, 2006

The Media: Whitewater "Scandal"--Huge. NSA Spying--Minor

Media Matters has a tremendous post today contrasting the grotesquely disproportionate coverage of the so-called "Whitewater Scandal" by the mainstream media to the relatively modest coverage being given to Bush's outright and brazen violation of U.S. law in the NSA spying matter. Go take a read, and see if it doesn't piss you off all over again (or for the first time, for that matter).
Remember, Whitewater was the tool by which the radical right engineered the monstrous power grab known as the Clinton impeachment. It was the "story" about which the New York Times ran repeated articles in an effort to discredit Clinton. It was the excuse that sex pervert/lowlife Kenneth Starr used to pry into Clinton's PERSONAL AND PRIVATE SEXUAL AFFAIRS (lest we forget that such things ARE private). It was the "issue" the Wall Street Journal used to fuel the savagely anti-Clinton editorials flooding out of its psychotically rightwing editorial board. In short, Whitewater was used to try to destroy a president on no actual grounds whatsoever--because there was no "scandal" in the so-called "Whitewater Scandal". The entire accusation was pure out and out bullshit. Period.
George W. Bush's crimes, on the other hand, are real and monstrous. From helping to engineer the 2000 coup d'etat to starting a war with Iraq based on lies to authorizing torture to presiding over rampant corruption to conducting illegal wiretapping, Bush's Administration has been a ghastly series of shocking offenses against our laws. As noted in one of my recent posts, more than half of the American people want to get rid of Bush if he broke the law in the wiretapping scandal. And yet, of the two most recent presidents, Bill Clinton was harassed and tormented 10 times more than Bush has been. No more than 30% of the American people wanted him impeached, and yet the mainstream media drove the impeachment farce relentlessly.
And the rightwingers actually have the nerve to use the label "Liberal Media"? Bullshit. The media in our country are controlled overwhelmingly by pro-Republican corporate interests. That's why they've been comparatively easy on Bush.
After all, you don't kick your bed partner.

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