skippy the bush kangaroo: only if they mean mojo nixon

Thursday, October 22, 2009

only if they mean mojo nixon

as john cole points out, it's pretty ridiculous for news media types to call obama "nixonian" while keeping completely silent about the antics of the previous administration:

peter wehner worked for the bush administration. the bush administration, in eight years, conducted more abuses to the field of journalism than anyone i can recall. a partial recollection of the bush administration’s wrongdoings include:

-paying armstrong williams, michael mcmanus, and maggie gallagher and others for favorable opinions about wh policies or to attack opponents of the wh.

-planting jeff gannon to lob softball questions.

-used reporters to out a cia agent, then sat by and watched reporters go to jail to protect their sources.

-fed reporters misinformation about wmd in iraq, then used those reporters stories as corroborating evidence of the existence of wmd in iraq.

-treated helen thomas like a leper.

-waged a coordinated campaign against nbc.

-kicked all the ny times reporters off of their planes.

-the pentagon pundit program, which sold the war by planting former military officers on networks. uncovering this story earned a journalist the fucking pulitzer.

-staged mock press conferences with fema employees pretending to be reporters.

-allowed ari fleischer to tell everyone (but directed at journalists) they needed to “watch what they say and what they do.”

and that is simply off the top of my head, and god only knows what lies and abuses peter wehner was responsible for while working at the bush era office of strategic initiatives. by comparison, the obama white house has merely stated the obvious, which is that the fox news is not a news organization.

as we said in the headline, this works only if they mean mojo nixon: