CNN and Bullshit; Don't Concede Ground on Rove

Just go to this link to a CNN clip, watch and listen. That came to the Dailykos website today via Atrios. of Eschaton. Atrios has also has cute cat pictures. For another humorous take on the latest news, check out what "The Axis of Evel Knievel" has to say about Rehnquist, Novack and the gang.

I'm turning to humor in desperation, because unlike some folks, I'm feeling pessimistic about this. Lately, because I keep hoping for an intentional change in the coverage of the Rove leak, I keep going to David Brock's Media Matters site. They've been documenting the frustrating way in which the news media continues to act as a mouthpiece for the RNC, down to the repetition of the misinterpretation of Joseph Wilson's interview on Thursday with Wolf Blitzer.
Fair, rather than posting the kind of breaking and crazy-making descriptions of corporate news-stories has reminded us of the root of thiswhole thing, the lies about WMD that took this country to war.
This story about the false yellow-cake uranium should remind us that even the "spin-on-the-spin" is still about WMD. Wilson exposed the lie, and in typical Bush fashion, the White House made a personal attack on Wilson and questioned the credibility of his report; that's when "Wilson's wife" became part of the war. As Rove tries to excuse his behavior, he is back to the same spin he used before. He says he was "correcting" and "warning" reporters not to use Wilson's "questionable" story..and the mainstream media is swallowing this, as if there was something questionable about Wilson's article, rather than something questionable about the Uranium yellow cake story that the Bush administration used to scare the American people, even though they KNEW that it was false.
I've read tons of lefty bloggers who may be worried that Rove is going to slip away from justice and thus are going into great depth about the possible ramifications of the leak People are asking, what is the investigation really about? The most interesting issue, and one that I think will come out in the investigation has to do with "who leaked to Rove?" (erm, no, it wasn't Novak).
I linked to Bob Perry's story about this the other day, and will again, just to remind you if you didn't get there. He makes a point which is all the more pointed at the very confusing, head-spinning moment:
The larger point is that senior White House officials, possibly including Bush, revealed the identity of a covert CIA officer as part of what appears to be a conspiracy to discredit Wilson in retaliation for telling the truth in his op-ed column. The key incriminating fact in this mystery is that Rove had no reason to know who Plame was, except as part of a public relations attack against her husband. It was a classic case of dirtying up – or punishing – the messenger for delivering unwanted news. It also fits with the long-running neoconservative strategy of using “perception management” techniques to “controversialize” critics and keep the American people in a constant state of confusion.
Whether or not you think he's the worst villain in the story, it's important not to concede ground on Rove, or to let him "controversialize" his own actions. He's no victim, he's no fall-guy, he's no unwitting, gosh-darn-it kid who didn't KNOW that Wilson's wife was undercover. Let's get out of his spin-cycle and come up for air: His use of politically damaging information is part of a pattern of behavior that goes all the way back to his college days with the rat-fuckers of CREEP. Interesting arguments about who else is involved are fine, but until that particular investigation hits the news, our job is to keep unspinning Mr. Rove until he wobbles like a little weeble.