Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Brian Lehrer Kissing David Brooks' Ass. Oy Gevalt

Why is Brian Lehrer kissing the ass of the disgraceful David Brooks on his radio show this morning? He introduced Brooks by calling him the most imaginative columnist at the New York Times. Could he mean that Brooks is imaginative because he simply "makes shit up"? (Sadly, Sasha Issenberg's article tracing Brooks' fabrications in his Atlantic Monthly Mag piece on "Blue America" from Philadelphia Magazine has now disappeared from Phillymag's website, but the link above will take you to a Daily Howler interview with Issenberg in which he reviews many of his findings).
(the open-source textbook business seems much more promising.)
Brooks on the radio came off like a hack. He defended the Bush whitehouse against the leak invesigation. Going to Lehrer's dialogue with Brooks about the leak investigation after listening to Amy Goodman's interview with Melvin Goodman, a former CIA analyst who strongly beleives that the Bush-Cheney cabal is about to come crashing down was a bit like zipping between parallel universes.
In one of those universes, the debate is about "will the prosecutor's charges focus on the violation of the identities protection act?" and "will the charges relate to perjury in the grand jury investigation of the leak, but not find a crime in the leak?"
In the other universe the debate is about, "will the prosectur charge w/cover up and conspiracy over the attack on political enemies?" or will the Whitehouse Iraq Group finally get busted for cooking up intelligence in order to mislead the American people into supporting a war against Iraq?
I hope the people who get the nasty surprise this week will be the ones who are interpreting the probe narrowly. Wouldn't that be sweet? It will sting both the govt and the pundits who defend them?
Finally, and sadly.
Look for Cindy Sheehan in the news today. She has been saying that she will chain herself to the Whitehouse fence after the 2000th soldier dies in Iraq. That bad news came this morning.
As a reminder, here is Carly Sheehan's poem, which Cindy Sheehan read at the Brooklyn Peace Fair on Saturday.

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