What the Hell Took So Long

Count me among those people who look at the press and say "where the hell have you been for the past seven years." It's taken that long for institutions I used to respect to pay serious attention to what's going on in the Pretender's Administration. I guess the money was elsewhere and now they aren't worried about losing advertisers.

For five glorious years, I was a freelancer shooting for The Washington Post. I was spending 90% of my time earning about 10% of my income but I was shooting for the The Washington Post. The great Katherine Graham was in charge. The lady who stared down the Nixon White House. The lady who got an honorary doctorate from Columbia the day I got my M.A. from there. One of my heroes. Someone I even met a time or two over the course of the five years.

Where was The Washington Post for the past seven years? Was Bob Woodward too close to the administration to do a careful study about the Pretender and the Penguin? Was there no hungry cub reporter chomping at the bit to take on the story? Were there no reporters who had worked in the White House during the previous Bush administration who were willing to expose the Shrub's behavior during those years? Even a friend of mine, who was a photographer in the WH pool back then, described the Pretender in ways that raised the hair on the back of my neck. I've met people who went to college or grad school with him who made it a point to say they did not vote for him.

Dan Rather loses his job over something that exposes the Pretender for what he is and the charade goes on. Ohio is promised by the head of the company providing voting machines and, amazingly, John Kerry concedes. What the hell happened to the press?

The Penguin shoots a friend in the face--that's gross negligence at best, folks--and the poor man apologizes for putting the Penguin and his family through so much trouble. No arrest for battery, no law suit for pain and suffering. Are you kidding me?

I checked out Keith Olbermann's website yesterday and saw a number of pot shots, but, for the most part, great praise for the commentaries he's been doing. For almost a year now, I've been hoping for some great enlightenment, along the lines of what happened when Edward R. Murrow took on Senator McCarthy. Things may be changing, but I don't think they are moving quickly enough. I want to see coverage of Olbermann's commentaries on news media with greater distribution than just MSNBC. I have no idea how many hits Olbermann's website gets, but I've been talking to people of like mind who don't even know about his news coverage.

Scooter Libby pays off his fine with no problem. I used to be married to a high-level civil servant and there's no way that kind of money would ever have been sitting in our bank account. Even political appointees aren't paid that much and the really good rich ones don't take a salary at all (well, they were $1 a year men in the FDR administration and even the Governator doesn't take a salary.) Nice going, Scooter. And now, it's not even likely he's going to have probation. Oh, no probation if there's no jail time? They didn't know that? I saw "Body Heat" where the villainess sets up a legal trap feigning ignorance and innocence which gets her exactly what she wants in the end. This smells of those good old boys sitting around watching "Body Heat" and saying "oh, we can do that and then good ole Scooter will pay the fine from the money everybody's given him and he'll get off for doing what we asked him to do. Then we can say that Bill Clinton did the same thing and, if we repeat the lie often enough, our people will believe it."

The big lies. How the Nazis took over (and never forget the ties the Pretender's family had with them!) How the Pretender and the Penguin stay in power. Nancy Pelosi, it's time to put impeachment back on the table. Democrats who want contributions from me better start acting like Democrats.

Me, if I prayed, it would be for a blood clot lodged in the Penguin's head when he goes in for surgery. I'd ask for a heart attack, but we know he doesn't actually have one.