Useful Idiots

I'm talking about the press.

I watched Bill Moyers Journal; Buying the War on PBS tonight, about how this clusterf*** of a war was sold to us, and really, that term is the most apt descriptive I can come up with for the press corps in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion. The press in this country was every bit as useful to the war criminals war hawks hot for a war they would not have to fight, as Soviet sympathizers were to Lenin.

If you didn't see it, download it.

Useful. Freakin. Idiots. Except where Soviet sympathizers were merely misguided – the mainstream media in this country is (with the notable exception of Knight-Ridder/McClatchy) all pretty much guilty of being criminal co-conspirators in the fraud to perpetrate an unjust and unjustified war.

The time is long past for the press in this country to stop with the feckless and make with the integrity. I’m pretty sure the founders had something like accountability of the press to the citizenry in mind when they put specific protections for the press in the Constitution. No other profession has direct constitutional protection. So start living up to it already. Until then, they'll just be Useful Idiots of the right-wing agenda-whores.