Bitched off in London

I've spent the day being particularly bitched off about the news, even though the news is always fucking outrageous and you'd think by now I'd be, y'know, comfortably numb.

And the truth is, there are days when I am indeed numbed by it all before noon. I look at one news site after another, blogging one thing and another, and I'm thinking, "My, that's horrific. If I let myself think about it for a minute I would probably burst into tears and run around screaming. Fortunately, I don't have time."

Sometimes I settle for having fifteen minutes of hate for the newspaper that delivered absolutely fucking terrifying news as if it were a report on the opening of a new municipal building or something.

This morning, The Washington Post relegated such a story to page 4. I'd already bitched about it earlier today, along with other things that I guess aren't important for us to know. But it just wouldn't leave me alone all day, I kept coming back to it and fuming.

I always wonder what those media fuckwits think will protect them if they keep giving the administration a pass while they dismantle the Bill of Rights. We're already seeing whistleblowers investigated and persecuted for trying to expose BushCo's crimes. Real whistleblowers - that's what "sources" is supposed to mean. It's increasingly clear that better journalists than Judith Miller could end up in a "tribunal" if they don't play along.

"Then they came for the journalists, and I said nothing because I did not work for The New York Times...."

A truly good newspaper would have a daily item on its front page under the heading "In the Dock", or maybe "Articles of Impeachment", with a list of the previous day's work by our leaders to destroy our country.

But they don't. And so the Republicans continue to strip the country of everything that once made it an enviable place to live, and have a good smirk while they're doing it, because they know the press will let them get away with it.

The quote of the week came from Karl Rove:

"There are practitioners of politics who hold that voters are dumb, ill-informed and easily misled, that voters can be manipulated by a clever ad or smart money," Rove said.

But Rove, seen as the mastermind behind President George W. Bush’s White House victories in 2000 and 2004, said, "It’s wrong to underestimate the intelligence of the American voter."

Actually, I don't think most voters are as dumb as Rove thinks they are. But I think Rove knows that even that doesn't matter if you can cow the American editor.

[Complain here about lack of sufficient rudeness and my failure to unleash my routine rant that people use the word "cunt" incorrectly.]