Sunday, April 28, 2013

Everything I ever wanted to say about the media during the Bush years

...was said by Charles Pierce the other day, after watching the press fawn over Bush and his new library:
The coverage of the opening of this vast temple to prevarication and ruin is not about bricks and mortar. It's about an attempt by the courtier press to absolve itself of a dereliction of duty that rivaled even that of the president in question while New Orleans drowned, and while the economy was bubbling toward disaster. (That dereliction of duty, it should be noted, now and forever, began with the coverage of the 2000 presidential campaign, and the disgraceful performance of the elite political press corps towards Al Gore.) It's about their efforts to help the country absolve itself from the immense damage it brought upon itself by electing, and then re-electing, a half-bright dry drunk who wrecked nearly everything he touched, and who now is trying to rehabilitate himself by explaining that he hasn't ruined anything else since he left office, and doesn't that make him a swell fella. The elite press is dedicating an entire day of coverage to the perpetuation of a monstrous public lie. Electing George W. Bush twice was a monumental act of democratic self-destruction from which the country has yet to recover. Celebrating him celebrating himself is simply to pour battery acid into the still-open wounds. I will take theories about dinosaurs in ancient China over the notion that George W. Bush was a good man confronted by insurmountable problems dropped on him by an implacable universe of chance. He was a career fk-up, from start to finish, and he finally found himself in a job where Daddy's money and Daddy's lawyers couldn't bail him out.

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