alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

August 26, 2005

MSNBVersailles

by kim @ 12:24 pm. Filed under Uncategorized

I see a fair share of the lefty blogosphere is commenting on this Digby post, one I completely agree with. I’ll just steal this from the conclusion:

The biggest sickness in our politics is this top down, elitist mentality in which people are fed a diet of information, entertainment, products and ideas that are focus grouped, soulless and commercial — and which are then filtered through a ruling media class that is so psychologically cramped, so emotionally sterile, so stuck in their own feedback loop that they are presenting a totally distorted version of reality. It’s important that we look elsewhere for wisdom and leadership.

Personally I fear that DC is turning into an aristocratic nest. Napolean’s palace. A Washington Versailles consisting of those in power and the media corporations they’re in bed with. The reason that the fourth estate is not currently functioning in a meaningful sense is that it’s no longer separate from the government it is supposed to report on. And by government I don’t mean the Executive branch per se, I mean this separate socio-politic-economic class they’ve created. If the military-industrial complex was the open secret of the 1960’s, the White House-media-corporate elite is the open secret of 2005.

Take this soiree described in today’s White House Briefing:

About 50 members of the White House press corps accepted President Bush’s invitation last night to come over to his house in Crawford, eat his food, drink his booze, hang around the pool and schmooze with him — while promising not to tell anyone what he said afterward.

It’s something of a Bush tradition, a way of saying thank you to journalists for whom an extended stay in the Crawford area is anything but a vacation.

And in spite of all the recent press demands for senior administration officials to stay on the record more often, the press corps can’t resist an offer of face time with the president, pretty much no matter what the conditions.

Later in the post Froomkin mentions that Karl Rove has also been having off-the-record dinners with reporters. Speaking of which let’s not forget that members of the Washington Post and Time magazine had damaging information on Karl Rove, information that could have affected the outcome of the last election, but decided to keep this information to themselves.

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