Lapdogs To The End

It's amazing that this deep into the Bush presidency, reporters and pundits still express genuine surprise and naive disappointment when the White House slights them in purposeful ways.

Amazing because the administration's true feelings about the press have blindingly obvious since January 2001, in part because almost nobody within the administration has tried to hide their feelings of contempt. That, and the fact the disdain has been advertised by a whole string of radical White House initiatives that have undercut the press' traditional White House function, and often done so in deceitful and embarrassing ways.

Yet here we are in the waning days of Bush's second term -- a second term that will go down in presidential history as the least popular in modern times -- and members of the White House press corps are still being pushed around and still signaling fresh dismay at how the administration shortchanges reporters.

Read the full Media Matters column here.