Here are a few recent news items that tie together nicely: Mike McCurry flacking for corporate control of the Internet, the White House press corps offended that Stephen Colbert spoiled their little love fest, and Hillary Clinton schmoozing the Fox news elite. Together, they're all part of Washington's 'deep ecology.'
It's like watching the Discovery Channel, but the creature at the bottom of the food chain is - you.
The Washington press and the "bipartisan" insider machine that rules the country live in a symbiotic relationship. No, scratch that. Actually it's more of a parasite/host role, where the press feeds off what the machine feeds it. In return, it responds within strictly ordered limits to ensure continued access to its food supply.
The power elite, for its part, makes sure that the press is well fed and happy. And both the elites and the press are available to their corporate paymasters whenever they're called upon to provide special services.
It's an efficient little ecosystem - self-contained and humming smoothly, like a watering hole in some sweltering savannah. Politicians come and go like rhinos, while the press hum around them like flies. Occasionally one of the big beasts will sicken and the flies get to feast on him as he slowly ebbs.
If only it weren't for all those people dying in a war founded on lies - and those annoying "bloggers" - it could go on peacefully forever. As they say on those nature shows, "let's go and have a look":
Mike McCurry was Bill Clinton's press secretary. Now he's advocating for those corporate interests that want to control and limit access between Internet companies - essentially converting a medium for the free flow of information into another privately-controlled knowledge universe, where you see only what large corporations want you to see.
This represents the privatization of a resource that was created with public funds - the World Wide Web. There's a precedent for that, of course. The "deregulation" of the broadcast airwaves took another resource we owned in common - airspace - and gave it to large corporate interests lock, stock, and barrel.
That, and the Reagan-era suspension of the FCC's Fairness Doctrine, led to the creation of Fox News Channel and its pseudo-competitors (like today's CNN). So, while McCurry flacks for the Fox-ization of the Internet, his former boss's wife heads down to Murdoch-land to press the flesh.
Everybody knows each other down at the watering hole.
McCurry trots out big media's tried and true strategy for defending itself against accusations that it doesn't like - one that was honed by Deborah Howell, the Washington Post's "ombudsman." He doesn't really try refuting any of the points raised by the "blogosphere, " any more than Howell did. Instead, like her, he complains about the tone.
Here's the thing, Mike and Deborah: When people are dying, other people get vehement. The Internet's a tool for raising uncomfortable questions about decisions that hurt the innocent. Complaining about tone is an easy out. Why not address the issues instead?
Here's McCurry's question to bloggers: "... how many of you lifted a finger to protect the First Amendment when the Washington Post and other "MSM" cited it to ferret out the truth about WMD and the wars inside the U.S. intelligence community over the pre-Iraq war (and now pre-Iran war)?"
The answer is: plenty of us. Take five minutes to do a Google blogsearch and you'll find dozens of posts supporting the press on this one. But here's a question back, Mike: Why didn't your buddies trying using the First Amendment to "ferret out the truth about WMD" before those lies got so many people killed?
Oh, wait, he answers that one right here: "I have had Pulitzer Prize winning reporters tell me that they feel intimindated and they lack public support. Of course they -- and their editors-- feel that way. Most of the blogosphere spends hours making them feel that way."
That would be the right-wing blogosphere, Mike. Do your jobs and the left will be there to defend you.
But what McCurry conveniently fails to mention is that the Administration and the GOP are the ones really putting the press under pressure. And the portrait he inadvertently paints - of timid journalists willing to buckle under the weight of some vehement but sloppy righties in pajamas at their PCs - is sadly accurate. But why do they cave so often? In part, because the conservative bloggers are backed by the power of all three branches of government.
And that's why the lefty bloggers do what they do - because, too often, you guys didn't do your jobs when the going got rough.
Want to paint yourself and the press as heroes? Next time, instead of whining, show some courage in adversity. Some of us will be there for you, no matter how rough the boys at "Powerline" make it for you.
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Which leads me to Stephen Colbert. His performance didn't get blacked out by the press because he attacked Bush, or - as some desperate righties would say, because he wasn't funny. It was because he attacked the press themselves, and their role in the ecosystem. Said Colbert:
"Here's how it works: the president makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know - fiction!"
Next time they hold that feeding frenzy known as the White House Correspondents Dinner, they should hire a more appropriate speaker. How about - oh, I don't know - David Attenborough?