Rhinocrisy

The U.S. government wanted to prosecute Osama bin Laden’s driver, a dude named Hamdan, for war crimes. They wanted it so bad they went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to promote their interpretation of Congressional, Constitutional and U.S. treaty requirements. Oops - the court decided that the war crimes tribunal was itself a war crime, as it violated the Geneva Conventions. It’s nice when hubris runs into itself, at least a little bit.

The news has been wall-to-wall debates over whether the New York Times should lose its White House press passes because of its treasonous act of reporting on this “secret” organization along with the Wall Street Journal and L.A. Times. Leave aside the fact that this is the most ridiculous demagoguery ever: it is getting tremendous traction among the kind of people who vote in cable-TV call-in polls and is almost certainly a more popular idea than the idea of leaving Bush in charge of the country for another week.

I’m not going to argue against this idea. Plenty of smarter people have. Instead, I like to think about what would happen if they did lose their press credentials. I think it would be the best thing to happen to them since the Pentagon Papers. They now dedicate at least one reporter for half of every workday to sitting around in a crumbling little room transcribing non-denial denials and noncomittal assents from a guy who doesn’t know, doesn’t even want to know, squat about turkey. It’s worse when the POTUS travels, as they have to send some fancy-pants reporter along to see — usually nothing. It’s partly what the wire reporters call deathwatch: you just need to be there in case the guy gets shot. But as far as news, it tends quickly to turn into stories about what the press was interested in or how the grounds are kept at Crawford, because the president and his flaks don’t provide information. They barely provide entertainment. I doubt that a picture of the president on the cover of a newspaper sells as many copies as a picture of a pretty sunset.

Meanwhile, the White House press corps does more for the President than he does for them. They continue to quote his lies, put his ugly mug on the front page, and otherwise treat him like a celebrity and important character rather than the pathetic pawn he is. He needs them to prop up his image more than they need him to improve sales or to enhance truth.

Instead, that $100,000+ a year top-notch high-speed reporter could be spending day after day pursuing news containing has both information and entertainment value. Sell papers and support democracy at the same time.

Does Sy Hersh have a White House press pass? He might, but you can’t tell from his stories. Still, he has helped the New Yorker become a serious news organ while exposing some of the worst crimes in Iraq, such as Abu Ghraib. How about it?

Why not give up the little plastic cards? The White House soon will learn — they are much better off keeping you inside than forcing you to go out and write real news.

But it won’t get you a good review from Andrew Bacevich. He reads liberal hawk Peter Beinart’s new The Good Fight so we don’t have to:

The Good Fight is insipid, pretentious and poorly written. At points it verges on incoherence. As history, it is meretricious. As policy prescription, it is wrongheaded. Beinart has perpetrated his fraud twice over.

I just wish Beinart would set me up with one of those $600,000 advances. For that kind of dough, I’d happily be insipid, pretentious and almost incoherent. Hell, I do it here for free.