Glenn Greenwald takes down Beltway journalism and k.o.'s Jokeline

glenn greenwald...

Scheming GOP operatives feed whispered lies to their favorite, most gullible, most slothful and/or dishonest Beltway journalists. Gleeful and grateful that they have been chosen for this dirty task, these journalists then scamper and write down what they were told and think that, by doing so, they are engaged in what they call "original reporting" -- which means uncritically passing on what they're told by government sources. As a result, they continue to obfuscate every key political issue and mislead Americans by doing the opposite of what journalists are supposed to do.

Even now that Klein knows that he was lied to by his GOP source(s), he still won't say that. Indeed, he does the opposite. He claims that there's some super-complex, clouded ambiguity here that people of good faith (such as his lying GOP operative-source) can see differently (Klein: "I reported as fact a provision of the bill that seems to be disputable, to say the least" and "I was clearly wrong to state as fact something that might not actually be in the bill"). Again and again, Klein defends his lying GOP source by pretending that there is some genuine grounds for disagreement here among good faith ladies and gentlemen that accounts for what he was told.

Worse, Klein now says that none of this really matters anyway, because "we are talking about relatively obscure and unimportant technical details" and his "larger point" about Democrats' excess partisanship is "still true." So Klein's column smeared House Democrats as wanting to protect Terrorists, based on a lie fed to him by GOP sources, and now that it's exposed for what it is, he says that none of that really matters anyway. What matters is that Democrats are still being foolish by not agreeing to the demands of the House Republicans and giving amnesty to telecoms and passing a bill that Republicans like, too.

my comment to glenn...

klein's obfuscation, like that of his masters, is deliberate... i simply do not understand why we continue to perpetuate the myth of the kind of so-called "journalism" that klein represents as incompetent or slothful... there's an agenda afoot here, the very same agenda we saw operating in the 12 december 2000 scotus decision that gave birth to the rolling coup d'etat that has been inexorably advancing for the past seven years... is there incompetence...? sure... take a 360-degree sweep and it's omnipresent... but there's also the agenda, an agenda that has systematically undermined the very foundations of the republic, an agenda that, until fairly recently, with the help of folks like yourself, glenn, dennis kucinich, naomi wolf, paul craig roberts, bruce fein, and others, has remained hidden... the role of joe klein and others of his ilk is no different than the public figures who pursue the same agenda and wear the same camouflage - joe lieberman, dianne feinstein, nancy pelosi, steny hoyer, and hillary clinton, to name a few... you would do all of us a great service, glenn, if, besides pointing out klein's lies, you would expound on WHY someone like mr. klein operates as he does, in spite of being caught out numerous times...

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