Reading Between the Lines: The McLellan Book

I don’t think that anyone harbors any doubt that the McLellan book is a cornucopia of bad news for the republicans who are already treading water trying to stay viable without looking as if they are tied to Bush’s apron strings—clearly the most unsuccessful president in memory—as they enter a tough election contest this Fall.

But there are other threads revealed in the subtext that are just as revealing and worthy of examination with a magnifying glass that nobody’s particularly interested in exploring at this time, the implications of which might just shatter a few illusions. More to the point, those illusions may need to be shattered if we are going to return to an honest government and a democratic society.

While the president and vice president and the actions of the Neocons have received virtually all of the initial attention, the fact is that most of what McLellan has talked about is rather old hat, already known and suspected and just missing Mr. McLellan’s stamp which lends an aura of autheniticity to these issues that still fester today.

The point that McLellan made in the subtext was that if the so-called “liberal” media did its job, the Iraq war should not have happened. And when you think about it, that revelation seems so downright honest that we may wonder why the media fought so hard to get the information from the press conferences and worked so little to assess what they were given. Traditionally, it is the objective hard-eyes of the media that have always stood between government’s hyperbole and the public’s hunger for the truth.

So, thusly, r. McLellan has exposed a nerve that needed to be exposed. What will come of it is a question that is stirring up speculation.

A sidelong glance at the problem has pierced the consciousness since McLellan’s writings became public. The media mostly takes umbrage at what he has to say.

David Gregory, who covered the White House for NBC disagrees with McLellan’s assessment arguing that the media did all it could to get at the truth and that McLellan should recall the kinds of probing questions he received at the press conferences…and many of his colleagues are quick to support his contention; nevertheless, there are nagging questions and have been for some time and only McLellan has verbalized them to the media’s chagrin.

Did the media do all it could to get at the truth; or were they too willing pawns of this administration?

I suspect this argument will not end here because it is a legitimate point. What’s more important? For the media to cozy up to the White House because they can change the FCC regs or that by so doing, they gain “access” or simply stay on the good side of the White House in order to gain consideration when the inevitable “scoop” occurs.

On the other hand, last night, Chris Matthews during one of his run-on diatribes that oftentimes, in his honesty, manages to zero in on the truth, tended to bring up a very sore point and that was how the media was used by the White House to persuade the people. He called it, and rightly so, “manipulation.”

What he was referring to was the Time’s Washington’s reporter’s case for the White House about WMD and the belief that the Iraqi’s possessed them. The article broke on Sunday and, coincidentally, at the time, all of the Inner Circle was making the rounds of the news shows to corroborate the subject matter of the article, including Cheney, Rove and Rice.

Even McLellan, after considering what went on for more than a year, has finally pushed the idea that much of the information that left the White House was propaganda or PR designed to influence the American people.

These and other examples, including the Libby affair, and the outing of Valerie Plame, which seemed to convince McLellan that he, too, was being used by the top level advisers for their own ends help to focus like a laser on the truth; that the media, for the most part, has chosen not to jeopardize its relationship with the White House by not pushing to hard to get at the truth. In all cases, people may wonder why there was eagerness to accept what they were given without questioning the major blanks in content which any legitimate journalist might have question, if not he, than certainly, his editor.

Whether this information will actually come back to haunt the media is a moot question at this point but deserves to be discussed.

Nevertheless, either way, the media’s disposition will not change the fact that media-astute young people will think twice before accepting more government-speak as the truth in the future.

Les Aaron
The Armchair Curmudgeon