Speaking of Cement

Is Karl Rove already old news? Two days ago, Bush has a seemingly fatal problem in his White House staff, a problem bad enough to cause a meltdown in his presidency, that should spell the beginning of the end, and just when it looks like the country will finally be made to face the truth about this man and his war, he announces a nominee for the Supreme Court and all of a sudden Rove is off the radar screen? Where is the “liberal media?” It seemed like when Judith Miller was jailed for refusing to reveal her source the press corps was finally waking from their White- House- press- release-induced coma and starting to actually ask some tough questions. Then Bush dangles a court nominee and they just lose concentra… Ooohh, shiny!

If we don’t keep the story alive it will just fade away like all the others that should have been enough to take this administration down. Diebold promising and delivering the election to Bush with voting machines that send our votes into a black hole, Kathleen Harris in charge of the Bush campaign and deciding to end the vote recount, the Downing Street Memo, no WMDs, speculation that the World Trade Center was rigged with explosives, the Bush family’s connection to the Saudi royal family, the Bush family’s holdings in financial services companies that would profit hugely from privatized accounts, the wholesale giveaway of our natural resources, the tax cuts for the rich, the resulting deficit and on and on…

And now Bush has “lowered the bar, revised his statement,” or whatever they want to call it on his pledge to fire anyone found to be connected to the leak of the identity of a covert CIA agent. (I, personally, would call it a “Flip-Flop,” but just to be snotty), and all they have to do is throw another story for the press to chase and the lead story that was so important yesterday is just so much debris. I can fool my puppy with this trick; when I want him to put down a toy, I just dangle another in front of him and he drops one for the other. I would like to think the press is smarter than Buddy, but, well, you see my point.

This is a true strength of the Republican Party, their ability to simply brush off those tough questions to which America deserves answers. If you want to see a master at work, watch one of their “press conferences.” Sometimes they give an answer to the question they wish had been asked; Reporter: “What do you think the president will do about…” Briefer: “I’m glad you asked that; I’ll tell you what he will not do…” Often they need only say, “I already answered that question,” and the reporter stops asking, even though it is obvious that the question was not answered. There’s a dance they do that goes like this: The reporter asks a question, the person giving the briefing deflects the question; the reporter asks again, and again the question is deflected. The reporter goes silent and the briefer goes on to the next hapless reporter. They do this for about a half hour and they all pretend they’ve just held a “press conference.” No questions have been answered, the country knows no more than it did a half hour earlier, and they all go collect their paychecks and go home. Having done our duty as consumers of “news,” we sit in our recliners and flip to a rerun of Friends.

Americans know, even those who supported Bush know, if they’re being honest with themselves, that something has gone horribly wrong in our country. They know that Bush has lied to us, that we have let him get away with it, and that by doing so we have become enmeshed in a religious war that could destroy us. If we let this one get away, if we allow our news media to sink back into the doldrums before we know the whole story about Karl Rove, Valerie Plame, the true reasons Bush dragged us into a war with Iraq, the whole stuff of it, if we don’t keep pressuring our news media to dig out the truth, we deserve whatever happens next.