Earlier this week I noted how The New York Times' version of La-La-La-I-Can't-Hear-You Journalism had somehow cast the unfolding IRS-Tea Party scandal as a story about Republicans, who by the way are factually unhinged. Well, take a look at today's front page:
G.O.P., Energized, Weighs How Far to Take Inquiries WASHINGTON — The investigations ensnaring the White House have unified the Republican Party, energized a political base shattered by election losses and given common purpose to lawmakers divided over a legislative agenda. The most pressing question for Congressional Republicans is no longer how to finesse changes to immigration law or gun control, but how far they can push their cases against President Obama without inciting a backlash of the sort that has left them staggering in the past.
White House mired in scandal! Republicans hardest hit!
In case you didn't get the message, check out the NYT's lead editorial:
Scandal Machine When politicians want to turn scandals into metaphors, actual details of wrongdoing or incompetence no longer matter. In fact, the details of the troubles swirling around the White House this week are bluntly contradicting Republicans who want to combine them into a seamless narrative of tyrannical government on the rampage.
Exactly who is demonstrating that "actual details of wrongdoing or incompetence no longer matter," again?
A pro-tip for those people who share the NYT worldview: When government screws up and/or abuses power, the most important thing is not the hyperbolic rhetoric of partisans from the opposition party. Particularly if your goal is journalism, or embracing a watchdog role on power, or simply exhibiting a little of the ol' civic duty. Or to put it in language even a media Boomer might understand, just because some Nixon-haters sympathized with the Weather Underground, doesn't mean Richard Milhous didn't grossly abuse power.
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