Let's get real.

So. Something resembling war breaks out between Georgia and Russia, and, a little after noon on Friday, Jonah Goldberg strokes his chin and notes, "This could get pretty ugly, pretty fast." Whereupon National Review's The Corner reverts to its previous all-John-Edwards-all-the-time format. Until Kathryn Jean Lopez butts in a bit after six p.m. today to note that the conflict provides further evidence that Barack Obama is a wimp.

Okay, then. Look, I'm not gonna tell the National Review how to run its blog, but it is a bit rich for Byron "Sergeant" York to complain therein about sudden MSM (that's "mainstream media" to you) overkill on Edwards without noticing the plank in his own eye. I think one thing the folks doing victory laps over the Edwards affair can't wrap their minds around is that most putative progressives stopped much caring about Edwards well before he dropped out of the race in January. I never much cared for the guy myself. But I'm not here to talk about my own political preferences. I'm here to talk about...well, selective memory. Byron "Sergeant" York at NRO's The Corner, Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit, Roger L. Simon aka themanwhoinventedmoseswine at Pajamas Media, and of course the estimable Mickey Kaus are all crowing about how the MSM's suppression of the Edwards story is one of the biggest clangs in said MSM's continuing death knell, and it's just a little...I don't know, what's the word? Disgusting?

Now that you've got the general tenor of this post, I'll jump.

It's not just, or even a little, about how all these guys were metaphorically shaking their fists at the mainstream media's mendacity in ignoring the Edwards' story in the National Enquirer when they themselves were quite blissful in their ignorance of at least one "Bush Drinking Again" account brought "to light" by the Enquirer in recent years. It's not about how their commenters seem to, as they will, let their outrage gallop way ahead of the facts on the table; Mommynator over at Simon's perch rages, "The lying, treasonous MSM (LTMSM) didn’t cut Vito Fossella of Staten Island, NY any slack. That’s because he has an R after his name. He basically did the same thing - had an affair, fathered a child - as Edwards. Only difference is, he resigned." Yes, Fossella did indeed resign, as at the time that his indiscretions were exposed, he held public office. Edwards—and I suppose we ought all be grateful for this—has nothing to resign from. (And yes, in case you're wondering, I do find it staggering that he had the nerve to run for president. But again, I'm not thoroughly bothered, as he never was close to having my vote.)

But you know, not to sound like some kind of pussy-ass pacifist femme or anything, but as squalid at Edwards' conduct has been, nobody, you know, has yet been killed as a result of it. I'm just saying. But let's move on for the moment.

One of Instapundit's many musings on Edwards and the MSM was particularly piquant:

SO NOW THAT WE KNOW THAT THE PRESS COVERED FOR EDWARDS -- just as, pre-invasion, they covered for Saddam -- that raises a question: What else are they not telling us for fear it will hurt the Democrats' prospects?

The post apparently motivated a fair number of outraged e-mails, which I infer were less outraged by Reynolds' peculiar implication of some kind of moral equivalence between Edwards and Saddam than by the notion that the "press" "covered for" Saddam. Armed with such ammunition, Reynolds moved in for the kill with an update. You can almost hear his insipid "Heh. Indeed." refrain amplifying into a reverb-drenched "Bwahahahaha!"

UPDATE: Once again, the lefty memory hole is revealed, with email like this:

That's got to be one of the most insane and stupid things I've read in a long time. "Covered for Saddam"? WTF are you talking about, what kind of drugs are you on? The only thing the media covered regarding Saddam was the administrations efforts to lie us into a war... something you were quite a part of.

Apparently these people have forgotten Eason Jordan and "The News We Kept to Ourselves." I started to put a link to that in the original post, but I thought I'd see if there were any out there dumb enough to walk into the trap. And there were. Much more on the Eason Jordan story is rounded up here.

Ah, yes, Eason Jordan, the "not anti-war, just on the other side" side's most venerated voice. Whose rationale for keeping quiet could more logically be attributed to a desire to protect sources and colleagues than "cover" for Saddam. But let's not even consider that. Professor Reynolds, I'll see your Eason Jordan, and I'll raise you a Judith "I was proved fucking right" Miller.

To bring this post back to its host blog's cinematic roots, sometimes one is reminded of this exchange from Dr. Strangelove:

Ambassador de Sadesky: Our doomsday scheme cost us just a small fraction of what we had been spending on defense in a single year. But the deciding factor was when we learned that your country was working along similar lines. And we were afraid of a doomsday gap.

President Muffley: This is preposterous. I've never approved of anything like that.

de Sadesky: Our source was The New York Times.

And here we might do well to examine another example of MSM intransigence, an example featuring that most favored target of Reynolds, et.al. Here are a few paragraphs from Jane Mayer's recent book, The Dark Side:

A measure of the pro-administration mood occured inside the New York Times, where Carlotta Gall, a British stringer based in Afghanistan, filed a story on February 5, 2003, about the deaths of [falsely accused and imprisoned terrorist suspect] Diliwar and another Afghan detainee. It sat for a month, according to Eric Umansky, who wrote about the American coverage of the war on terror in the Columbia Journalism Review, finally appearing a little over a month before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. "I very rarely have to wait long for a story to run," Gall said. "If it's an investigation, occasionally as long as a week.

Her story, Umansky found, was at the center of an editorial fight. Her piece was "the real deal. It referred to a homicide. Detainees had been killed in custody. I mean, you can't get much clearer than that." Roger Cohen, then the Times' foreign editor, told him, "I pitched it, I don't know, four times at page-one meetings, with increasing urgency and frustration. I laid awake at night over this story. And I don't fully understand to this day what happened. My single greatest frustration as foreign editor was my inability to get that story on page one."

Doug Frantz, who was then the Times' investigative editor, said that Howell Raines, then the Times' top editor, and his deputies "insisted that it was improbable; it was just hard to get their mind [sic] around." Eventually, the paper ran the story, buried on page fourteen. "If it had run on the front page, it would have sent a strong signal not just to the Bush administration but to other news organizations," Frantz said. Gall concluded there had been a reluctance to "believe bad things of Americans" that had chilled the pursuit of truth even inside the most esteemed daily newspaper in the country.

But Glenn Reynolds and Roger L. Simon think you ought to be really steamed that the New York Times wasn't Johnny-on-the-spot with news about where a failed Democratic presidential candidate had been dipping his dick.

If that's not bullshit, I don't know what is.

By the way, Diliwar's story is recounted in detail in Alex Gibney's too-little-seen documentary Taxi to the Dark Side. And Roger Cohen, far from being a hero of that old standby "The Left," is frequently tarred with the "wanker" brush in the irreverent progressive blogosphere.

Comments

[Tony Dayoub]

The idea that Edwards' infidelity should "cast a shadow over the Democratic party," as I've heard it said elsewhere, is ridiculous. Edwards is clearly not the man we chose to lead this party for any number of reasons.

Don't throw stones in glass houses, I say.

How come the right-wing media suppresses comparisons of Edwards' indiscretion to their own candidate McCain's own indiscretion?

It's been well documented ( http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B02EFDF1439F934A15751C0A9669C8B63 ) that John McCain conducted an affair with Cindy McCain while he was married to his first wife. But you really don't hear much about it. I only read about it on Wikipedia once.

And the second time I heard about it was on Friday after the Edwards news broke. According to Mark Green, a guest on MSNBC's "Race for the White House", when McCain was asked about the Edwards infidelity, his response was, "No comment."

Why don't these guys take a cue from their own candidate and lift themselves above this level of discourse?

[Malfunctioning Glenn Reynolds Robot]

Heh. Indeed. We're winning! Read the whole thing. Obama's got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where's my recession? Mickey Kaus was right about Edwards! Heh. Indeed. We're winning! Read the whole thing. Obama's got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where's my recession? Mickey Kaus was right about Edwards! Heh. Indeed. We're winning! Read the whole thing. Obama's got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where's my recession? Mickey Kaus was right about Edwards! Heh. Indeed. We're winning! Read the whole thing. Obama's got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where's my recession? Mickey Kaus was right about Edwards! Heh. Indeed. We're winning! Read the whole thing. Obama's got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where's my recession? Mickey Kaus was right about Edwards! Heh. Indeed. We're winning! Read the whole thing. Obama's got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where's my recession? Mickey Kaus was right about Edwards! Heh. Indeed. We're winning! Read the whole thing. Obama's got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where's my recession? Mickey Kaus was right about Edwards! Heh. Indeed. We're winning! Read the whole thing. Obama's got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where's my recession? Mickey Kaus was right about Edwards! Heh. Indeed. We're winning! Read the whole thing. Obama's got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where's my recession? Mickey Kaus was right about Edwards! Heh. Indeed. We're winning! Read the whole thing. Obama's got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where's my recession? Mickey Kaus was right about Edwards! Heh. Indeed. We're winning! Read the whole thing. Obama's got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where's my recession? Mickey Kaus was right about Edwards! Heh. Indeed. We're winning! Read the whole thing. Obama's got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where's my recession? Mickey Kaus was right about Edwards! Heh. Indeed. We're winning! Read the whole thing. Obama's got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where's my recession? Mickey Kaus was right about Edwards! Heh. Indeed. We're winning! Read the whole thing. Obama's got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where's my recession? Mickey Kaus was right about Edwards! Heh. Indeed. We're winning! Read the whole thing. Obama's got an oozing sense of entitlement. Dude, where's my recession? Mickey Kaus was right about Edwards!

[MovieMan0283]

Good call, Tony. And, as I recall, McCain's wife had cancer at the time...sound familiar? Not that I want this story to build up either, I really don't care about the candidates' infidelities except to the extent that they distract from more important issues (that said, cheating on your wife while she's struggling with a life-threatening disease is pretty, um, shitty). I will give McCain credit for one thing: during this "scandal" and all the Obama fear-mongering, he's been pretty consistent in not getting involved and actively disavowing when the ball came firmly into his court. Maybe it's just self-serving wisdom of the aforementioned "don't throw stones..." variety, but at this point I'll take what I can get.

[MovieMan0283]

CORRECTION: McCain cheated on his wife, while she was recovering from a car accident, not suffering from cancer.

Apologies.

[cadavra]

And the press treated Giuliani going out on the town with his mistress (while his TV-reporter wife was being humiliated in public) as some kind of lark. Not to mention Gingrich, Hyde, Chenoweth, Burton (who fathered a child out of wedlock), etc. Rank hypocrites, every single one of them.