http://dailyhowler.com/It’s nice to be nice, but we find that passage semi-bizarre—although we’re pleased to see Kevin say that something was wrong with the coverage of Campaign 2000. We’d love to know what that could have been. Kevin rarely if ever mentions this fact—and he doesn’t explain it here.
Why do we find this semi-bizarre? Yes, it’s very nice to be nice; indeed, when we started THE DAILY HOWLER, we included a feature called “x gets it right,” in which we explicitly praised big scribes who got some story right (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 4/8/99, with links to a string of previous posts). But as the months turned into years—as the coverage of Campaign 2000 turned into an astounding press story—it began to seem more and more absurd to spend time on such a feature. According to Kevin, the press corps bungled Campaign 2000, then bungled the run-up to war in Iraq. Would it be strange for a site to focus on that without, somehow, feeling obliged to praise famous scribes when they get something right? After all, famous scribes are supposed to get things right! What’s wrong with focusing on something else—on a remarkable, history-changing situation? Why would someone need an “excuse” to focus on matters like that?
Simply put, the mainstream coverage of Campaign 2000 is an astonishing, still untold story. It isn’t clear who Kevin is criticizing in his remarks about liberal press criticism. But let us just explain our problem: In part, we’ve had to scream and turn handstands about Campaign 2000 because the Kevin Drums of this world have simply refused to say Boo about it. To this day, he has said next to nothing about this remarkable topic (and about the Clinton pseudo-scandals which preceded it)—as have almost all liberal elites. In so doing, they have failed to serve your interests (and those of the general public). But by the way, wasn’t it awful about Final Jeopardy? To Kevin, lounging in Orange County, that did seem worthy of note.
LOVE AND HATE: For ourselves, we don’t “hate” the MSM “with a white hot passion,” or any other way, for that matter. But then, we don’t consider it a “beloved institution,” either. Why must such passions be involved in this? For us, this hasn’t been about either emotion; it has been about the deeply puzzling, unexplained drift of our history. Yes, our recent history, lost, stolen and strayed—and covered up by our liberal elites.