Oxymoron

Glenn Greenwald makes a rare appearance (he's writing a book) at his Unclaimed Territory today and writes an article with (a record, I think) nine updates. His topic -- the oxymoronic inclusion of the word "credibility" in a sentence with the "right-wing blogosphere". Glenn is at his passionate and articulate best as he concludes:

That media inaccuracy is not their concern is about as glaring and obvious a fact as one can discover. They don't seem to have noticed that this entire war was based upon inaccurate reporting -- a whole series of false claims about Saddam Hussein, the state of the Iraqi weapons program, its relationship to Al Qaeda, its involvement in the 9/11 attacks, the cost of our invasion, the consequences of it.

But there, "inaccurate reporting" generated what they craved -- some nice, bloody war in the Islamic world, so it didn't bother them at all, and still doesn't. I have read more right-wing blogs than I can count, with a depressing frequency, and I don't think I have ever seen a single post written by any of them examining or decrying the sloppy, inaccurate reporting of the "MSM" which endorsed every false claim by the Bush administration which drove the country to invade Iraq.

Someone who stands outside of a store and repeatedly lets burglars in -- and who even themselves frequently runs into the building to steal some nice merchandise -- isn't a "watchdog" in any meaningful sense of the term, even if they wear the uniform.

They are dishonest hacks with an agenda that is the opposite of what they claim. This Jamil Hussein humiliation would be rather compelling evidence, standing alone, to demonstrate how they operate. But this incident has plenty of company. At some point, isn't their total lack of credibility, the endless stream of irresponsible, false accusations, and the reckless disregard for facts that drives them going to be so apparent that it becomes undeniable to everyone but them? We have long ago reached the point where that ought to be the case.

I especially like this UPDATE -- a link to this Tom Tomorrow cartoon: