[Chris Alger]

It adds up if you consider the media a series of profit-driven business that must operate within the constraints imposed by self-justifying authority that operate through the media and a plethora of other institutions. If the media calls the President a draft-dodger or a sodomite or a crook, this can sell beer and cars and might bode ill for the President but it's only a minor, temporary setback for the institutions of power. Worse case analysis is that the party under attack has to replace one guy with any of a dozen people waiting, hopefully, in the wings. In the long run its not problematic at all because stories like this can be sold as part of a systemic ability to guard against abuse and ferret out bad guys. Remember the catch phrase from Watergate: "the system worked." Individuals get creamed by the system is invulernerable. If you say Bush (or Clinton) is the best of all possible Presidents you sound like a partisan clown. If you say America's is the best of all possible systems you sound like a rationale patriot; no one will ask for your credentials in comparative systems analysis.

If, however, the media calls the President a terrorist or an aggressor based on a war that inculpates the Congress, the media, the Pentagon, the corporations and so on, this goes to the heart of power. This is a real threat. Take Watergate again and recall that the House impeachment committee considered Nixon's bombing of Cambodia, which killed tens of thousands of civilians and had no Congressional appropriation or authorization at all (Nixon had the secret approval of a small group of powerful Democratic, mostly conservative Senators with whom he consulted). Small potatoes compared to a burglary, but it essentially pointed the finger at the whole system, while the othr things could be explained as partisan dirty tricks, something the system can contain. This is why you see endless horrific images of 9/11 or Iraqi or Palestinian suicide bombers but hardly anything about the havoc wreaked by the U.S. and Israel. The exceptions to this are the fairly unrefutable "mistakes" which carry a similar dual meaning.

There are all kinds of contraints: the difficulty of dealing with a response from real domestic power if it is threatened (compared to tinpot rulers in Iran or Iraq), the need to explain things at length with expensive time to keep from sounding "un-American," the right-wing noise over the liberal media consipiracy, the need for access to officials, the need to placate advertisers (who fund the same officials and parties).

The upshot is that Bush's national guard service, like Clintons' adultery, is fair game. Bush's war and Clinton's bombing of Sudan, however, are not because they are systemic acts of a broad group of elites (who's commonalities are disguised by their constant partisan bickering over trivia). A corrolary to this is that we should expect a lot of noise from the media about how dogged and merciless they are in hounding the powerful, perhaps even to the point of recklessness, a tendency to excess of which thoughtful people should be wary. Another is a much greater degree of dispute and information about domestic policy, where the diffences bewteen elites are at stake. This is less true with foreign policy, where they tend to be united (reflect in the old saw about "politics stops at the water's edge").

Remember in the early 80's how Walter Cronkite used to say, at the end of every broadcast, that it's been X days since the Iranian hostages were taken. Nobody doubted that he was justified in reminding Americans of the plight of the 50 hostages, an unquestionably regretable thing.

OTOH, most people would consider lying to justify a war (rather than lying about troop movements or progess) quite a bit worse, one of the worst-case scenarios of the U.S. being run by a malignant dictator. While this memo might be new, the issue of Bush's lying (and those of his since-rewarded subordinates) is not. Now consider the possibility of Brokaw or Katie Couric saying, every day, "it's been X days wihout any investigation about whether the White House lied about the war." Or change it to "Republican and Democratic leaders lied about the war." It is inconceivable, despite the chinks in the armor caused by Bush's leveraging public apathy and ignorance into undridled aggression.

One could say "of course we castigate other countries more than we beat up on ourselves, what do you expect?" It might be unjustifiable at the extreme and we can do better, but this is just human nature. The response is "who's we?" I don't have a desire or interest in turning Iraq into a U.S., protectorate, nor does anyone else I know. Instead of seeing this view reflected in the media, we are constantly bombarded with images showing "America" as a unitary thing, as if "America" and not a few thousand Americans were responsble for everything. We don't see common sense reflected in the news presented by the media any more than we see it in the commercials that fund the news. The difference is that commercials don't need to appear serious to work, but that the news has to. But it's all part of the same system.