A Profession of Quislings

I see where there appears to be a concerted effort made in and by media to drum up some sympathy for poor, persecuted, misunderstood outgoing usurper president George W. Bush.

This. Makes. Me. Sick. Leaving aside for the moment the breathtaking wrongheadedness of such an attempt, all I can say is WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU, JOURNALISTS OF THE WORLD??? Did you not go through the same past eight years I did? And did you not see the egregious perversions this creature practiced on us all? The rape of the Constitution, the disassembling of the economy, the pushing of two wars and the abandonment of the first one when it got too tough, the boastful claim of "Mission accomplished", the shameless preening atop the still-smoking pile of rubble and bodies at Ground Zero...I could go on and on, but my typing fingers are getting tired.

And if you did see all this, then WHY THE HELL DIDN'T YOU THINK TO TAKE HIM TO TASK FOR IT? And, getting back to the breathtaking wrongheadedness, why now are you STILL seen to further whitewash this vile piece of trash by attempting to score him some sympathy props?

I have about as much respect for my journalistic profession at the moment as I have for Shrub himself. Which is to say not even none, but it's measured in negative increments so large as to approximate geologic time. For eight years, journalists colluded and conspired, nudge-nudge-wink-wink, at propping up his lying, cheating, stealing Potemkin-village tactics with matching ones of their own. Where was the outrage and fury as all this went down, to get us to where we are today? Where were the crusading journos ripping the lid off the noxious brew of favoritism, elitism and screw-the-people that Bush and his minions and lackeys were pouring with such success down everyone's throat? Why did none of you sputter and spit it right back in their faces?

Why? Because you were a cowardly pack of sycophants and suckups. Because you just caved. Because you'd rather quit than fight. You're far too intelligent NOT to have realized what was going on; therefore I can only assume that you accepted and agreed to this monumental screwing.

Which makes you just as guilty as the scumbags who perpetrated this mess. I am thoroughly ashamed of your failure to fight back, and thoroughly disgusted at your current attempt to soften the image of Bush, probably not out of affection for him but just to make yourselves look less like the jackasses and political whores you really are.

Not to mention the bend-over sellouts to your masters: the big conglomerates that own all media and rule the airwaves and front pages. It all comes down to money: the masters run the plantations, and the serfs knuckle under. And the few who do speak out are summarily bounced, as a warning to uppity journos everywhere: not "All the news that's fit to print", but "All the news that's going to get printed, we'll tell you."

Well, maybe that's a consideration for which journalists should validly be cut a little slack, in the cause of keeping their families fed, but in these days of the Internet, there are many other ways to get the truth out there without anyone's job being imperiled. I don't notice any renegade journalists out there: any Zorros, any Batmans, any Green Arrows, let alone any Deep Throats. Fear and money rule. And who do we have to thank for that? That's right: the corrupt Sith Lords Darth Cheney, Darth Rove and their little Darthian friends who have enriched their pockets at the expense of the American public. They conducted themselves as if we're THEIR servants, not they ours.

And by not holding those who could report these abuses to the standards of their profession, we colluded and turned a blind eye, even as we all struggled to survive. The two things should not be mutually exclusive. If people get the government they deserve, as is said to be the case by common wisdom, then maybe people get the Fourth Estate they deserve, too. Or that deserves them.

The honorable and integrity-laden firebrand journalists of the past are spinning in their graves. Whatever happened to "Speak truth to power?" Somehow over the past eight years, journalists read that as "Kiss power's ass no matter what."

I say again, you make me sick.