Of Courage and Valor in the Fourth Estate

I love it when someone has enough historical memory to dredge up what today’s star pundit said yesterday about the same topic. Thus does Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com take the peepee out of wankmaster Joe Klein, starting with his latest column in TIME magazine in which he kicks the now prone and pathetic GWB by referring to. . .

. . . his ridiculous, preening appearance in a flight suit on the deck of the aircraft carrier beneath the “Mission Accomplished” sign.

Klein calls the flight-suit image ‘one of the two defining moments of the Bush failure.’

Fair enough. But, asks Greenwald, what was the brave giant-slayer Klein saying when Bush was riding high? Greenwald reminds him with a transcript of his May 4, 2003, appearance on Face the Nation:

BOB SCHIEFFER: “How does [the Democratic presidential primary debate] play off against the pictures we saw this week of President Bush landing on the aircraft carrier and appearing before these screaming, adoring groups of military people? As far as I'm concerned, that was one of the great pictures of all time. . . .”

JOE KLEIN: “Well, that was probably the coolest presidential image since Bill Pullman played the jet fighter pilot in the movie Independence Day. . . . And it just shows you how high a mountain these Democrats are going to have to climb.”

Not nearly as high as the contradiction Klein will have to scale to explain this utter disconnect between his current opinion and the one he peddled back when it mattered.

What lessons can be drawn from this hilarious example?

First, ignore Joe Klein always.

More importantly, recall that the chattering classes are mouthpieces of the commonplace and that the task of punditry, almost by definition, is to package and transmit what people are comfortable with thinking and feeling at the moment and within a narrow band of approved possibilities. It is a bit like extracting a blood sample and reinjecting it into the originating veins.

Do not, however, expect to be cautioned about anything that escapes the cozy worldview on display. No commentators will headline their pieces, We Might Lose This War or Our Leaders Are Leading Us over the Precipice. That will only merit comment after the fact.