Whiskey Bar: Hard Evidence

Whiskey Bar: Hard Evidence: "Maybe the Downing Street Memo (coupled with Bush's sinking poll numbers) will be the cocktail that puts a little fire in the bellies of the Washington press corps. A few stiff belts of the truth seem to have encouraged Polman to stop pulling his punches anyway. More likely, the corporate drones at the top of the editorial pyramid will heed the voice of their master (Mammon) and simply close the bar -- long before the timid nobodies at CNN or the henpecked husbands of CBS/NBC/ABC ever get their hands on a drop of the good stuff.



"On the other hand, the sheer insanity of the Iraq occupation (and the administration's own progressively more flagrant detachment from reality) finally seem to be having an effect on the American public -- despite the media's attempts to severely ration the truth. It may not take much of the stuff to get a good bar fight going, one in which the administration -- and the conservative propaganda machine -- will come out the loser for a change."



One would have thought an unpopular war might have affected the 2004 election. One might have thought that numerous scandals might of interest.



It may be that the scandals are piling higher and higher, a giant bonfire of corruption and incompetence, which will ignite in an apparently spontaneous media firestorm. Of course, this is the same corporate right-wing media, which kept Whitewater alive for seven long years.



For the news junkies, all of this stuff is known. It is being reported. It just is not being reinforced into a continuous narrative. There was nothing to report about Whitewater. But, the continuous narrative was put in place anyway.



It is not the facts, which make a scandal. It is the will to repeat a narrative, which unites the facts. That will is lacking. And, without it, no facts about Bush will bring him down. There will be no perfect storm, to rescue America from a long, fast decline.



And, even if such a perfect storm should emerge at the horizon, look for Bush's masters to try some horror, to shortcircuit it all -- some dramatic, horrible event, to bring American atavism to the fore, and to preserve the fascist State Bush has been building.