Lance Mannion explains why the right-wing pundits, like David Ignatius of the Washington Post or David Broder of the New York Times appear to be so irrationally determined to believe the best of the leaders of the Republican Party and the Bush Administration, when those people are, in fact, among the absolute worst political leaders imaginable.
I think that they're being told lots and lots of scary stories off the record.
I'm thinking that at parties, or after press conferences, or while waiting in the green room before a Sunday morning bobblehead fest or while in the lines waiting to get into the best restaurants at lunch someone pulls them aside, saying, "A word in your shell-like?"
Maybe they get phone calls.
This someone is not the usual suspect. This someone is a someone they trust. Someone who seems sane, who seems to know what they're talking about, who is on the inside but not "one of them," not an obvious party hack or true believer. This someone may wear a uniform but more likely it's a someone who is known to have the ears of trustworthy men and women who do wear uniforms.
This someone pulls a David Ignatius aside and says, "This is on the hush-hush, the QT, deep background."
And then the someone tells a scary story about what the terrorists almost did yesterday.
The story is vague, sketchy, but it has the ring of truth and it contains at least one detail that makes the journalist's skin crawl.
And then the someone adds that he or see could say more . . .
But the someone must be quiet. Walls have ears. The people would panic if they knew. The someone melts away into the air, leaving shaking in his socks the journalist who goes home to have nightmares all night and then gets up in the morning and, unable to tell us the horrorible things he knows, writes instead a column in which he tells us to just shut up and let the big strong daddies in the Republican Party handle everything for us.
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