Scandalous
I suppose I should be used to it by now, but I’m not.
When it comes to policy matters, the mainstream media will sit on its thumbs indefinitely, taking a position that purports to be objective but is in fact a form of cowardly post-modernism–that there is no true and false, no right and wrong, but that there are simply two sides to every story.
But when a juicy personal scandal comes along–one that is tangential or irrelevant to policy, then the press extends its claws.
I speak, of course, about Bush’s history in the “champagne unit” of the Texas Air National Guard, his, uh, undocumented presence for duty, and the newfound interest in it.
It’s a bit of a mystery to me why this wasn’t an issue in 2000, or before for that matter. It’s been known, and it’s been covered intermittently since then, with some interesting angles. Something–I don’t know what–poked the press in the side and whetted their interest in this. Which is fine in and of itself: as a bellicose president, Bush of all people should be held up for close scrutiny when it comes to his own military service. But there have been so many issues of more immediate concern during the past four years that went underreported that the renewed interest in investigative journalism comes across as tawdry.