The Washington martini set

Digby notes the open contempt for citizens' right to know that the Washington press corps shares with their soul mates in government.

If politicians and the press want to know why they get no respect from the people, this is why. They openly defend dirty politics, pooh-pooh our outrage against it, and then expect us to look up to them.

Bob Woodward and Richard Cohen think that Fitzgerald is some sort of obsessed Javert chasing down the poor journalists and their sources over a little loaf of DC's staff of life --- the politics of personal destruction. To the rest of us, it's clear that the law is the only institution left capable of sorting out the truth now that the press and the politicians are so cozy that it literally takes a threat of jail to get journalists to report important stories about our most powerful leaders.

Bob Woodward very likely knew on the day that Novak revealed that Wilson's wife was CIA that this was a coordinated leak, not idle gossip. He most certainly knew that it was a coordinated leak when he found out that Libby and Rove had both "idly gossipped" about this to other reporters. Yet in his media appearances he made it quite clear that he believes that it was a trivial matter. I think we must take him at his word.

The elite press corps see the Nixonian dirty politics that have completely distorted our political discourse over the last 30 years as social currency. Swift-boating and McCain's black daughter and Linda Trip's tapes and Al Gore's suits are entertainment to them and the dissemination of this entertainment buys them access for what they think are their "serious" stories. We are told to just "get over" partisan impeachments, stolen elections and even lying about nuclear weapons.

Richard Cohen and his ilk believed that dirty politics are what Washington "does" the way that Hollywood makes movies or Detroit makes cars while the rest of us rubes maintained the strange belief that Washington is supposed to serve the people. That's the heart of this crisis in journalism. The elite press corps have completely missed the biggest political story of the last quarter century because they were having so much fun laughing and cavorting with their Republican sources that they failed to see that a powerful, criminal political machine was built upon the "trivial" acts of character assassination they found so amusing.

It's rather ironic (and that's a word I usually try to avoid using for fear of growing addicted) that in the sniffing and tut tutting of Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen -- what set off Dibgy's fine rant -- he basically says that Fitzgerald is chasing nothing significant, something that is Standard Operating Procedure in D.C.: a cover-up. Funny, I thought chasing down a cover-up was what reporters were supposed to do, not wait for Fitzgeralds to do it for them. In fact, wasn't chasing down a cover-up what turned Woodward from a nobody metro reporter to the Dean of American Journalism?

Follow the money, indeed.

And this just occurs to me: What's Carl Bernstein have to say about all of this?

But in trying, unsuccessfully, to find Digby's link to the Cohen quote (maybe I just couldn't take any more "Hardball"), I did find this interesting exchange:

SCARBOROUGH: You know, I always love reading Woodward books because he is—we talked about this before—he‘s sort of—he really doesn‘t work for a newspaper, he works for Woodward. He writes these books.

And for Washington insiders, they read these books and you just think, OK, this person leaked this way, this person leaked that. When I...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: I think Clinton really did do that, by the way. I think he underlined, “George Stephanopoulos said this” and that kind of thing.

SCARBOROUGH: But it‘s just so easy to figure out.

And in this case you have Bob Woodward obviously protecting his source, who is...

MATTHEWS: Do you think it‘s Cheney?

SCARBOROUGH: I certainly do.

And of course, it‘s so funny—about a month back, I heard somebody -

somebody called me up and said, you know, Cheney, it looks like Cheney is going to be running for president 2008, which I heard from people deep inside the Bush administration...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: You heard that, too?

(CROSSTALK)

SCARBOROUGH: But I said, “Well, how do you know?”

And they said, “Because Bob Woodward is going around telling everybody.”

MATTHEWS: What was he, flattering a source, do you think?

SCARBOROUGH: Of course he was.

And again, I remember I think in 1991 reading “The Commanders” at the beach and just dying laughing, going, oh my God, Colin Powell will leak this chapter, somebody else leaked that—but it happens all the time.

And people don‘t understand that, that reporters take it easy on their sources.

I remember one time we were in one of those meetings where we were trying to overthrow Newt Gingrich, right? This one time, I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut. I said absolutely nothing. Sat in the back, I said I‘m not going to get caught in this.

MATTHEWS: You don‘t want a bouquet thrown to you by Bob Novak, for example? And just say, everyone in the cloak room knows you ratted out a week ago.

SCARBOROUGH: Right. So I said absolutely nothing. Another guy in there who never liked me came out. He leaked to his source, tore me to shreds. Lied about me.

This newspaper ran it, and this reporter everybody knows. And I said what the hell just happened? Four days later, the leaker gets a front-page glowing review. A conservative that this newspaper had always hated.

And I went to the reporter, I said I know what you did. He said, what are you talking about? I said I know what you did. You kicked me in the butt. You got this guy‘s other source and told him you‘d write him a positive article if he ratted everybody out.

That‘s how it works.

MATTHEWS: Fee for service.

SCARBOROUGH: Fee for service. And the thing is, it happens whether you are talking about “Roll Call,” “The Washington Post,” or “The New York Times.”

I guess the pols and the reporters and the columnists consider us to be passive spectators whose role is to sit quietly and observe their maneuvering and petty back stabbing. We should consider ourselves fortunate to be admitted to the show.