A reader comments, in reference to "Kristof: Bush Should Act Like a Greek Boy" (10/22):

You guys bashing Kristof have short memories. He broke the news of Joe Wilson's trip to Niger, and before that he was one of the first to suggest that WMD won't be found in Iraq because the president lied. Yes, his praise of the Christian right is stupid. But he is not "rooting" for Bush; he's offering a mild but accurate criticism of Bush.

Not everyone is going to criticize Bush in the bombastic style this blog seems to prefer, but who cares? Is the point not to win an election? Isn't this more likely to happen if Bush is criticized in all sorts of styles, tones, and registers?

speakingcorpse replies:

You are of course correct about Kristof. He regularly informs us of things we would otherwise know nothing about. Still, there's got to be a place to express, without reservation, the horror and disgust that are inevitably provoked by our public discourse. The fact that Kristof--an obviously intelligent and useful writer--could have concluded a column about the leak scandal by saying it made "both sides" look equally bad is, at least from a certain perspective, reason enough to consider suicide or terrorism.

It's only fair that I be able to say about Kristof's remark at the end of his latest Plame piece that it (the remark) is the first step towards death, and is the equivalent of the emission of, at least, a small turd.

Look, at least part of the problem we face is that the mainstream media plays these kinds of stupid games. AmCop is a kind of overcompensation--a place for infantile feelings expressed in an infantile manner. Bad things happen when such feelings have no outlet.

While we're on the topic of Kristof--and since we're approaching the anniversary of last year's midterm elections--I am going to reprise here a Media Whores Online reader's response to Kristof's 11/5/02 column "The Left Dumbs Down." It was an exceptionally stupid and repugnant column, coming as it did on the eve of an election in which Republicans capitalized on the very campaign of lies which seemed less important to Kristof than the Democrats' anger about those lies.

Mr. Kristof:

Stop blaming Democrats and other honest citizens (in your words, "the left") for the crisis state of mainstream journalism in this country. It's the fault of yourself and your peers in the field that more and more Americans distrust and despise the corporate news media. It comes down to your own arrogant dishonesty.

Your column today serves as an example of this tendency. In it, you deceitfully swirl valid complaints about the media and the Bush administration together with conspiracy-theory mongering, as if both were of the same ilk. The assertion that some make that Sen. Wellstone's plane crash was no accident is, indeed, unjustified without some valid evidence of treachery, which has not emerged thus far to my knowledge.

But that allegation is NOT being made by nearly as many people as the number of those who are disgusted and outraged at the plain facts about George W. Bush, 'his' administration, and the state of the news media today. Namely, the fact that our supposed Chief Executive is a smug, soft-headed mama's boy who's never really accomplished a thing in his life; that he can barely put a coherent sentence together all by himself; that he's surrounded and controlled by a corrupt Big Business clique; that he was not validly elected but appointed to office in an unforgivable abuse of authority by the US Supreme Court; and that the corporate news media continues to pander to and promote him and his handlers with eager shamelessness.

Furthermore, this follows upon 8 years of unrelenting scandal-mongering and character assassination by the corporate media in cooperation with the GOP against President Bill Clinton, ending in a scheme to topple him from office over concocted scandals and cynically contrived legal violations; and then the 2000 election campaign, in which Al Gore was relentlessly smeared and Bush whitewashed, ending with the abominable theft of the presidency -- which you in the corporate media also tried to finesse and put over on the public.

Should I respect a news outlet like the New York Times, when I know that it regularly peddles distortions and lies? The paper that reported a story during the campaign about Al Gore making criticisms of the drug industry, headlined not 'Gore Criticizes Drug Industry' but 'Gore Tries Pitching Himself as Critic of Drug Industry'? That smeared Gore as a habitual or even pathological liar, and in one article consulted an authority on people who claim to have been abducted by outer-space aliens in reference to his supposed 'problem'? That tries to tell me, in the face of all the evidence, that SEC chairman Harvey Pitt is an honest officeholder whose "accomplishments'"have been obscured because of his blunt "style"?

The other instances of "venom" on "the left" which you cite in today's column are also attempts to deceive. Sen. Wellstone, a highly-regarded and even beloved figure to many good people in this country, had committed his life to politics, and died in the final stretch of a campaign in which huge amounts of corporate money were being spent to defeat and replace him with a turncoat and puppet. That politics were spoken of at his memorial was certainly to be expected. In truth, the same would have happened if a Republican Senate candidate had died under the same circumstances -- only you in the corporate media wouldn't be propagating the notion that something was wrong about it.

The fact that many Americans aren't sold on the push for an invasion of Iraq is because the Bush administration's motives are blatantly suspicious on the face of it. They haven't even begun to justify the proposed military action in the terms they've offered. What's left are the obvious motivations that these exemplars of government-corporate cronyism would be acting out of -- mainly, the desire to seize and control Iraq's oil resources.

If you corporate media folks really wish to regain credibility, I advise that, for starters, you stop trying to bullshit the American public about the character and abilities of our 'president,' because nearly everyone understands that WE DON'T HAVE A PRESIDENT. Democrats, independents and many Republicans know damned well that the lazy and dimwitted George W. Bush isn't running this administration, and wouldn't be capable of doing so if he had to. The corporatist clique surrounding him are the real powers and decision-makers, and their ruthlessness and resourcefulness are not to be underestimated.

We on "the left" don't underestimate these people, believe me. We know what we're faced with when it comes to today's corporate media as well.

Peter Risley