More on the Moyers documentary

(NOTE: This post from last week has been bumped up to give prominence to the exchanges in the comments section, the last few contributions to which were made today. -- The Rascal)

Before you click on this link for a good little essay by Glenn Greenwald about last night's edition of "Bill Moyers Journal" on PBS, wherein the media were skewered for swallowing the Bush administration's crapola in the months just prior to the war in Iraq, The Rascal has one observation to share:

One of the best things about Moyers' documentary is that it puts the lie to a popular myth among conservatives about the so-called liberal media. That myth holds that the media, controlled by a snobbishly liberal elite, is inherently inclined to oppose almost anything arising from a conservative Republican presidency.

The truth, as Moyers made clear, is that The New York Times, the Washington Post, the TV networks and the rest of the establishment media were more than eager four and five years ago to support this Republican president in his plans for military adventure in the Middle East. They were more than eager to marginalize, if not denounce, anybody who dared express skepticism about the matter. They were more than eager to play an indispensible role in the administration's calculated efforts to curry public favor for the policy. They were willing, in short, to be played like so many violins.

The lesson to be learned from this is that liberals have no more reason than conservatives to trust the mainstream media. That's why so many of the liberals in the blogosphere, unbeknownst to the conservatives who don't read such stuff, tend to be distrustful of (and sometimes hostile to) the establishment media.

UPDATE: Mark Knoller of CBS News takes issue today with Moyers' characterization of the White House press corps as lapdogs. The comments at the bottom of the piece rightly put Knoller in his place.

Rightists to Bush: Dump 'Berto

Under the banner of the American Freedom Agenda, a bunch of influential conservatives is telling President Bush that he should fire Attorney General Alberto Gonzales "for the good of the country."

The group's letter to Bush says Gonzales "has presided over an unprecedented crippling of the Constitution's time-honored checks and balances...has brought rule of law into disrepute, and debased honesty as the coin of the realm."

Gonzales is scheduled to testify tomorrow before the Senate Judiciary Committee in its investigation of the Bush administration's firing of eight federal prosecutors.

UPDATE: Gonzales' appearance before the Senate committee has been postponed until Thursday because of the Virginia Tech shootings.