The ten foot pole in action

You’ll recall that, when I commented on the Reid scandal — and it is a scandal, because he used Government power for private profit and then hid that fact — I said the real story would be whether the MSM embraced the story.  If it didn’t, I said, that would add huge credibility to the conservative contention that the MSM exists, not so much to relay news, as to advance a single political party (that would be the Democratic party, for those in doubt).  Laer, at Cheat-Seeking Missiles, used his Lexis-Nexis access to establish what I suspected:  with some limited and laudable exceptions, the MSM is trying hard not to touch the Reid story.

I can imagine the MSM editorial meetings.  Someone asks, “What about Reid?” There’s a moment of embarassed silence before someone else murmurs, “You know, I don’t think we should be dealing with this now.  We really need to hammer away on how Bush, who insulted Jong Il by calling him a member of the Axis of Evil, forced him to prove his evilness with a nuclear explosion.  And of course, there’s the 8 billion dead in Iraq because of American soldiers.  Nor can we forget Foley’s rape of the Vienna Boys’ Choir, and the fact that Hastert watched the hold thing on a specially made home video.”  (By the way, everything in that sentence is nonsense, except for the fact that Jimmy Carter did actually say that, because Bush called Jong Il evil, Jong Il, who was previously as pure as driven snow, was driven mad by the insult, and forced to prove himself, not innocent of the charge, but actually evil.)  As a sop to their consciences, someone then says, “We’ll follow up on it after the election.  But first, let’s see what more we can get from the Foley story.”  And that’s the news, folks.