Just when I posted on the Downing Street memo multiplying itself like those Biblical patriarchs I got this e-mail from FAIR:
A June 7 White House press conference with George W. Bush and Tony Blair offered the first public response from Bush to the memo, and with that came an upswing in U.S. media attention. But some in the media took it as a chance to lash out at the activists who have been bringing attention to the story all along. On June 8, Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank referred to Downing Street Memo activists--some of whom were offering a cash reward for the first journalist to ask Bush about the memo--as "wing nuts." He also offered an illogical explanation for the memo's low media profile:
"In part, the memo never gained traction here because, unlike in Britain, it wasn't election season, and the war is not as unpopular here. In part, it's also because the notion that Bush was intent on military action in Iraq had been widely reported here before, in accounts from Paul O'Neill and Bob Woodward, among others. The memo was also more newsworthy across the Atlantic because it reinforced the notion there that Blair has been acting as Bush's 'poodle.'"
Milbank had reported the same day (6/8/05) that his paper's latest poll showed that only 41 percent of Americans approved of the Iraq war--which makes one wonder when exactly the war would cross Milbank's threshold and become unpopular enough to make the memo newsworthy. Secondly, Milbank argued the memo isn't news because other similar stories were once reported--a peculiar explanation, to be sure. Finally, Milbank's third rationale--that the memo was news in the U.K. because it confirmed existing suspicions--would seem to directly contradict the
It is such a beauty of...yes!, wingnut logic, that I'm going to just sit here quietly reading it over and over again.