There are moments in our national discourse that the narrative seems to change, and there are even moments when sanity, or as close to sanity as we can get, appears to have a chance of prevailing. We may have reached such a moment in the reaction to the reaction of the neo-cons to the events currently taking place in Iraq, events that war opponents predicted before the war even started.
A question is being asked of these people that they have never been asked before: “Why should we listen to you now, when you've been wrong about everything in the past?” This is a stunning development in a culture in which being wrong is usually a path to career advancement, no matter how many dead bodies one leaves in one's wake.
A slight diversion now, but I will get back to my point. I have always assumed that the people on Fox are smarter than the people they play on television. They are amply rewarded for saying very silly and stupid things, but, so far as I know, aren't required to believe anything they say. After all, they can turn on a dime anytime it suits the anti-Obama purpose, so intellectual honesty, not to mention consistency, is not a job requirement. Nonetheless, they know from whence their paychecks come, and what they are being paid to do (hint: journalism optional). So, it is always a surprise when one of them strays off the reservation. When one does it two times (three if you count a takedown of convicted criminal Dinesh D'Souza), it starts one must take notice.
So, to get back to my main point, it is more than emblematic of the media's extraordinary somewhat turnabout that Megyn Kelly, called out Dick Cheney, John Bolton, and D'Souza last week, while other somewhat journalists were piling onto Wolfowitz and others. Since she did it three times, it must be true. You can watch the video of Cheney here. Dick looks like a deer caught in the headlights about to get shot in the face. Remember, these guys are used to getting a free ride on Fox. They go on Fox precisely because they will not be asked the very obvious questions that Kelly put to Cheney. It's such an ironclad rule that Cheney may well have an action against Fox for breach of contract. I love when he insists that he wasn't wrong about weapons of mass destruction in spite of the fact that he was wrong about weapons of mass destruction because all his friends agreed with him at the time.
Why did Kelly slip the leash (at least for a while, she starts throwing softballs near the end)? It would be interesting to know. I'm not buying her claim that she's not an ideologue. That might very well be true, but most days she plays one on television. Has she had some sort of life altering experience? A crisis of conscience in which she realized that what she does has corrosive effects in the real world; that, in short, it matters? Perhaps someone she cared about (she probably does care about some people) was killed in Iraq. It would be interesting to know. Unfortunately, this media pushback on Iraq is likely to be an anomaly; fruit so low hanging that even Megyn Kelly can't resist. But, there's always hope.
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