The Disgruntled Employee

Isn't it interesting that when someone makes charges against an employer, the immediate reaction from said employer is the "disgruntled employee" excuse?

Following the blowback from Scott McClellan's new book, in which (surprise, surprise) he is critical of the Bush administration and George W. Bush, all we heard from the White House is how it was all "disgruntled employee" claptrap and "That's not the Scott I knew." You're right. The Scott McClellan you knew would lie his motherfuckin' ass off for the Bushies, so yes, maybe this Scott was unrecognizable to you as a man whose conscience ate away at him until he had to come out with something a little closer to the truth than the standard Bush White House fare. I still have a problem believing that he "unknowingly" lied, but that's up for debate.

But for all those who still think, and I wouldn't have the first clue why, that the media has an obvious "liberal bias" comes the newest Disgruntled Employee of the Day: Jessica Yellin.

CNN correspondent Jessica Yellin said Thursday she was referring to her time spent at MSNBC when she said she felt pressure not to report stories critical of the Bush administration during the time leading up to the Iraq war.

During her CNN appearance, Yellin said the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives to make sure the war was presented "in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president's high approval ratings."

The higher Bush's approval ratings, the more pressure she felt from news executives to put on positive stories about the president, she said. Pushed by [CNN's Anderson] Cooper to explain, Yellin said her bosses would turn down critical stories about the administration and try to put on positive pieces.

MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines... didn't dispute Yellin's claim that she did some Washington and Pentagon reports while there.

"She had little to no contact with editorial decision makers, and certainly was not a part of the editorial process on a daily basis," Gaines said. "Given how her story has changed so dramatically since her appearance on CNN - her current employer - less than 24 hours ago, we find it hard to believe that anyone would take this disgruntled former employee's comments seriously."

And how did her story change? She specified that it was MSNBC she was working for when she felt the pressure to report the favorable stories as opposed to being critical. Why are these people still trying to defend what we already know to be true? The media ginned up the drumbeat for war as much as the Bushies did. We all know this. Even that "liberal rag" the New York Times had Judith Miller marching in lockstep with the White House and their WMD claims. But is "disgruntled employee" Yellin telling the truth?

I think we can all remember the cancelled Phil Donohue show on MSNBC, the same time slot that Countdown with Keith Olbermann now fills.

The charges against MSNBC aren't new, however. A prime-time show with Phil Donahue received consistent pressure to present panels tilted in favor of the war, said Jeff Cohen, that program's former senior producer. Donahue's show was on for less than a year before being cancelled less than a month before the war began.
He once witnessed a producer scolded for organizing a discussion with pro- and anti-war sentiments presented equally, said Cohen, a liberal activist who wrote a book about his experiences with TV networks.

...From the other side of the podium, McClellan offered criticism of the media's performance. He said reporters were "complicit enablers" by covering the preparations for war instead of more aggressively questioning the need for it.

Finally, and although it comes five years too late, it's a start... coincidentally just in time for a Democratic president to be in a position to take over the Oval Office January 20th, 2009.

But it is far from over. The mainstream media is still caught in a rut of propping up instead of examining independently and letting the cream rise to the top. A perfect example is how the McCainstream Media handles the Maverick with kid gloves even though we know that Mr. Straight Talk Reformer has sided with the current pResident 95%-100% of the time in the last 18 months.

That's some agent of change, huh?

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald has more on Politico and their equating "critics" of the war to "left wing haters" but ties in the point of the push back on those claiming deferential treatment of the media towards the Bush Administration.

Politico reporter Mike Allen, formerly of The Washington Post and Time, appeared yesterday on the show of right-wing radio host Mike Gallagher. The two of them guffawed together at how absurd are Scott McCellan's claims that the media was "deferential" to the Bush administration and then Allen said this:

ALLEN: And indeed, Scott does adopt the vocabulary, rhetoric of the left wing haters. Can you believe it in here he says the White House press corps was too deferential to the administration?

We only believe it because it's true, Mr. Allen.

McClellan Skewered For Telling Truth

By now, everyone has weighed in on the new McClellan tell-all on the Bushies' back rooms, but I think there are two trains of thought for Scotty's book.

1 - Now he tells us? And

2 - Maybe this will open the floodgates.

Either way, cracking the door open on a extremely secretive administration can only be a good thing. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. The White House has obviously come out with guns blazing in their attack on McClellan in response. But there is one former aide who came to his defense.

One former Bush aide... is sticking up for McClellan, arguing that the former Bush press secretary is "getting savaged for saying what everyone knows to be true."

Mike Turk served as the eCampaign director for President Bush's 2004 reelection campaign. As such, his tenure corresponded with that of McClellan's. No longer connected to the administration, Turk is now one of the few (if any) voices with connections to that crowd who are saying, quite simply, that the book "What Happened" is steeped in little more than truth.

Maybe he'll be the first on many.

Lott To Resign

JACKSON, Miss. — Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, the Senate's No. 2 Republican, plans to resign his seat before the end of the year, congressional and Bush administration officials said Monday.

Lott, 66, scheduled two news conferences in Pascagoula and Jackson later in the day to reveal his plans. According to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of the announcement, Lott intends to resign effective at the end of the year.

...Lott's colleagues elected him as the Senate's Republican whip last year, a redemption for the Mississippian after his ouster five years ago as the party's Senate leader over remarks he made at retiring Sen. Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party in 2002. Lott had saluted the South Carolina senator with comments later interpreted as support for southern segregationist policies.

Well, birds of a feather...

But seriously, something major is happening here. The amount of resignations over the last few months is not something I remember as a normal thing towards the end of an administration. Are the rats truly deserting the sinking ship?

What do they know that we don't, that is causing an exodus from Washington? Something of epic proportions is going to break soon. One would have thought it was the McClellan book quote story - or non-story as the "liberal" media would have you believe. A cackling laugh or a $400 haircut is major news, but the possibility that the highest officials in our government committed treason is something to be buried in the back pages.

Speculation is that Lott is trying to beat the new rule for former Senators joining lobbying groups. By resigning before the end of the year, Mr. Lott would beat the effective date for new ethics rules that double to two years the amount of time former Senators must wait before they can join a firm to lobby former colleagues. The new rule applies to those who leave office “on or after” Dec. 31.

What Happened?!...

...is the the title of Scott McClellan's new book(punctuation mine). The former White House Press Secretary reveals in a stunning tell-all that he (gasp!) knew he was lying when covering for the Bush Crime Syndicate.

The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

There was one problem. It was not true.

I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the president himself.

The book is scheduled for release in April of 2008, with plenty of time to hand out presidential pardons before then. Great going, Scotty, you li'l ol' patriot, you.

UPDATE: November 21, 2007, 9:30pm EST

McClellan does not believe President Bush lied to him about the role of White House aides I. Lewis Scooter Libby or Karl Rove in the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity, according to McClellan's publisher.

...the president told McClellan what "he thought to be the case." But... McClellan believes, "the president didn't know it was not true."

So that makes Bush incompetent instead of a liar. Either way, it's a sorry state of affairs for the Oval Office.

I just want a member of the press corps to ask one, simple question: Dana, now that this story has come out, how can we ever trust what anyone in this administration says from that podium ever again?