Priorities

The Daily Howler, I've come to realize, is just about the best leftist website around. Mostly a review of--and a criticism--of what resident Howler, Bob Somerby, sees as the laziness and stupidity of the left-leaning media (Matthews, Klein, et al). He has repeatedly asserted that the MSM's habitual repeating of the "myths" surrounding Al Gore (inventing the Internet, discovering Love Canal, being lectured by Naomi Wolf) cost Gore the 2000 election. This is a debatable point. He has lately asserted that the weather calamities of the past year or so prove that Al Gore was right all along. This, too, is a debatable point--though one I find absurd. (I've become a bit of a nut on the subject of the 1900 Galveston Hurricane, a storm that made Katrina resemble a soft summer shower. I don't know that there were two hundred private automobiles in all of the United States in 1900--was the Galveston storm a product of greenhouse gases? Okay, anyway . . .)

Today, The Howler seizes upon a news item we might refer to as The Telling Detail:

A CARTOON PRESS CORPS: Only Elisabeth Bumiller could overlook the mordant humor in her presentation. At the start of this morning’s “White House Letter,” she describes the press corps’ conduct during a recent plane ride:

BUMILLER (5/22/06): Reporters en route to Arizona on Air Force One last week opted to watch the movie ''King Kong'' in the press cabin. Not so Tony Snow, the new White House press secretary and former Fox News commentator, who told reporters that he spent the flight in the staff cabin watching Gen. Michael V. Hayden's confirmation hearings to be the new C.I.A. director—on CNN.

Howler: Got milk—and cookies? While Snow watches Hayden’s confirmation hearings, the “press corps” chooses King Kong!

Readers, let’s review: It’s the middle of a work day. An important hearing is under way. The press corps is stuck on a long plane ride. And they choose to watch an inane, year-old movie! Only Bumiller could offer this fact and fail to see the dark humor involved—the portrait it paints of her hapless cohort, the people who steward our discourse.

Over on NRO's Media Blog, Stepehn Spreuill observes:

These are the same people who were complaining a few weeks ago that they couldn't get anyone to change the channel from Fox News — probably so they could watch Free Willy 3: The Rescue on HBO Family.

I think I'm supposed to write, "Heh."